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Philip Marlowe #6
禺丿丕丨丕賮馗蹖 胤賵賱丕賳蹖
爻丕賱 賳卮乇: 1378
408 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1953
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40142 people want to read
About the author
Raymond Chandler
420听books5,413听followersRaymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America.
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.
The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor鈥攂y instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious鈥攁n innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.
The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor鈥攂y instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious鈥攁n innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."
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June 19, 2023
To say goodbye is to die a little.
There are some books that just feel good to have on your dashboard, never too far from your fingertips to read in the tiny gaps between obligations and responsibility. The type of book that rides shotgun and keeps you company through the darker hours, through lonely nights at a shady laundromat or booze-soaked rainstorms on your porch. Raymond Chandler鈥檚 The Long Goodbye is that sort of book, that sort of friend. The past few months have seen some bleak times and I鈥檝e been on a Chandler kick to press through them. Of all the Marlowe adventures, this was the one that stands out like a lighthouse in a storm telling an unforgettable tale of murder and mystery. Chandler took noir to soaring heights of literary acceptance with his works, joining as an essential author of the genre and The Long Goodbye leaves an eternal mark on the face of literature even more so that the more upbeat and hardboiled that kicked off the Phillip Marlowe novel series and inspired fantastic films such as The Big Lebowski. Goodbye is a novel for hard times, hard drinking, hard living; an aged and more cynical than ever Marlowe proves he鈥檚 worth his salt in honoring the memory of a short-lived but impactful friendship with Terry Lennox. Lennox, a war-hero alcoholic, has been a victim of either suicide or arranged murder in a small Mexican town while on the lam escaping an accusation for murder of his rich wife, and Marlowe will stop at nothing to see through the doors slammed shut by political power and fear and discover the truth. While a bit bloated, this is a novel of near perfection in the mystery genre that is guaranteed to keep you up at night, gladly dropping more quarters for another dryer cycle in order to keep reading because a mystery with Marlowe is about as good as life gets.
To label this novel perfection would be to bastardize any opinions on the literature more widely accepted by the academy that I鈥檝e previously championed and praised, but few novels have felt like a better friend in hard times than The Long Goodbye. Or perhaps it鈥檚 just that I like occupying Marlowe鈥檚 headspace. I even named my new cat after him upon completion of The Big Sleep. Marlowe is the type of man you wish you were, but not one you鈥檇 want to spend time with. He is fearless and devoted nearly to a fault, unafraid to play the asshole to get what he wants. He swims upon his moods and cherishes those moments of getting right up in someones face just to drown out a bad feeling or ascertain the truth. He calls everyone out on their bullshit and possesses a moral compass so strong that nobody besides himself seems to be worth a damn. Pushy and thorny, Marlowe is the hero for me. Reading a Chandler novel is much like geeking out on the old John Wayne films I鈥檇 watch with my father as a child, particularly True Grit. There are the pitfalls of blatant misogyny, racism (particularly towards Latin Americans in this one, which with my love of Latin American literature was particularly not cool) and cornball dated humor, but it is honestly very easy to overlook when the plot is that engaging, the writing that 鈥榗ool鈥� and the novel so entertaining. How can you not love a novel with a passage like this:
This is the sort of novel that keeps you pouring a glass along with Marlowe鈥攑erhaps is that what they mean by an 鈥榓ctive reader鈥�, one who empathizes with the character and drinks when he drinks?鈥攁nd despite being a pot-boiler of a thriller, never insults the intellect. The twists are fresh and the writing crisp. Granted, the novel is a bit bloated and some elements may raise the 鈥�really?鈥� eyebrow of critique, but on the whole it works. It is easy to consider many bits as cliche in the modern day, but important to remember that it was Chandler that invented it before it became cliche. There is also a really charming self-consciousness to this novel with regards to the writing. 鈥�Why did I go into such detail?鈥� Marlowe asks of himself, 鈥�because the charged atmosphere made every little thing stand out as a performance.鈥� The writing truly fits the scene and the P.I. narrator. While in most novels it would be easy to sneer at a lengthy passage on the physical description and dress of a character as they first walk on the scene, here it is at home since Marlowe would need to analyze a fresh face for all they are worth to build a profile of them quickly in order to interact with them and press for the goal. Chandler has a true gift for dialogue and character mannerisms as well, creating a wide, engaging cast. 鈥�He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel,鈥� he says at one point, and the dialogue of each character is always brilliantly nuanced. There is even a wonderful sense of satire on authors present, with Chandler poking fun at top-selling authors who write for profit and not for artistic merit, as is shown with Roger Wade. The continuous satire and critique of Hollywood and California that permeates Chandler鈥檚 novels comes alive in comical form with the desert sobering-up-clinic and the mentally challenged guard who cannot separate his fantasy role-playing of cowboys and tough guys from reality. On the surface it is easy to scoff at these scenes, but Chandler plays for something deeper.
It is fascinating to have read Chandler grow as a writer and to see his characters develop and age over time. Like a racoon, Marlowe has grown older and meaner and tougher, but all the more honorable, strong-willed and fearless.
The Long Goodbye is a cornerstone of noir and mystery that rises above any genre into simply being a beautiful piece of literature. A searing social critique orchestrated with dazzling plot twists, enviable dialogue prowess and a firm grounding in doing what is right simply because it is right, Chandler has created a masterpiece that is just as potent today as it was when first written. This is the sort of novel that scratches an itch of being both a fluff read and an intellectual endeavour (there must be a term for this somewhere) and grabs the reader by the throat and heart and won鈥檛 let go until the final, heart wrenching few lines. Plus, the Robert Altman film starring Elliott Gould is fantastic (though not a perfect adaption it still works) and rivals even Chinatown as a masterpiece of noir cinema. This novel was a true comfort on many a dark night and it was sad to see it end. Marlowe is a true literary hero and one I won鈥檛 ever forget.
4.5/5
鈥�Out there in the night of a thousand crimes people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.
It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn鈥檛 have one. I didn鈥檛 care.
I finished the drink and went to bed.鈥�
鹿 While there is plenty of drinking to be had (finish this novel without wanting to go order a gimlet, I dare you), Chandler does well to also add an air of caution to the intake of alcohol. To drink in moderation is one thing, but the horrors of alcoholism and excess make up a major portion of the novel. 鈥�A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.鈥�
There are some books that just feel good to have on your dashboard, never too far from your fingertips to read in the tiny gaps between obligations and responsibility. The type of book that rides shotgun and keeps you company through the darker hours, through lonely nights at a shady laundromat or booze-soaked rainstorms on your porch. Raymond Chandler鈥檚 The Long Goodbye is that sort of book, that sort of friend. The past few months have seen some bleak times and I鈥檝e been on a Chandler kick to press through them. Of all the Marlowe adventures, this was the one that stands out like a lighthouse in a storm telling an unforgettable tale of murder and mystery. Chandler took noir to soaring heights of literary acceptance with his works, joining as an essential author of the genre and The Long Goodbye leaves an eternal mark on the face of literature even more so that the more upbeat and hardboiled that kicked off the Phillip Marlowe novel series and inspired fantastic films such as The Big Lebowski. Goodbye is a novel for hard times, hard drinking, hard living; an aged and more cynical than ever Marlowe proves he鈥檚 worth his salt in honoring the memory of a short-lived but impactful friendship with Terry Lennox. Lennox, a war-hero alcoholic, has been a victim of either suicide or arranged murder in a small Mexican town while on the lam escaping an accusation for murder of his rich wife, and Marlowe will stop at nothing to see through the doors slammed shut by political power and fear and discover the truth. While a bit bloated, this is a novel of near perfection in the mystery genre that is guaranteed to keep you up at night, gladly dropping more quarters for another dryer cycle in order to keep reading because a mystery with Marlowe is about as good as life gets.
To label this novel perfection would be to bastardize any opinions on the literature more widely accepted by the academy that I鈥檝e previously championed and praised, but few novels have felt like a better friend in hard times than The Long Goodbye. Or perhaps it鈥檚 just that I like occupying Marlowe鈥檚 headspace. I even named my new cat after him upon completion of The Big Sleep. Marlowe is the type of man you wish you were, but not one you鈥檇 want to spend time with. He is fearless and devoted nearly to a fault, unafraid to play the asshole to get what he wants. He swims upon his moods and cherishes those moments of getting right up in someones face just to drown out a bad feeling or ascertain the truth. He calls everyone out on their bullshit and possesses a moral compass so strong that nobody besides himself seems to be worth a damn. Pushy and thorny, Marlowe is the hero for me. Reading a Chandler novel is much like geeking out on the old John Wayne films I鈥檇 watch with my father as a child, particularly True Grit. There are the pitfalls of blatant misogyny, racism (particularly towards Latin Americans in this one, which with my love of Latin American literature was particularly not cool) and cornball dated humor, but it is honestly very easy to overlook when the plot is that engaging, the writing that 鈥榗ool鈥� and the novel so entertaining. How can you not love a novel with a passage like this:
Alcohol is like love...The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl鈥檚 clothes off.鹿
This is the sort of novel that keeps you pouring a glass along with Marlowe鈥攑erhaps is that what they mean by an 鈥榓ctive reader鈥�, one who empathizes with the character and drinks when he drinks?鈥攁nd despite being a pot-boiler of a thriller, never insults the intellect. The twists are fresh and the writing crisp. Granted, the novel is a bit bloated and some elements may raise the 鈥�really?鈥� eyebrow of critique, but on the whole it works. It is easy to consider many bits as cliche in the modern day, but important to remember that it was Chandler that invented it before it became cliche. There is also a really charming self-consciousness to this novel with regards to the writing. 鈥�Why did I go into such detail?鈥� Marlowe asks of himself, 鈥�because the charged atmosphere made every little thing stand out as a performance.鈥� The writing truly fits the scene and the P.I. narrator. While in most novels it would be easy to sneer at a lengthy passage on the physical description and dress of a character as they first walk on the scene, here it is at home since Marlowe would need to analyze a fresh face for all they are worth to build a profile of them quickly in order to interact with them and press for the goal. Chandler has a true gift for dialogue and character mannerisms as well, creating a wide, engaging cast. 鈥�He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel,鈥� he says at one point, and the dialogue of each character is always brilliantly nuanced. There is even a wonderful sense of satire on authors present, with Chandler poking fun at top-selling authors who write for profit and not for artistic merit, as is shown with Roger Wade. The continuous satire and critique of Hollywood and California that permeates Chandler鈥檚 novels comes alive in comical form with the desert sobering-up-clinic and the mentally challenged guard who cannot separate his fantasy role-playing of cowboys and tough guys from reality. On the surface it is easy to scoff at these scenes, but Chandler plays for something deeper.
It is fascinating to have read Chandler grow as a writer and to see his characters develop and age over time. Like a racoon, Marlowe has grown older and meaner and tougher, but all the more honorable, strong-willed and fearless.
Maybe I was tired and irritable. Maybe I felt a little guilty. I could learn to hate this guy without even knowing him. I could just look at him across the width of a cafeteria and want to kick his teeth inThe relationship between him and Ohl has soured a bit, both of them really elbowing the other in the ribs with more force and sadistic pleasure, with Ohl no longer a chain-smoker but constantly rubbing an unlit cigarette between his lips. What has not changed is the insight into Los Angeles and Hollywood, blossoming now into subtle jabs of social insight with Marlowe looking down at all the socialites as their sins and flaws seem to define them. The Long Goodbye reads almost like a western where the territory is wild and untamed and crime running rampant not as a driving force but as a symptom of the American lifestyle we have let cultivate itself. Power and greed and evil are seen here as byproducts of a society ruled by its own fear and vice, and Marlowe must navigate these deadly waters to uphold the good names of himself and those he cares about.
The Long Goodbye is a cornerstone of noir and mystery that rises above any genre into simply being a beautiful piece of literature. A searing social critique orchestrated with dazzling plot twists, enviable dialogue prowess and a firm grounding in doing what is right simply because it is right, Chandler has created a masterpiece that is just as potent today as it was when first written. This is the sort of novel that scratches an itch of being both a fluff read and an intellectual endeavour (there must be a term for this somewhere) and grabs the reader by the throat and heart and won鈥檛 let go until the final, heart wrenching few lines. Plus, the Robert Altman film starring Elliott Gould is fantastic (though not a perfect adaption it still works) and rivals even Chinatown as a masterpiece of noir cinema. This novel was a true comfort on many a dark night and it was sad to see it end. Marlowe is a true literary hero and one I won鈥檛 ever forget.
4.5/5
鈥�Out there in the night of a thousand crimes people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.
It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn鈥檛 have one. I didn鈥檛 care.
I finished the drink and went to bed.鈥�
鹿 While there is plenty of drinking to be had (finish this novel without wanting to go order a gimlet, I dare you), Chandler does well to also add an air of caution to the intake of alcohol. To drink in moderation is one thing, but the horrors of alcoholism and excess make up a major portion of the novel. 鈥�A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.鈥�
September 30, 2021
(Book 511 from 1001 books) - The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6), Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye is a novel by Raymond Chandler, published in 1953, his sixth novel featuring the private investigator Philip Marlowe. Some critics consider it inferior to The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely, but others rank it as the best of his work. Chandler, in a letter to a friend, called the novel "my best book".
The novel opens outside a club called the Dancers. It is late October or early November. No specific year is given for when the events take place, but internal evidence and the publication date of the novel place them some time between 1950 and 1952.
Philip Marlowe meets a drunk named Terry Lennox, a man with scars on one side of his face. They forge an uneasy friendship over the next few months. In June, Lennox shows up late one night at Marlowe's home in "a great deal of trouble" and needing a ride to the airport across the border in Tijuana, Mexico. Marlowe agrees as long as Lennox does not tell him any details of why he is running.
On his return to Los Angeles, Marlowe learns that Lennox's wife was found dead in her guest house and that she died before Lennox fled. Marlowe is arrested on suspicion of murder after refusing to co-operate with investigators, who want him to confess that he helped Lennox flee. ...
禺丿丕丨丕賮馗蹖 胤賵賱丕賳蹖 - 乇蹖賲賵賳丿 趩賳丿賱乇 (乇賵夭賳賴鈥� 讴丕乇) 丕丿亘蹖丕鬲 丌賲乇蹖讴丕貨 蹖讴蹖 丕夭 氐丿 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 噩賳丕蹖蹖 亘乇鬲乇 丿賳蹖丕貨 鬲丕乇蹖禺 賳禺爻鬲蹖賳 禺賵丕賳卮: 乇賵夭 爻賵賲 賲丕賴 賲蹖 爻丕賱1999賲蹖賱丕丿蹖
毓賳賵丕賳: 禺丿丕丨丕賮馗蹖 胤賵賱丕賳蹖貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴: 乇蹖賲賵賳丿 趩賳丿賱乇貨 賲鬲乇噩賲 賮鬲丨 丕賱賱賴 噩毓賮乇蹖 噩賵夭丕賳蹖貨 鬲賴乇丕賳貙 乇賵夭賳賴 讴丕乇貙 1378貙 丿乇 408氐貨 卮丕亘讴 9646728073貨 賲賵囟賵毓 丿丕爻鬲丕賳賴丕蹖 倬賱蹖爻蹖 丕夭 賳賵蹖爻賳丿诏丕賳 丕蹖丕賱丕鬲 賲鬲丨丿賴 丌賲乇蹖讴丕蹖蹖 - 賲丕噩乇丕賴丕蹖 賮賱蹖倬 賲丕乇賱賵 - 讴鬲丕亘 卮卮 - 爻丿賴 20賲
趩讴蹖丿賴 丿丕爻鬲丕賳: 賲乇丿蹖 亘賴 賳丕賲 芦鬲乇蹖 賱賳賵讴爻禄 亘丕 丿禺鬲乇蹖 丕夭 禺丕賳丿丕賳 孬乇賵鬲賲賳丿 丌卮賳丕 賲蹖鈥屫促堌� 丕賲丕 趩賵賳 禺賵丿 丕夭 孬乇賵鬲 亘賴乇賴鈥� 丕蹖 賳丿丕乇丿貙 亘丕 亘蹖鈥屬呝囏臂� 丿禺鬲乇 賲賵丕噩賴 賲蹖鈥屭必� 賵 賳丕诏夭蹖乇 丕夭 丕賵 賮丕氐賱賴 賲蹖鈥屭屫必� 爻乇丕賳噩丕賲 芦鬲乇蹖禄 亘丕 賲爻丕毓丿鬲 丿賵爻鬲卮 賭 讴丕乇丌诏丕賴 賲丕乇賱賵 賭 讴丕乇蹖 丿乇 芦賱丕爻鈥屬堏ж陈� 賲蹖鈥屰屫жㄘ� 賵 丕賵囟丕毓 丕賵 亘賴 卮丿鬲 乇賵 亘賴 亘賴亘賵丿蹖 賲蹖鈥屫辟堌� 賵 倬賵賱 賮乇丕賵丕賳 丿爻鬲 賵 倬丕 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 丕賵 亘丕 鬲睾蹖蹖乇 賵囟毓 賲丕賱蹖 禺賵丿貙 亘賴 爻乇丕睾 賴賲丕賳 丿禺鬲乇 賲蹖鈥屫辟堌� 賵 亘丕 丕賵 丕夭丿賵丕噩 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 丕蹖賳 丕賲乇 丕賱亘鬲賴 亘丕 賳丕乇囟丕蹖鬲蹖 讴丕乇丌诏丕賴 芦賲丕乇賱賵禄 氐賵乇鬲 賲蹖鈥屭屫必� 蹖讴趩賳丿 爻倬乇蹖 賲蹖鈥屫促堌� 鬲丕 丕蹖賳讴賴 芦鬲乇蹖禄 亘丕 丨丕賱鬲蹖 賵丨卮鬲鈥屫藏囏� 賵 鬲賮賳诏 亘賴 丿爻鬲貙 賳夭丿 讴丕乇丌诏丕賴 芦賲丕乇賱賵禄 賲蹖鈥屫③屫� 賵鈥ω�
丌睾丕夭 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 丕夭 賲鬲賳: (丿賮毓賴 蹖 丕賵賱蹖 讴賴 趩卮賲賲 亘賴 芦鬲乇蹖 賱賳賵讴爻禄 丕賮鬲丕丿貨 鬲賵蹖 蹖讴 賲丕卮蹖賳 芦乇賵賱夭乇賵蹖爻禄 賳賯乇賴 丕蹖 乇賳诏貙 亘蹖乇賵賳 鬲乇丕爻 乇爻鬲賵乇丕賳 芦丿賳爻乇夭禄 賲爻鬲 亘賵丿貙 賲爻卅賵賱 倬丕乇讴蹖賳诏 賲丕卮蹖賳 乇丕 丌賵乇丿賴 亘賵丿貙 賵 賴賲蹖賳胤賵乇 丿乇賵 賵丕夭 賳诏賴 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘賵丿貨 趩賵賳 倬丕蹖 趩倬 芦鬲乇蹖 賱賳賵讴爻禄 賴賳賵夭 亘蹖乇賵賳 賲丕卮蹖賳 丌賵蹖夭丕賳 亘賵丿貨 丕賳诏丕乇 蹖丕丿卮 乇賮鬲賴 亘賵丿 讴賴 丕氐賱丕 倬丕蹖 趩倬蹖 賴賲 丿丕乇賴貨 趩賴乇賴 丕卮 噩賵丕賳 亘賴 賳馗乇 賲蹖丕賵賲丿貨 賵賱蹖 賲賵賴丕卮 爻賮蹖丿 丕爻鬲禺賵賳蹖 亘賵丿貨 丕夭 趩卮賲丕卮 賲毓賱賵賲 亘賵丿 讴賴 倬丕鬲蹖賱賴貨 賵賱蹖 丕夭賵賳 讴賴 賲蹖诏匕卮鬲蹖貙 賯蹖丕賮賴 丕卮 賲孬賱 賴乇 讴爻 丿蹖诏賴 丕蹖 亘賵丿貨 讴賴 鬲賵 噩丕蹖蹖 讴賴 賮賯胤 賵丕爻賴 爻乇讴蹖爻賴 讴乇丿賳 爻丕禺鬲賴 卮丿賴貙 倬賵賱 夭蹖丕丿蹖 禺乇噩 讴乇丿賴 亘丕卮丿貨 蹖賴 丿禺鬲乇 讴賳丕乇卮 亘賵丿貨 賲賵賴丕蹖蹖 亘賴 乇賳诏 賯乇賲夭 鬲蹖乇賴 蹖 丿賵爻鬲 丿丕卮鬲賳蹖 丿丕卮鬲貨 乇賵 賱亘賴丕卮 賱亘禺賳丿 丿賵乇蹖 亘賵丿貙 賵 乇賵 卮賵賳賴 賴丕卮 蹖賴 倬丕賱鬲賵 禺夭 丌亘蹖貙 讴賴 鬲賯乇蹖亘丕 亘丕毓孬 賲蹖卮丿 丕賵賳 芦乇賵賱夭 乇賵蹖爻禄 賲孬賱 賴乇 賲丕卮蹖賳 丿蹖诏賴 丕蹖 亘賴 賳馗乇 亘蹖丕丿貨 丕賲丕 賳賴貨 賴蹖趩蹖 賳賲蹖鬲賵賳賴 亘丕 芦乇賵賱夭乇賵蹖爻禄 丕蹖賳 讴丕乇 乇賵 亘讴賳賴貨 賵 ...)貨 倬丕蹖丕賳 賳賯賱
鬲丕乇蹖禺 亘賴賳诏丕賲 乇爻丕賳蹖 22/08/1399賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貨 07/07/1400賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貨 丕. 卮乇亘蹖丕賳蹖
The Long Goodbye is a novel by Raymond Chandler, published in 1953, his sixth novel featuring the private investigator Philip Marlowe. Some critics consider it inferior to The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely, but others rank it as the best of his work. Chandler, in a letter to a friend, called the novel "my best book".
The novel opens outside a club called the Dancers. It is late October or early November. No specific year is given for when the events take place, but internal evidence and the publication date of the novel place them some time between 1950 and 1952.
Philip Marlowe meets a drunk named Terry Lennox, a man with scars on one side of his face. They forge an uneasy friendship over the next few months. In June, Lennox shows up late one night at Marlowe's home in "a great deal of trouble" and needing a ride to the airport across the border in Tijuana, Mexico. Marlowe agrees as long as Lennox does not tell him any details of why he is running.
On his return to Los Angeles, Marlowe learns that Lennox's wife was found dead in her guest house and that she died before Lennox fled. Marlowe is arrested on suspicion of murder after refusing to co-operate with investigators, who want him to confess that he helped Lennox flee. ...
禺丿丕丨丕賮馗蹖 胤賵賱丕賳蹖 - 乇蹖賲賵賳丿 趩賳丿賱乇 (乇賵夭賳賴鈥� 讴丕乇) 丕丿亘蹖丕鬲 丌賲乇蹖讴丕貨 蹖讴蹖 丕夭 氐丿 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 噩賳丕蹖蹖 亘乇鬲乇 丿賳蹖丕貨 鬲丕乇蹖禺 賳禺爻鬲蹖賳 禺賵丕賳卮: 乇賵夭 爻賵賲 賲丕賴 賲蹖 爻丕賱1999賲蹖賱丕丿蹖
毓賳賵丕賳: 禺丿丕丨丕賮馗蹖 胤賵賱丕賳蹖貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴: 乇蹖賲賵賳丿 趩賳丿賱乇貨 賲鬲乇噩賲 賮鬲丨 丕賱賱賴 噩毓賮乇蹖 噩賵夭丕賳蹖貨 鬲賴乇丕賳貙 乇賵夭賳賴 讴丕乇貙 1378貙 丿乇 408氐貨 卮丕亘讴 9646728073貨 賲賵囟賵毓 丿丕爻鬲丕賳賴丕蹖 倬賱蹖爻蹖 丕夭 賳賵蹖爻賳丿诏丕賳 丕蹖丕賱丕鬲 賲鬲丨丿賴 丌賲乇蹖讴丕蹖蹖 - 賲丕噩乇丕賴丕蹖 賮賱蹖倬 賲丕乇賱賵 - 讴鬲丕亘 卮卮 - 爻丿賴 20賲
趩讴蹖丿賴 丿丕爻鬲丕賳: 賲乇丿蹖 亘賴 賳丕賲 芦鬲乇蹖 賱賳賵讴爻禄 亘丕 丿禺鬲乇蹖 丕夭 禺丕賳丿丕賳 孬乇賵鬲賲賳丿 丌卮賳丕 賲蹖鈥屫促堌� 丕賲丕 趩賵賳 禺賵丿 丕夭 孬乇賵鬲 亘賴乇賴鈥� 丕蹖 賳丿丕乇丿貙 亘丕 亘蹖鈥屬呝囏臂� 丿禺鬲乇 賲賵丕噩賴 賲蹖鈥屭必� 賵 賳丕诏夭蹖乇 丕夭 丕賵 賮丕氐賱賴 賲蹖鈥屭屫必� 爻乇丕賳噩丕賲 芦鬲乇蹖禄 亘丕 賲爻丕毓丿鬲 丿賵爻鬲卮 賭 讴丕乇丌诏丕賴 賲丕乇賱賵 賭 讴丕乇蹖 丿乇 芦賱丕爻鈥屬堏ж陈� 賲蹖鈥屰屫жㄘ� 賵 丕賵囟丕毓 丕賵 亘賴 卮丿鬲 乇賵 亘賴 亘賴亘賵丿蹖 賲蹖鈥屫辟堌� 賵 倬賵賱 賮乇丕賵丕賳 丿爻鬲 賵 倬丕 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 丕賵 亘丕 鬲睾蹖蹖乇 賵囟毓 賲丕賱蹖 禺賵丿貙 亘賴 爻乇丕睾 賴賲丕賳 丿禺鬲乇 賲蹖鈥屫辟堌� 賵 亘丕 丕賵 丕夭丿賵丕噩 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 丕蹖賳 丕賲乇 丕賱亘鬲賴 亘丕 賳丕乇囟丕蹖鬲蹖 讴丕乇丌诏丕賴 芦賲丕乇賱賵禄 氐賵乇鬲 賲蹖鈥屭屫必� 蹖讴趩賳丿 爻倬乇蹖 賲蹖鈥屫促堌� 鬲丕 丕蹖賳讴賴 芦鬲乇蹖禄 亘丕 丨丕賱鬲蹖 賵丨卮鬲鈥屫藏囏� 賵 鬲賮賳诏 亘賴 丿爻鬲貙 賳夭丿 讴丕乇丌诏丕賴 芦賲丕乇賱賵禄 賲蹖鈥屫③屫� 賵鈥ω�
丌睾丕夭 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 丕夭 賲鬲賳: (丿賮毓賴 蹖 丕賵賱蹖 讴賴 趩卮賲賲 亘賴 芦鬲乇蹖 賱賳賵讴爻禄 丕賮鬲丕丿貨 鬲賵蹖 蹖讴 賲丕卮蹖賳 芦乇賵賱夭乇賵蹖爻禄 賳賯乇賴 丕蹖 乇賳诏貙 亘蹖乇賵賳 鬲乇丕爻 乇爻鬲賵乇丕賳 芦丿賳爻乇夭禄 賲爻鬲 亘賵丿貙 賲爻卅賵賱 倬丕乇讴蹖賳诏 賲丕卮蹖賳 乇丕 丌賵乇丿賴 亘賵丿貙 賵 賴賲蹖賳胤賵乇 丿乇賵 賵丕夭 賳诏賴 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘賵丿貨 趩賵賳 倬丕蹖 趩倬 芦鬲乇蹖 賱賳賵讴爻禄 賴賳賵夭 亘蹖乇賵賳 賲丕卮蹖賳 丌賵蹖夭丕賳 亘賵丿貨 丕賳诏丕乇 蹖丕丿卮 乇賮鬲賴 亘賵丿 讴賴 丕氐賱丕 倬丕蹖 趩倬蹖 賴賲 丿丕乇賴貨 趩賴乇賴 丕卮 噩賵丕賳 亘賴 賳馗乇 賲蹖丕賵賲丿貨 賵賱蹖 賲賵賴丕卮 爻賮蹖丿 丕爻鬲禺賵賳蹖 亘賵丿貨 丕夭 趩卮賲丕卮 賲毓賱賵賲 亘賵丿 讴賴 倬丕鬲蹖賱賴貨 賵賱蹖 丕夭賵賳 讴賴 賲蹖诏匕卮鬲蹖貙 賯蹖丕賮賴 丕卮 賲孬賱 賴乇 讴爻 丿蹖诏賴 丕蹖 亘賵丿貨 讴賴 鬲賵 噩丕蹖蹖 讴賴 賮賯胤 賵丕爻賴 爻乇讴蹖爻賴 讴乇丿賳 爻丕禺鬲賴 卮丿賴貙 倬賵賱 夭蹖丕丿蹖 禺乇噩 讴乇丿賴 亘丕卮丿貨 蹖賴 丿禺鬲乇 讴賳丕乇卮 亘賵丿貨 賲賵賴丕蹖蹖 亘賴 乇賳诏 賯乇賲夭 鬲蹖乇賴 蹖 丿賵爻鬲 丿丕卮鬲賳蹖 丿丕卮鬲貨 乇賵 賱亘賴丕卮 賱亘禺賳丿 丿賵乇蹖 亘賵丿貙 賵 乇賵 卮賵賳賴 賴丕卮 蹖賴 倬丕賱鬲賵 禺夭 丌亘蹖貙 讴賴 鬲賯乇蹖亘丕 亘丕毓孬 賲蹖卮丿 丕賵賳 芦乇賵賱夭 乇賵蹖爻禄 賲孬賱 賴乇 賲丕卮蹖賳 丿蹖诏賴 丕蹖 亘賴 賳馗乇 亘蹖丕丿貨 丕賲丕 賳賴貨 賴蹖趩蹖 賳賲蹖鬲賵賳賴 亘丕 芦乇賵賱夭乇賵蹖爻禄 丕蹖賳 讴丕乇 乇賵 亘讴賳賴貨 賵 ...)貨 倬丕蹖丕賳 賳賯賱
鬲丕乇蹖禺 亘賴賳诏丕賲 乇爻丕賳蹖 22/08/1399賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貨 07/07/1400賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貨 丕. 卮乇亘蹖丕賳蹖
July 3, 2024
Hardboiled dick Philip Marlow orders a few gimlets and uses chum as a derogatory term.
When's the last time you casually lit a cigarette, tossed back a drink, then looked someone dead in the eye and said, Listen, chum...?
After about the third time he did it, I felt an urge to bring it back into my everyday lexicon. I don't know about you, but I think it might go a long way toward upping my cool factor.
Another thing that stuck out to me was the amount of money that Marlow turns down or gives back due to his odd sense of honor. I'm so poor it made my stomach hurt.
Take it! Take the dirty money you grubby little detective!
What's the skinny gist, you ask?
Well, I'm not sure I even know where to start with that, Random Goodreader.
But a lot happens in this pretty short book.
{insert slow jazzy music here}
This sordid tale begins when a cheating wife gets murdered. She's a floozy so no one cares, see? But she was a rich floozy, so her daddy is covering it up. No, you dirty bastard, not that kind of a daddy...her real daddy.
{insert a haze of cigarette smoke into the room here}
A loser friend of Marlow's sets off on a middle-of-the-night trip to Mexico, writes a confession, and then offs himself. Or did he have help?
On the other side of town, a drunk author goes on a bender and his hot wife begs Marlow to find him.
Marlow, did you just kiss his wife?
Wait. Was the boozy author the real killer?
Or was it -?
Nothing is what it seems.
Nothing.
If that didn't make sense then I did my job right, pal.
You can't trust a dame to tell the truth anyway.
Recommended.
Pssst. Hey, chum. The narrator who read this to me was Elliott Gould.
When's the last time you casually lit a cigarette, tossed back a drink, then looked someone dead in the eye and said, Listen, chum...?
After about the third time he did it, I felt an urge to bring it back into my everyday lexicon. I don't know about you, but I think it might go a long way toward upping my cool factor.
Another thing that stuck out to me was the amount of money that Marlow turns down or gives back due to his odd sense of honor. I'm so poor it made my stomach hurt.
Take it! Take the dirty money you grubby little detective!
What's the skinny gist, you ask?
Well, I'm not sure I even know where to start with that, Random Goodreader.
But a lot happens in this pretty short book.
{insert slow jazzy music here}
This sordid tale begins when a cheating wife gets murdered. She's a floozy so no one cares, see? But she was a rich floozy, so her daddy is covering it up. No, you dirty bastard, not that kind of a daddy...her real daddy.
{insert a haze of cigarette smoke into the room here}
A loser friend of Marlow's sets off on a middle-of-the-night trip to Mexico, writes a confession, and then offs himself. Or did he have help?
On the other side of town, a drunk author goes on a bender and his hot wife begs Marlow to find him.
Marlow, did you just kiss his wife?
Wait. Was the boozy author the real killer?
Or was it -?
Nothing is what it seems.
Nothing.
If that didn't make sense then I did my job right, pal.
You can't trust a dame to tell the truth anyway.
Recommended.
Pssst. Hey, chum. The narrator who read this to me was Elliott Gould.
June 13, 2024
Promises what it says, really. A very long, unevenly written tale about a private eye who helps out a polite, gentle alcoholic after a chance encounter outside a club. A murder happens, then a suicide, but through a long and meandering chain of events, the detective stays involved instead of bowing out, because of course he does; this is a novel.
I haven't read Chandler before, nor watched adaptations, and I was most impressed by the writing style. Brisk, acidic prose that spares no one, including himself.
"They had watching and waiting eyes, patient and careful eyes, cool disdainful eyes, cops鈥� eyes. They get them at the passing-out parade at the police school."
鈥�'Sold it, darling? How do you mean?' She slid away from him along the seat but her voice slid away a lot farther than that."
Surprisingly for me, I soon grew uninterested in the supposed mystery, which essentially dies down for a good third of the book, and only picks up in the last third. There's a rush of events in the first quarter, then a lot of alcoholic binges, with trips back and forth to estates outside of L.A. The last 15% or so slowly wraps up the plot, first with another murder, a surprise denouement worthy of Hercule Poirot, another suicide, and then another couple of twisty consequences and follow-ups. Curiously, the case is 'wrapped-up' by the police at least twice, both times in error, although the reader isn't sure of this. Marlowe comes out with some surprise information at the very end that was not particularly alluded to earlier, nor did the reader have an inclination that his suspicion was heading that direction, especially as he continues making principled stands. It takes on the aspect of a magic trick rather than an organic series of events made clear.
That said, the prose was amazing.
"There鈥檚 nothing around here but one great big suntanned hangover."
Chandler also has a lot of opinions to work out,
about the law:
"The law isn鈥檛 justice. It鈥檚 a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer."
about decorators:
"The fellow who decorated that room was not a man to let colors scare him. He probably wore a pimento shirt, mulberry slacks, zebra shoes, and vermilion drawers with his initials on them in a nice Mandarin orange."
about writers:
"Maybe you always ought to ask a writer how the book is going. And then again maybe he gets damned tired of that question."
about rich people:
鈥淭here ain鈥檛 no clean way to make a hundred million bucks,鈥� Ohls said. 鈥淢aybe the head man thinks his hands are clean but somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut from under them and had to sell out for nickels, decent people lost their jobs, stocks got rigged on the market, proxies got bought up like a pennyweight of old gold, and the five per centers and the big law firms got paid hundred-grand fees for beating some law the people wanted but the rich guys didn't, on account of it cut into their profits."
and about gambling:
"You think those palaces in Reno and Vegas are just for harmless fun? Nuts, they鈥檙e there for the little guy, the something-for-nothing sucker, the lad that stops off with his pay envelope in his pocket and loses the week-end grocery money. The rich gambler loses forty grand and laughs it off and comes back for more."
and the press:
"Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo, and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on its circulation and you know what the circulation depends on.鈥�
I mean, honestly, I found it kind of fascinating to read modern sentiments from someone writing 70 years ago. I'm sure that says something profound, but you'll have to explain it to me.
Wikipedia and the like talk about how this is Chandler's favorite and most autobiographical novel. He apparently wrote it while his wife had a prolonged fatal illness, and his own mental health struggles seemed to be mirrored by the character Roger Wade. It adds interesting insight, to be sure, and it could very well explain why I felt the middle third of the book wasn't about a mystery at all, but about Wade's problems.
Overall, I'm definitely worth reading and likely rereadable for the prose, although I've heard ranks up there as well. Note there is some weird racial descriptions about Mexicans, both in a town in Mexico and one in specific, but I think it largely passed a sniff test. Women fare about as well as you would expect from noir genre stereotypes. On the whole, re-readable, with caveats.
I haven't read Chandler before, nor watched adaptations, and I was most impressed by the writing style. Brisk, acidic prose that spares no one, including himself.
"They had watching and waiting eyes, patient and careful eyes, cool disdainful eyes, cops鈥� eyes. They get them at the passing-out parade at the police school."
鈥�'Sold it, darling? How do you mean?' She slid away from him along the seat but her voice slid away a lot farther than that."
Surprisingly for me, I soon grew uninterested in the supposed mystery, which essentially dies down for a good third of the book, and only picks up in the last third. There's a rush of events in the first quarter, then a lot of alcoholic binges, with trips back and forth to estates outside of L.A. The last 15% or so slowly wraps up the plot, first with another murder, a surprise denouement worthy of Hercule Poirot, another suicide, and then another couple of twisty consequences and follow-ups. Curiously, the case is 'wrapped-up' by the police at least twice, both times in error, although the reader isn't sure of this. Marlowe comes out with some surprise information at the very end that was not particularly alluded to earlier, nor did the reader have an inclination that his suspicion was heading that direction, especially as he continues making principled stands. It takes on the aspect of a magic trick rather than an organic series of events made clear.
That said, the prose was amazing.
"There鈥檚 nothing around here but one great big suntanned hangover."
Chandler also has a lot of opinions to work out,
about the law:
"The law isn鈥檛 justice. It鈥檚 a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer."
about decorators:
"The fellow who decorated that room was not a man to let colors scare him. He probably wore a pimento shirt, mulberry slacks, zebra shoes, and vermilion drawers with his initials on them in a nice Mandarin orange."
about writers:
"Maybe you always ought to ask a writer how the book is going. And then again maybe he gets damned tired of that question."
about rich people:
鈥淭here ain鈥檛 no clean way to make a hundred million bucks,鈥� Ohls said. 鈥淢aybe the head man thinks his hands are clean but somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut from under them and had to sell out for nickels, decent people lost their jobs, stocks got rigged on the market, proxies got bought up like a pennyweight of old gold, and the five per centers and the big law firms got paid hundred-grand fees for beating some law the people wanted but the rich guys didn't, on account of it cut into their profits."
and about gambling:
"You think those palaces in Reno and Vegas are just for harmless fun? Nuts, they鈥檙e there for the little guy, the something-for-nothing sucker, the lad that stops off with his pay envelope in his pocket and loses the week-end grocery money. The rich gambler loses forty grand and laughs it off and comes back for more."
and the press:
"Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo, and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on its circulation and you know what the circulation depends on.鈥�
I mean, honestly, I found it kind of fascinating to read modern sentiments from someone writing 70 years ago. I'm sure that says something profound, but you'll have to explain it to me.
Wikipedia and the like talk about how this is Chandler's favorite and most autobiographical novel. He apparently wrote it while his wife had a prolonged fatal illness, and his own mental health struggles seemed to be mirrored by the character Roger Wade. It adds interesting insight, to be sure, and it could very well explain why I felt the middle third of the book wasn't about a mystery at all, but about Wade's problems.
Overall, I'm definitely worth reading and likely rereadable for the prose, although I've heard ranks up there as well. Note there is some weird racial descriptions about Mexicans, both in a town in Mexico and one in specific, but I think it largely passed a sniff test. Women fare about as well as you would expect from noir genre stereotypes. On the whole, re-readable, with caveats.
December 16, 2020
IT鈥橲 OK WITH ME
Marlowe cresce, senza invecchiare.
Letterariamente nato nel 1939, qui appare quattordici anni dopo per la sesta volta.
Disilluso, e apparentemente cinico, 猫 in realt脿 il solito inguaribile romantico, qui pi霉 che mai.
Al punto da credere 鈥榓ncora鈥� in valori come l鈥檃micizia, e perfino l鈥檕nest脿.
In questo romanzo, pi霉 che in altri, la tematica dell鈥檃lcol la fa da padrone, ci sono ben tre personaggi che ne sono schiavi: lo scrittore in crisi creativa, l鈥檃mico fuggitivo, e lo stesso protagonista. Per un lungo periodo della sua vita Chandler ebbe seri problemi di alcol, fino probabilmente a morire per le conseguenze dell鈥檈ccesso.
Il condominio dove abita Marlowe a Westwood - sullo sfondo le sue belle vicine di casa.
Il lungo addio 猫 il grande sonno, la morte.
Per me Chandler rimane un maestro insuperato del noir in chiave hard boiled, e leggerlo rimane uno dei piaceri della vita.
Poi, vent鈥檃nni dopo l鈥檜scita del romanzo, nel 1973, arriv貌 Robert Altman. Erano i suoi anni pi霉 fecondi: in soli cinque anni realizz貌 film storici, come questo, 鈥淢*A*S*H*鈥�, 鈥淢cCabe & Mrs Miller-I compari鈥�, 鈥淭hieves Like Us-Gang,鈥� 鈥淣ashville鈥�, concedendosi anche opere 鈥榤inori鈥�, ma sempre pi霉 che pregevoli, come 鈥淏rewster McCloud-Anche gli uccelli uccidono鈥�, 鈥淚mages鈥� e 鈥淐alifornia Split-California Poker鈥�. Il suo obiettivo sembrava essere fare buoni film intervenendo sui generei cinematografici, smitizzandoli (pietra miliare rimane la rivisitazione del West nel film con Warren Beatty e Julie Christie), giocando sugli stereotipi.
Qui, pi霉 che altrove, respiro molta nouvelle vague francese, sapientemente adattata alla costa ovest degli US.
Verso la fine, stessa inquadratura del mitico finale: qui Marlowe arriva a piedi alla casa dell鈥檃mico, e poi se ne va (sempre a piedi!).
Altman carrella, panoramica, zoomma, muove in continuazione la sua macchina da presa col dolly, e riprende attraverso finestre, su vetri specchi quadri finestre acqua, superfici che riflettono e schermano, cornici che raddoppiano l鈥檌nquadratura.
Altrettanto meta-cinematografica 猫 la colonna sonora di John Williams, la canzone The Long Goodbye che si ripete per tutto il film sotto forma di puro score, oppure dalla radio, oppure cantata dai personaggi, nel campanello di una porta, nella marcia funebre di un funerale messicano.
La storia, oltre a essere attualizzata ambientandola nella Los Angeles dei primi anni Settanta (il gangster sembra un sosia di Paul Simon! 脠 interpretato da Mark Rydell, pi霉 famoso come regista che come attore: suoi sono 鈥淪ul lago dorato鈥� e 鈥淚l fiume dell鈥檌ra鈥�), 猫 scarnificata, ridotta all鈥檕sso, sfrondando tutti i rami secondari con cui Chandler contorceva le sue trame.
Gould-Marlowe rimane vestito cos矛 tutto il film, inclusa la sigaretta accesa, presente in ogni singola scena.
Gi脿 dalla prima inquadratura capiamo molto di questo 鈥榥uovo鈥� Marlowe: dorme vestito con la luce accesa su un letto sfatto, accanto ha un posacenere straboccante di cicche, viene svegliato alle tre del mattino dal gatto affamato, si accende immediatamente una sigaretta, e come nel resto del film, non la abbandona mai, e la accende sempre con fiammiferi strusciati su qualsiasi superficie (la parete dietro il letto 猫 tutta segnata). Sembra uno studente fuori sede, e fuori corso, di quelli che frequentano poco la doccia, non rinunciano a vestiti stazzonati e lavandini ingombri di piatti sporchi.
脠 un tale perdente che poco pi霉 avanti perde anche il gatto (non 猫 riuscito a imbrogliarlo: il gatto ha la sua marca preferita di cibo in scatola e mangia solo quella, Marlowe ha cambiato etichetta ai barattoli, ma il gatto non c鈥櫭� cascato).
I dialoghi delle scene con Hayden-Wade sono tutti improvvisati perch茅 Sterling Hayden era sempre ubriaco e strafatto. La casa dove abita 猫 la casa dove abitava Robert Altman all鈥檈poca.
Durante l鈥檌nterrogatorio della polizia Marlowe si dipinge la faccia con l鈥檌nchiostro del tampone per le impronte digitali: un po鈥� come un giocatore di football, ancor pi霉 come un pellerossa, a met脿 tra la marachella e la protesta (Belmondo si colorava di blu nel finale di 鈥淧ierrot le fou鈥�).
Per貌 indossa sempre lo stesso abito scuro, con camicia bianca e cravatta: anche se invitato a togliersela, evita, rimane vestito perfino quando si tuffa nell鈥檕ceano per salvare lo scrittore ubriaco (un immenso iconico Sterling Hayden, che improvvis貌 tutti i suoi dialoghi perch茅 sul set era perennemente ubriaco e fatto d鈥檈rba).
Gould/Marlowe prova a imbrogliare il gatto: di nascosto riempie il barattolo del cibo preferito dal felino con un altro qualsiasi, lo offre alla bestiola che per貌 non ci casca, e rifiuta sdegnasa.
脠 un Marlowe molto diverso, a cominciare dal fatto che 猫 trasportato negli anni Settanta.
Ma nostalgia e malinconia impregnano il film come il romanzo: basta pensare alla macchina che Elliott Gould-Philip Marlowe possiede, una Lincoln Continental decapottabile del 1948. O basta pensare al fatto che a sceneggiare 猫 la stessa Leigh Brackett del mitico 鈥淚l Grande Sonno鈥�, proprio quello diretto da Haward Hawks nel 1946, con l鈥檃ncor pi霉 mitico Bogart che rese leggendario il private eye Marlowe. O anche alle imitazione del custode del Malibu Colony.
Ma oltre a questi sentimenti 鈥榬etro鈥�, c鈥櫭� ironia e umorismo da vendere, macchiette, caricature, alleggerimento, diluizione della suspense.
脠 un noir cos矛 atipico che 猫 girato quasi tutto di giorno, senza neon e asfalti bagnati in controluce (il direttore della fotografia 猫 il grande Vilmos Zsigmond, che in post-produzione sovraespose il negativo alla luce per smorzare i neri e ammorbidire i colori fino a raggiungere tonalit脿 pastello).
Le vicine di casa, sempre nude, sempre tra lo strafatto e lo sciroccato.
脠 un film con un investigatore privato protagonista e non vediamo mai il suo ufficio, con la classica porta a vetri, e la bottiglia di bourbon nascosta nel cassetto della scrivania. Dove lavora questo Marlowe? Ce l鈥檋a un ufficio?
脠 un detective privato che gira disarmato, tranne nel finale.
Che ha vicine di casa bellissime e sciroccate, perennemente in topless, sempre sveglie, passano il tempo tra yoga meditazione e confezionando candele, preparano brownies alle tre del mattino (sicuramente speziati di hashish). Marlowe invece di corteggiarle, gli fa la spesa di notte e non si fa rendere i soldi. Piuttosto chiede loro di gettare un occhio sul suo gatto che s鈥櫭� offeso per il tranello della scatoletta di cibo ed 猫 sparito.
Gould 猫 sornione e strafottente, ma emana anche tenerezza e fragilit脿, le donne lo ingaggiano anche per essere protette (vedi la moglie dello scrittore, Nina van Pallandt).
Riflessi e doppie inquadrature.
Per tutto il film Gould-Marlowe ripete 鈥淚t鈥檚 ok with me鈥�, inno di strafottenza e rinuncia: ma alla fine invece, all鈥檃mico che gli dice "A nessuno importa鈥�", risponde "Importa a me.鈥� E compie un gesto tanto inaspettato quanto inevitabile, regalando al film un finale magnifico, decisamente superiore a quello del romanzo.
Quanto assomiglia ai protagonisti dei film americani della stessa epoca (il Jack Nicholson di 鈥淐inque pezzi facili鈥�, Gene Hackman de 鈥淟a conversazione鈥�, DeNiro di 鈥淭axi Driver鈥�, sempre Hackman di 鈥淏ersaglio di notte鈥�, il Krist Kristofferson di 鈥淧at Garrett & Billy the Kid鈥濃€�: delusi, perdenti, ma non sconfitti, anti-eroi un po鈥� fuori dal tempo, ma perfette espressioni di quel loro tempo incerto.
E allora, il lungo addio del film di Altman 猫 forse quello del cinema americano al cinema classico, al cinema di pap脿: la nouvelle vague 猫 venuta almeno dieci/quindici prima, anche il free cinema, adesso 猫 il tempo della New Hollywood (non per niente il film si chiude sulle note di Hooray for Hollywoodche continua a scorrere sotto i titoli di coda)
PS
In due ruoli minori, neppure citati nei titoli di coda (uncredited) si vedono David Carradine e Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Da sinistra a destra: Robert Altman, Nina von Pallandt, Elliott Gould.
Marlowe cresce, senza invecchiare.
Letterariamente nato nel 1939, qui appare quattordici anni dopo per la sesta volta.
Disilluso, e apparentemente cinico, 猫 in realt脿 il solito inguaribile romantico, qui pi霉 che mai.
Al punto da credere 鈥榓ncora鈥� in valori come l鈥檃micizia, e perfino l鈥檕nest脿.
In questo romanzo, pi霉 che in altri, la tematica dell鈥檃lcol la fa da padrone, ci sono ben tre personaggi che ne sono schiavi: lo scrittore in crisi creativa, l鈥檃mico fuggitivo, e lo stesso protagonista. Per un lungo periodo della sua vita Chandler ebbe seri problemi di alcol, fino probabilmente a morire per le conseguenze dell鈥檈ccesso.
Il condominio dove abita Marlowe a Westwood - sullo sfondo le sue belle vicine di casa.
Il lungo addio 猫 il grande sonno, la morte.
Per me Chandler rimane un maestro insuperato del noir in chiave hard boiled, e leggerlo rimane uno dei piaceri della vita.
Poi, vent鈥檃nni dopo l鈥檜scita del romanzo, nel 1973, arriv貌 Robert Altman. Erano i suoi anni pi霉 fecondi: in soli cinque anni realizz貌 film storici, come questo, 鈥淢*A*S*H*鈥�, 鈥淢cCabe & Mrs Miller-I compari鈥�, 鈥淭hieves Like Us-Gang,鈥� 鈥淣ashville鈥�, concedendosi anche opere 鈥榤inori鈥�, ma sempre pi霉 che pregevoli, come 鈥淏rewster McCloud-Anche gli uccelli uccidono鈥�, 鈥淚mages鈥� e 鈥淐alifornia Split-California Poker鈥�. Il suo obiettivo sembrava essere fare buoni film intervenendo sui generei cinematografici, smitizzandoli (pietra miliare rimane la rivisitazione del West nel film con Warren Beatty e Julie Christie), giocando sugli stereotipi.
Qui, pi霉 che altrove, respiro molta nouvelle vague francese, sapientemente adattata alla costa ovest degli US.
Verso la fine, stessa inquadratura del mitico finale: qui Marlowe arriva a piedi alla casa dell鈥檃mico, e poi se ne va (sempre a piedi!).
Altman carrella, panoramica, zoomma, muove in continuazione la sua macchina da presa col dolly, e riprende attraverso finestre, su vetri specchi quadri finestre acqua, superfici che riflettono e schermano, cornici che raddoppiano l鈥檌nquadratura.
Altrettanto meta-cinematografica 猫 la colonna sonora di John Williams, la canzone The Long Goodbye che si ripete per tutto il film sotto forma di puro score, oppure dalla radio, oppure cantata dai personaggi, nel campanello di una porta, nella marcia funebre di un funerale messicano.
La storia, oltre a essere attualizzata ambientandola nella Los Angeles dei primi anni Settanta (il gangster sembra un sosia di Paul Simon! 脠 interpretato da Mark Rydell, pi霉 famoso come regista che come attore: suoi sono 鈥淪ul lago dorato鈥� e 鈥淚l fiume dell鈥檌ra鈥�), 猫 scarnificata, ridotta all鈥檕sso, sfrondando tutti i rami secondari con cui Chandler contorceva le sue trame.
Gould-Marlowe rimane vestito cos矛 tutto il film, inclusa la sigaretta accesa, presente in ogni singola scena.
Gi脿 dalla prima inquadratura capiamo molto di questo 鈥榥uovo鈥� Marlowe: dorme vestito con la luce accesa su un letto sfatto, accanto ha un posacenere straboccante di cicche, viene svegliato alle tre del mattino dal gatto affamato, si accende immediatamente una sigaretta, e come nel resto del film, non la abbandona mai, e la accende sempre con fiammiferi strusciati su qualsiasi superficie (la parete dietro il letto 猫 tutta segnata). Sembra uno studente fuori sede, e fuori corso, di quelli che frequentano poco la doccia, non rinunciano a vestiti stazzonati e lavandini ingombri di piatti sporchi.
脠 un tale perdente che poco pi霉 avanti perde anche il gatto (non 猫 riuscito a imbrogliarlo: il gatto ha la sua marca preferita di cibo in scatola e mangia solo quella, Marlowe ha cambiato etichetta ai barattoli, ma il gatto non c鈥櫭� cascato).
I dialoghi delle scene con Hayden-Wade sono tutti improvvisati perch茅 Sterling Hayden era sempre ubriaco e strafatto. La casa dove abita 猫 la casa dove abitava Robert Altman all鈥檈poca.
Durante l鈥檌nterrogatorio della polizia Marlowe si dipinge la faccia con l鈥檌nchiostro del tampone per le impronte digitali: un po鈥� come un giocatore di football, ancor pi霉 come un pellerossa, a met脿 tra la marachella e la protesta (Belmondo si colorava di blu nel finale di 鈥淧ierrot le fou鈥�).
Per貌 indossa sempre lo stesso abito scuro, con camicia bianca e cravatta: anche se invitato a togliersela, evita, rimane vestito perfino quando si tuffa nell鈥檕ceano per salvare lo scrittore ubriaco (un immenso iconico Sterling Hayden, che improvvis貌 tutti i suoi dialoghi perch茅 sul set era perennemente ubriaco e fatto d鈥檈rba).
Gould/Marlowe prova a imbrogliare il gatto: di nascosto riempie il barattolo del cibo preferito dal felino con un altro qualsiasi, lo offre alla bestiola che per貌 non ci casca, e rifiuta sdegnasa.
脠 un Marlowe molto diverso, a cominciare dal fatto che 猫 trasportato negli anni Settanta.
Ma nostalgia e malinconia impregnano il film come il romanzo: basta pensare alla macchina che Elliott Gould-Philip Marlowe possiede, una Lincoln Continental decapottabile del 1948. O basta pensare al fatto che a sceneggiare 猫 la stessa Leigh Brackett del mitico 鈥淚l Grande Sonno鈥�, proprio quello diretto da Haward Hawks nel 1946, con l鈥檃ncor pi霉 mitico Bogart che rese leggendario il private eye Marlowe. O anche alle imitazione del custode del Malibu Colony.
Ma oltre a questi sentimenti 鈥榬etro鈥�, c鈥櫭� ironia e umorismo da vendere, macchiette, caricature, alleggerimento, diluizione della suspense.
脠 un noir cos矛 atipico che 猫 girato quasi tutto di giorno, senza neon e asfalti bagnati in controluce (il direttore della fotografia 猫 il grande Vilmos Zsigmond, che in post-produzione sovraespose il negativo alla luce per smorzare i neri e ammorbidire i colori fino a raggiungere tonalit脿 pastello).
Le vicine di casa, sempre nude, sempre tra lo strafatto e lo sciroccato.
脠 un film con un investigatore privato protagonista e non vediamo mai il suo ufficio, con la classica porta a vetri, e la bottiglia di bourbon nascosta nel cassetto della scrivania. Dove lavora questo Marlowe? Ce l鈥檋a un ufficio?
脠 un detective privato che gira disarmato, tranne nel finale.
Che ha vicine di casa bellissime e sciroccate, perennemente in topless, sempre sveglie, passano il tempo tra yoga meditazione e confezionando candele, preparano brownies alle tre del mattino (sicuramente speziati di hashish). Marlowe invece di corteggiarle, gli fa la spesa di notte e non si fa rendere i soldi. Piuttosto chiede loro di gettare un occhio sul suo gatto che s鈥櫭� offeso per il tranello della scatoletta di cibo ed 猫 sparito.
Gould 猫 sornione e strafottente, ma emana anche tenerezza e fragilit脿, le donne lo ingaggiano anche per essere protette (vedi la moglie dello scrittore, Nina van Pallandt).
Riflessi e doppie inquadrature.
Per tutto il film Gould-Marlowe ripete 鈥淚t鈥檚 ok with me鈥�, inno di strafottenza e rinuncia: ma alla fine invece, all鈥檃mico che gli dice "A nessuno importa鈥�", risponde "Importa a me.鈥� E compie un gesto tanto inaspettato quanto inevitabile, regalando al film un finale magnifico, decisamente superiore a quello del romanzo.
Quanto assomiglia ai protagonisti dei film americani della stessa epoca (il Jack Nicholson di 鈥淐inque pezzi facili鈥�, Gene Hackman de 鈥淟a conversazione鈥�, DeNiro di 鈥淭axi Driver鈥�, sempre Hackman di 鈥淏ersaglio di notte鈥�, il Krist Kristofferson di 鈥淧at Garrett & Billy the Kid鈥濃€�: delusi, perdenti, ma non sconfitti, anti-eroi un po鈥� fuori dal tempo, ma perfette espressioni di quel loro tempo incerto.
E allora, il lungo addio del film di Altman 猫 forse quello del cinema americano al cinema classico, al cinema di pap脿: la nouvelle vague 猫 venuta almeno dieci/quindici prima, anche il free cinema, adesso 猫 il tempo della New Hollywood (non per niente il film si chiude sulle note di Hooray for Hollywoodche continua a scorrere sotto i titoli di coda)
PS
In due ruoli minori, neppure citati nei titoli di coda (uncredited) si vedono David Carradine e Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Da sinistra a destra: Robert Altman, Nina von Pallandt, Elliott Gould.
August 25, 2022
Philip Marlowe a cynical shamus looks down at the parking lot of The Dancers Club, watching a drunk be put into his car a silver Rolls Royce, but the annoyed valet has trouble, the left leg refuses to be moved inside, instead remains firmly on the ground. Where the rest of the intoxicated man will soon be also. The pretty red- headed woman sitting next to him or was, in the automobile is very angry with good reason. Turns out she is Sylvia Lennox ex- wife of this inebriated war veteran (Second World War) Terry Lennox, and he has the scars on his face to prove it. Mr. Marlowe not known for being a nice guy, comes down the steps and helps the defenseless Terry up . While the multimillionaire's notorious daughter says she's late for an engagement and goes to get a cab for the lush, Mr. Lennox. Taking the vehicle ( it's hers), speeding away like a race driver towards the finish line. What to do with this pathetic creature, take him home and sober him up thinks Marlowe, can't leave the poor man in the gutter things were different in the last year of the 1940's, besides Thanksgiving had just been celebrated ... Soon these unlikely two become friends , Mr. Marlowe keeps Terry from the drunk tank the next time he sees him, trying to be vertical on the streets of Los Angeles, hustles him away when a cop notices.. . But would you believe it ? This alcoholic friend, living mostly in some dark hole outside, wherever he could find or reach one, remarries the wealthy daughter of Mr. Harlan Potter and is on their second honeymoon in Las Vegas ! From the top to the bottom and back again, sending a hundred dollar check to the astonished Marlowe for all his complications, a few days before Christmas too. .. They later become drinking partners at a dingy bar, but happiness does not last, Mr. Lennox is just a front to keep the promiscuous Sylvia looking respectable, Daddy is a cold conservative, honorable man, no bad publicity, he likes it as much as a stock market crash but a murder is committed, there will be more and Terry is suspected, the hero flees to Mexico with the assistance of Philip, who asks not the right questions, a pal is a pal. The tough police aren't slapping the private detective around, beating him like a punching bag with eyes, not the first time either from criminals or the law, it does still hurt but keeps his trap shut...Jailed, looking out into space (only blankness) waiting and wondering how can he get out of this foolish mess, maybe be incarcerated in San Quentin the big house for years, but has his pride intact... Days later he is sprung, becomes involved with Mr. and Mrs. Wade in the exclusive then San Fernando Valley, Eileen Wade is breathtakingly beautiful, Roger Wade is another drunk but a best- selling writer, needs to stop drinking in order to finish his next book, swords and romance, a favorite of critics it isn't , they however are poor and he is rich ... Philip Marlowe through no fault of his own brings death and sinister lurking gangsters ... Raymond Chandler the king of mystery authors has another great novel which lifts it above the genre into serious, distinguished literature.
November 21, 2022
This is the sixth and last of the full-length novels that Raymond Chandler wrote featuring his iconic detective, Philip Marlowe. It's also the most personal in that Chandler seems to have based two of the characters, Terry Lennox and Roger Wade, at least in part on himself.
At the book opens, Marlowe meets a man named Terry Lennox outside of a nightclub. Lennox is very drunk and his date drives off and leaves him. Marlowe, being a good samaritan, takes Lennox to his own home, sobers him up and then drives him home to the mansion that Lennox shares with his very promiscuous and extremely wealthy wife. On the basis of this incident, Marlowe and Lennox strike up a friendship of sorts and occasionally get together for drinks. Then one night, Lennox turns up and asks Marlow to give him a ride to Mexico, no questions asked.
Well, what are friends for?
Marlowe gives Lennox a ride and from that point, things generally go to hell in a handbasket. It's very difficult to say anything else about the plot of the novel without giving things away that the reader will want to find out for him or herself. This is, though, one of Chandler's best novels, full of the social commentary and great prose for which Chandler was so deservedly famous. This plot is actually a little less convoluted than some of the others and it's fun to watch it unfold. I finished the book this time around, after reading the other Chandler novels in order, regretting even more than ever the fact that there are only six of these novels along with a number of short stories. I could have used a lot more.
On a side note, this novel was published in 1953 and is set sometime around 1950. It was finally filmed by Robert Altman in 1973, starring Elliot Gould as Marlowe and the story is set in the early 1970s rather than the early 1950s. A lot of people like the movie a lot, but I've seen it twice and have never been able to warm up to it. Given the way that Humphrey Bogart inhabited the role of Marlowe and really made it his own, I just couldn't buy Gould as Marlowe. Also, Marlowe, who seemed to perfectly belong to the late 1940s and early '50s, seemed out of place in the 1970s--almost anachronistic. For my part, then, when I need a Philip Marlowe film fix, I'll stick with the Bogart version of "The Big Sleep," and I'm sure I'll be coming back to this and the other novels again and again in the coming years.
At the book opens, Marlowe meets a man named Terry Lennox outside of a nightclub. Lennox is very drunk and his date drives off and leaves him. Marlowe, being a good samaritan, takes Lennox to his own home, sobers him up and then drives him home to the mansion that Lennox shares with his very promiscuous and extremely wealthy wife. On the basis of this incident, Marlowe and Lennox strike up a friendship of sorts and occasionally get together for drinks. Then one night, Lennox turns up and asks Marlow to give him a ride to Mexico, no questions asked.
Well, what are friends for?
Marlowe gives Lennox a ride and from that point, things generally go to hell in a handbasket. It's very difficult to say anything else about the plot of the novel without giving things away that the reader will want to find out for him or herself. This is, though, one of Chandler's best novels, full of the social commentary and great prose for which Chandler was so deservedly famous. This plot is actually a little less convoluted than some of the others and it's fun to watch it unfold. I finished the book this time around, after reading the other Chandler novels in order, regretting even more than ever the fact that there are only six of these novels along with a number of short stories. I could have used a lot more.
On a side note, this novel was published in 1953 and is set sometime around 1950. It was finally filmed by Robert Altman in 1973, starring Elliot Gould as Marlowe and the story is set in the early 1970s rather than the early 1950s. A lot of people like the movie a lot, but I've seen it twice and have never been able to warm up to it. Given the way that Humphrey Bogart inhabited the role of Marlowe and really made it his own, I just couldn't buy Gould as Marlowe. Also, Marlowe, who seemed to perfectly belong to the late 1940s and early '50s, seemed out of place in the 1970s--almost anachronistic. For my part, then, when I need a Philip Marlowe film fix, I'll stick with the Bogart version of "The Big Sleep," and I'm sure I'll be coming back to this and the other novels again and again in the coming years.
June 27, 2021
As research for a novel I'm writing, I'm reading detective fiction and stealing everything of value. My story takes place in L.A. of the early '90s, but I'm buying every type of firework on the stand and lighting the fuse. Though I've seen Philip Marlowe adapted to film or television, my introduction to the fiction of Raymond Chandler is The Long Goodbye, the author's sixth novel featuring the Los Angeles private dick. Published in 1953, it's long in the tooth, but it's a testament to Chandler's immense literary skill that more than sixty years of copying and pasting by others hasn't stripped this novel of its vitality.
The first-person account begins with Marlowe's enigmatic relationship with Terry Lennox, a fop he brings home like a stray dog, sobering him up, cooking him breakfast and giving him enough bucks to catch a bus to Las Vegas where a job awaits. Terry reappears in Marlowe's life married to Sylvia Potter, the daughter of publishing magnate Harlan Potter. Not long after, Terry appears on Marlowe's doorstep with a gun in his hand. He offers Marlowe five hundred dollars to drive him to Tijuana. Terry hasn't shot anybody with that gun, but doesn't claim innocence over whatever fate has met his promiscuous wife.
Returning home, Marlowe finds two homicide cops waiting. His wise guy act doesn't go over well with the LAPD, who are looking for Terry Lennox and notify Marlowe that Sylvia has been found dead in her guest house in Encino, her face beaten to a pulp with a bronze statuette. Marlowe doesn't believe Terry would do anything like that and loyalty costs him some smacks in the face and three days in jail. The cops let him go when Lennox is located in a small mountain town in Mexico with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Marlowe doesn't believe Terry would kill himself either.
I thought about Terry Lennox in a detached sort of way. He was already receding into the distance, white hair and scarred face and weak charm and his peculiar brand of pride. I didn't judge him or analyze him, just as I had never asked him questions about how he got wounded or how he ever happened to get himself married to anyone like Sylvia. He was like somebody you meet on board a cruise ship and get to know very well and never really know at all. He was gone like the same fellow when he says goodbye at the pier and let's keep in touch, old man, and you know you won't and he won't. Likely enough you'll never even see the guy again. If you do he will be an entirely different person, just another Rotarian in a club car. How's business? Oh, not too bad. You look good. So do you. I've put on too much weight. Don't we all? Remember that trip in the Franconia (or whatever it was)? Oh sure, swell trip, wasn't it?
The hell it was a swell trip. You were bored stiff. You only talked to the guy because there wasn't anybody around that interested you. Maybe it was like that with Terry Lennox and me. No, not quite. I owned a piece of him. I had invested time and money in him, and three days in the icehouse, not to mention a slug in the jaw and a punch in the neck that I felt every time I swallowed. Now he was dead and I couldn't even give him back his five hundred bucks. That made me sore. It was always the little things that make you sore.
Marlowe receives a visit at his office from a flashy hoodlum named Mendy Melendez and his bodyguard. Melendez delights in taunting Marlowe as a "cheapie" not worth the bother, except to threaten about making publicity off the Terry Lennox case. Melendez claims that Terry not only saved his life in the war, but the life of a Vegas gangster named Randy Starr. Marlowe later receives an envelope with Mexican stamps, a note written by Terry and a $5,000 bill in it. Needing something else to occupy himself with, Marlowe accepts a meeting at the Ritz-Beverly with a potential client, a New York publishing agent.
The agent pitches Marlowe the job of investigating his client Roger Wade, author of tawdry and popular historical novels who's struggling to finish his latest. Spencer and Wade's wife believe there might be something in Roger's past driving him into a bottle and need someone to watch him. Marlowe turns the job down, until he's joined by Mrs. Eileen Wade, a fairy princess blonde whose manner gets the dick's attention, but not enough for him to take a job as male nurse for her drunk husband though. Visiting Marlowe at his office the next day, Eileen Wade notifies Marlowe that Roger has been missing for three days, leaving only a name on a piece of yellow paper, "Dr. V."
Marlowe draws on a contact in a high-end Beverly Hills private investigation firm, a place he turned down a job in, for a list of L.A. area quacks with the last name "V" who for the right price prescribe their services to people like Roger Wade. Infiltrating the operations of three quacks one at a time, Marlowe leaves with nothing but disdain for their practice.
I paid my check, left my car where it was, and walked the north side of the street to the Stockwell Building. It was an antique with a cigar counter in the entrance and a manually operated elevator that lurched and hated to level off. The corridor to the sixth floor was narrow and the doors had frosted glass panels. It was older and much dirtier than my own building. It was loaded with doctors, dentists, Christian science practitioners not doing too good, the kind of lawyers you hope the other fellow has, the kind of doctors and dentists who just scrape along. Not too skillful, not too clean, not too much on the ball, three dollars and please pay the nurse; tired, discouraged men who know just exactly where they stand, what kind of patients they can get and how much money they can be squeezed into paying. Please Do Not Ask For Credit. Doctor is In, Doctor is Out. That's a pretty shaky molar you have there, Mrs. Kazinski. Now if you want this new acrylic filling, every bit as good as a gold inlay, I can do it for you for $14. Novocain will be two dollars extra, if you wish it. Doctor is In, Doctor is Out. That will be Three Dollars. Please Pay the Nurse.
In a building like that there will always be a few guys making real money, but they don't look it. They fit into the shabby background, which is protective coloring for them. Shyster lawyers who are partners in a bail-bond racket on the side (only about two per cent of all forfeited bail bonds are ever collected). Abortionists posing as anything you like that explains their furnishings. Dope pushers posing as urologists, dermatologists, or any branch of medicine in which the treatment can be frequent, and the regular use of local anesthetics is normal.
Of course, Marlowe finds Roger Wade. Of course, Roger & Eileen Wade knew Terry & Sylvia Lennox. Of course, the mysteries of Sylvia's murder and Roger's ennui are related. And of course, Marlowe figures it out, despite the rich and powerful, the police and a criminal element not wanting anything figured out. What I loved about The Long Goodbye from its hangover title to its reveal on the last page is the character of Philip Marlowe. He doesn't have a deep past or seem to have much of a future either, nor does he seem to travel far. He's like an audience member at a game show, sitting in one place, incredulous, while the sets and prizes keep revolving in front of him.
So passed a day in the life of a P.I. Not exactly a typical day but not totally untypical either. What makes a man stay with it nobody knows. You don't get rich, you don't often have much fun. Sometimes you get beaten up or shot at or tossed into the jailhouse. Once in a long while you get dead. Every other month you decide to give it up and find some sensible occupation while you can still walk without shaking your head. Then the door buzzer rings and you open the inner door to the waiting room and there stands a new face with a new problem, a new load of grief, and a small piece of money.
While I felt The Long Goodbye dragging on a little bit, I think the reason Raymond Chandler has stood the test of time is that as filmed or liberated as some of his plots have been over the years, nobody can write this wee-small-hours-of-the-morning prose, mix together various elements or make it feel as timeless as Chandler does on the page. This novel was loosely but memorably adapted in 1973 by filmmaker Robert Altman with Elliott Gould as Marlowe, clinging to Chandler's dusty '50s values of loyalty while L.A. had entered the Me Decade. An often self-indulgent film, I prefer the novel, which functions better as a story and allows the reader into Marlowe's mind.
Word count: 119, 606 words
The first-person account begins with Marlowe's enigmatic relationship with Terry Lennox, a fop he brings home like a stray dog, sobering him up, cooking him breakfast and giving him enough bucks to catch a bus to Las Vegas where a job awaits. Terry reappears in Marlowe's life married to Sylvia Potter, the daughter of publishing magnate Harlan Potter. Not long after, Terry appears on Marlowe's doorstep with a gun in his hand. He offers Marlowe five hundred dollars to drive him to Tijuana. Terry hasn't shot anybody with that gun, but doesn't claim innocence over whatever fate has met his promiscuous wife.
Returning home, Marlowe finds two homicide cops waiting. His wise guy act doesn't go over well with the LAPD, who are looking for Terry Lennox and notify Marlowe that Sylvia has been found dead in her guest house in Encino, her face beaten to a pulp with a bronze statuette. Marlowe doesn't believe Terry would do anything like that and loyalty costs him some smacks in the face and three days in jail. The cops let him go when Lennox is located in a small mountain town in Mexico with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Marlowe doesn't believe Terry would kill himself either.
I thought about Terry Lennox in a detached sort of way. He was already receding into the distance, white hair and scarred face and weak charm and his peculiar brand of pride. I didn't judge him or analyze him, just as I had never asked him questions about how he got wounded or how he ever happened to get himself married to anyone like Sylvia. He was like somebody you meet on board a cruise ship and get to know very well and never really know at all. He was gone like the same fellow when he says goodbye at the pier and let's keep in touch, old man, and you know you won't and he won't. Likely enough you'll never even see the guy again. If you do he will be an entirely different person, just another Rotarian in a club car. How's business? Oh, not too bad. You look good. So do you. I've put on too much weight. Don't we all? Remember that trip in the Franconia (or whatever it was)? Oh sure, swell trip, wasn't it?
The hell it was a swell trip. You were bored stiff. You only talked to the guy because there wasn't anybody around that interested you. Maybe it was like that with Terry Lennox and me. No, not quite. I owned a piece of him. I had invested time and money in him, and three days in the icehouse, not to mention a slug in the jaw and a punch in the neck that I felt every time I swallowed. Now he was dead and I couldn't even give him back his five hundred bucks. That made me sore. It was always the little things that make you sore.
Marlowe receives a visit at his office from a flashy hoodlum named Mendy Melendez and his bodyguard. Melendez delights in taunting Marlowe as a "cheapie" not worth the bother, except to threaten about making publicity off the Terry Lennox case. Melendez claims that Terry not only saved his life in the war, but the life of a Vegas gangster named Randy Starr. Marlowe later receives an envelope with Mexican stamps, a note written by Terry and a $5,000 bill in it. Needing something else to occupy himself with, Marlowe accepts a meeting at the Ritz-Beverly with a potential client, a New York publishing agent.
The agent pitches Marlowe the job of investigating his client Roger Wade, author of tawdry and popular historical novels who's struggling to finish his latest. Spencer and Wade's wife believe there might be something in Roger's past driving him into a bottle and need someone to watch him. Marlowe turns the job down, until he's joined by Mrs. Eileen Wade, a fairy princess blonde whose manner gets the dick's attention, but not enough for him to take a job as male nurse for her drunk husband though. Visiting Marlowe at his office the next day, Eileen Wade notifies Marlowe that Roger has been missing for three days, leaving only a name on a piece of yellow paper, "Dr. V."
Marlowe draws on a contact in a high-end Beverly Hills private investigation firm, a place he turned down a job in, for a list of L.A. area quacks with the last name "V" who for the right price prescribe their services to people like Roger Wade. Infiltrating the operations of three quacks one at a time, Marlowe leaves with nothing but disdain for their practice.
I paid my check, left my car where it was, and walked the north side of the street to the Stockwell Building. It was an antique with a cigar counter in the entrance and a manually operated elevator that lurched and hated to level off. The corridor to the sixth floor was narrow and the doors had frosted glass panels. It was older and much dirtier than my own building. It was loaded with doctors, dentists, Christian science practitioners not doing too good, the kind of lawyers you hope the other fellow has, the kind of doctors and dentists who just scrape along. Not too skillful, not too clean, not too much on the ball, three dollars and please pay the nurse; tired, discouraged men who know just exactly where they stand, what kind of patients they can get and how much money they can be squeezed into paying. Please Do Not Ask For Credit. Doctor is In, Doctor is Out. That's a pretty shaky molar you have there, Mrs. Kazinski. Now if you want this new acrylic filling, every bit as good as a gold inlay, I can do it for you for $14. Novocain will be two dollars extra, if you wish it. Doctor is In, Doctor is Out. That will be Three Dollars. Please Pay the Nurse.
In a building like that there will always be a few guys making real money, but they don't look it. They fit into the shabby background, which is protective coloring for them. Shyster lawyers who are partners in a bail-bond racket on the side (only about two per cent of all forfeited bail bonds are ever collected). Abortionists posing as anything you like that explains their furnishings. Dope pushers posing as urologists, dermatologists, or any branch of medicine in which the treatment can be frequent, and the regular use of local anesthetics is normal.
Of course, Marlowe finds Roger Wade. Of course, Roger & Eileen Wade knew Terry & Sylvia Lennox. Of course, the mysteries of Sylvia's murder and Roger's ennui are related. And of course, Marlowe figures it out, despite the rich and powerful, the police and a criminal element not wanting anything figured out. What I loved about The Long Goodbye from its hangover title to its reveal on the last page is the character of Philip Marlowe. He doesn't have a deep past or seem to have much of a future either, nor does he seem to travel far. He's like an audience member at a game show, sitting in one place, incredulous, while the sets and prizes keep revolving in front of him.
So passed a day in the life of a P.I. Not exactly a typical day but not totally untypical either. What makes a man stay with it nobody knows. You don't get rich, you don't often have much fun. Sometimes you get beaten up or shot at or tossed into the jailhouse. Once in a long while you get dead. Every other month you decide to give it up and find some sensible occupation while you can still walk without shaking your head. Then the door buzzer rings and you open the inner door to the waiting room and there stands a new face with a new problem, a new load of grief, and a small piece of money.
While I felt The Long Goodbye dragging on a little bit, I think the reason Raymond Chandler has stood the test of time is that as filmed or liberated as some of his plots have been over the years, nobody can write this wee-small-hours-of-the-morning prose, mix together various elements or make it feel as timeless as Chandler does on the page. This novel was loosely but memorably adapted in 1973 by filmmaker Robert Altman with Elliott Gould as Marlowe, clinging to Chandler's dusty '50s values of loyalty while L.A. had entered the Me Decade. An often self-indulgent film, I prefer the novel, which functions better as a story and allows the reader into Marlowe's mind.
Word count: 119, 606 words
April 5, 2022
Obra maestra de la literatura. De lectura imprescindible.
Literature masterpiece. Essential reading.
Literature masterpiece. Essential reading.
April 20, 2014
Chandler鈥檚 known as the king of LA noir and word is this is his best. His writing is lean and clean, short staccato sentences with not a word wasted. Almost poetic in its brevity 鈥� not to be confused with lack of substance. Humour me, I鈥檓 trying it out on this review Marlowe鈥檚 amazingly complex, a fast-talking P.I. surviving on tough cynicism. Deep down just a stand-up guy with a soft spot for underdogs. Got a moral core that earns him no thanks, just a whole whack of trouble and an enemy around every corner. There鈥檚 a suicide and a murder everybody鈥檚 pushing Marlow to drop. "You know something, kid? You think you're cute but you're just stupid. You're a shadow on the wall.鈥� But walking away just ain't in his make-up.
A taste of Marlow's world 鈥淚 drove back to Hollywood feeling like a short length of chewed string. It was too early to eat, and too hot. I turned on the fan in my office. It didn't make the air any cooler, just a little more lively. Outside on the boulevard the traffic brawled endlessly. Inside my head thoughts stuck together like flies on flypaper.鈥� He builds characters effortlessly 鈥� again in just a few words. Take this pair of Homicide Detectives "He was gray blond and looked sticky. His partner was tall, good-looking, neat, and had a precise nastiness about him, a goon with an education. They had watching and waiting eyes, patient and careful eyes, cool disdainful eyes, cops' eyes."
Plot's a bit convoluted but moves along nicely. Don鈥檛 get caught up trying to keep it all straight. Instead enjoy the ambiance and the deliciously broken people. Majority of them clinging to sanity by a thread. Roger Wade is interesting, a bestselling pulp fiction author who hits the bottle hard. Rumour has it this is semi-autobiographical.
Heads-up: Written in the 50鈥檚 so you'll need to take in stride some racism. Women are broads and they're all bad news. He seems to like them anyway. "So they're human, they sweat, they get dirty, they have to go to the bathroom. What did you expect-golden butterflies hovering in a rosy mist?鈥�
Way I see it I lucked out. My GR buddies guided me to Chandler as an intro to the world of hard-boiled detective novels. My 1st stab at it, have nothing to compare it to. Can鈥檛 rate by genre so 4.5 stars as pure entertainment 鈥� it was a blast.
A taste of Marlow's world 鈥淚 drove back to Hollywood feeling like a short length of chewed string. It was too early to eat, and too hot. I turned on the fan in my office. It didn't make the air any cooler, just a little more lively. Outside on the boulevard the traffic brawled endlessly. Inside my head thoughts stuck together like flies on flypaper.鈥� He builds characters effortlessly 鈥� again in just a few words. Take this pair of Homicide Detectives "He was gray blond and looked sticky. His partner was tall, good-looking, neat, and had a precise nastiness about him, a goon with an education. They had watching and waiting eyes, patient and careful eyes, cool disdainful eyes, cops' eyes."
Plot's a bit convoluted but moves along nicely. Don鈥檛 get caught up trying to keep it all straight. Instead enjoy the ambiance and the deliciously broken people. Majority of them clinging to sanity by a thread. Roger Wade is interesting, a bestselling pulp fiction author who hits the bottle hard. Rumour has it this is semi-autobiographical.
Heads-up: Written in the 50鈥檚 so you'll need to take in stride some racism. Women are broads and they're all bad news. He seems to like them anyway. "So they're human, they sweat, they get dirty, they have to go to the bathroom. What did you expect-golden butterflies hovering in a rosy mist?鈥�
Way I see it I lucked out. My GR buddies guided me to Chandler as an intro to the world of hard-boiled detective novels. My 1st stab at it, have nothing to compare it to. Can鈥檛 rate by genre so 4.5 stars as pure entertainment 鈥� it was a blast.
December 24, 2012
A down and out friend of Marlowe's flees to Mexico with Marlowe's help, his wife dead under suspicious circumstances. Marlowe's friend soon turns up dead, an apparent suicide. But what does his death, if anything, have to do with a drunk writer Marlowe finds himself watching?
I'm not really sure how I feel about the Long Goodbye. It's Chandler so the writing is great, with Chandler's trademark similes and hard-boiled atmosphere. On the other hand, it's written a little differently than his other Philip Marlowe books. It's more philosophical and less crime-oriented. The two victims in the story seem to be stand-ins for Chandler himself.
It's still crime oriented, though. It took me forever to figure out how the two seemingly unrelated cases were linked. I got there just before Marlowe did but it was a close shave.
What else is there to say without giving anything away? Chandler once again delivers the goods, just not in the same package as usual. Still, it was a very enjoyable read.
I'm not really sure how I feel about the Long Goodbye. It's Chandler so the writing is great, with Chandler's trademark similes and hard-boiled atmosphere. On the other hand, it's written a little differently than his other Philip Marlowe books. It's more philosophical and less crime-oriented. The two victims in the story seem to be stand-ins for Chandler himself.
It's still crime oriented, though. It took me forever to figure out how the two seemingly unrelated cases were linked. I got there just before Marlowe did but it was a close shave.
What else is there to say without giving anything away? Chandler once again delivers the goods, just not in the same package as usual. Still, it was a very enjoyable read.
June 29, 2013
I enjoyed the atmospherics and mood of this one, the last of Chandler鈥檚 detective stories featuring Philip Marlowe. This one is different in being more meditative and in having more of a focus on alienation among the wealthy residents of gated compounds. Chandler also restrains Marlowe鈥檚 use of colorful similes in his interior monologues, which became a clich茅 in many of his imitators. Compared to the earlier tales, Chandler is more judicious here in the playful, sardonic banter Marlowe uses for dismaying and undermining his adversaries, part of his signature cool bravado in the face of danger.
The story begins with Marlowe helping his sensitive alcoholic friend Lennox escape to Mexico, with no questions asked. Soon he learns his faithless, wealthy wife has been brutally murdered, with Lennox the prime suspect. Marlowe stays mum during brutal police questioning and is held in jail for a few days. His initial temptation to investigate the case as a possible frame is undermined by reports of Lennox鈥檚 suicide and written confession. The case comes up again when he begins to find links with another PI job. A publisher tries to hire him to uncover the roots of a writer鈥檚 block and violent behavior when drinking. Though he turns the job down, the guy鈥檚 seductive wife draws him into their situation. A murder takes place that he might have prevented, putting Marlowe into high gear to solve the linked cases and foil the pervasive efforts of powerful forces to suppress the truth.
Despite the troubles with alcohol that beset his two main characters and Chandler himself, he has a wonderful way of capturing the allure Marlowe finds in drinking with Lennox:
鈥淚 like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar鈥攖hat鈥檚 wonderful.鈥� I agreed with him. 鈥�
鈥淎lcohol is like love,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl鈥檚 clothes off.鈥�
Chandler鈥檚 prose has some more delights in capturing the casual attitudes of the rich on power of money:
鈥淚鈥檓 a big bad man, Marlowe. I make lots of dough. I got to make lots of dough to juice the guys I got to juice in order to make lots of dough to juice the guys I got to juice.
A rich businessmen has his formula for success nicely boiled down:
You can鈥檛 have quality with mass production. You don鈥檛 want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence.
Marlowe鈥檚 jaded attitude about conventional justice is nicely expressed is this diatribe:
鈥淟et the law enforcement people do their own dirty work. Let the lawyers work it out. They write the laws for other lawyers to dissect in front of other lawyers to dissect in front of other lawyers called judges so that other judges can say the first judges were wrong and the Supreme Court can say the second lot were wrong. Sure there鈥檚 such as a thing as law. We鈥檙e up to our necks in it. About all it does is make business for lawyers. How long do you think the big-shot mobsters would last if the lawyers didn鈥檛 show them how to operate?鈥�
Chandler seems to have some fun with frustrations of the police over mental health concerns in society鈥檚 response to crime:
鈥淵ou two characters been seeing any psychiatrists lately?鈥�
鈥淛esus,鈥� Ohls said, 鈥渉adn鈥檛 you heard? We got them in our hair all the time these days. 鈥his ain鈥檛 police business any more. It鈥檚 getting to be a branch of the medical racket. They鈥檙e in and out of jail, the courts, the interrogation rooms. They write reports fifteen pages long on why some punk of a juvenile held up a liquor store or raped a schoolgirl or peddled her to the senior class. Ten years from now guys like Hernandez and me will be doing Rohrschach tests and word associations instead of chin-ups and target practice.
So you get the picture that there is a bit of preaching in this story. But we often never sure which attitudes align with Chandler鈥檚 own. I choose to believe the following words of Marlowe are close to his own, and I appreciate the tongue-in-cheek aspects behind them:
鈥淵ou鈥檙e a damn good cop, Bernie, but just the same you鈥檙e all wet. In one way cops are all the same. They blame the wrong things. 鈥rime isn鈥檛 a disease, it鈥檚 a symptom. Cops are like a doctor that gives you aspirin for a brain tumor, except that the cop would rather cure it with a blackjack. We鈥檙e a big tough rich wild people and crime is the price we pay for it, and organized crime is the price we pay for organization. We鈥檒l have it with us for a long time. Organized crime is just the dirty side of the sharp dollar.鈥�
鈥淲hat鈥檚 the clean side?鈥�
鈥淚 never saw it. 鈥et鈥檚 have a drink.鈥�
Through this tale we get a dose of the metaphor for the detective as a cynical but good hearted agent who strives to address the social ills of corruption and greed with truth and justice. But here the heroic aspects are infused with the tragic element of impotence in the face of rank consumerism and selfishness in society in the early 50s. Altman as the director of the movie version in 1973 (starring Elliot Gould as a surprise) highlighted the existential and chaotic aspects of this outlook and put a Don Quixote-like aspect to Marlowe鈥檚 tilting at windmills.
The story begins with Marlowe helping his sensitive alcoholic friend Lennox escape to Mexico, with no questions asked. Soon he learns his faithless, wealthy wife has been brutally murdered, with Lennox the prime suspect. Marlowe stays mum during brutal police questioning and is held in jail for a few days. His initial temptation to investigate the case as a possible frame is undermined by reports of Lennox鈥檚 suicide and written confession. The case comes up again when he begins to find links with another PI job. A publisher tries to hire him to uncover the roots of a writer鈥檚 block and violent behavior when drinking. Though he turns the job down, the guy鈥檚 seductive wife draws him into their situation. A murder takes place that he might have prevented, putting Marlowe into high gear to solve the linked cases and foil the pervasive efforts of powerful forces to suppress the truth.
Despite the troubles with alcohol that beset his two main characters and Chandler himself, he has a wonderful way of capturing the allure Marlowe finds in drinking with Lennox:
鈥淚 like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar鈥攖hat鈥檚 wonderful.鈥� I agreed with him. 鈥�
鈥淎lcohol is like love,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl鈥檚 clothes off.鈥�
Chandler鈥檚 prose has some more delights in capturing the casual attitudes of the rich on power of money:
鈥淚鈥檓 a big bad man, Marlowe. I make lots of dough. I got to make lots of dough to juice the guys I got to juice in order to make lots of dough to juice the guys I got to juice.
A rich businessmen has his formula for success nicely boiled down:
You can鈥檛 have quality with mass production. You don鈥檛 want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence.
Marlowe鈥檚 jaded attitude about conventional justice is nicely expressed is this diatribe:
鈥淟et the law enforcement people do their own dirty work. Let the lawyers work it out. They write the laws for other lawyers to dissect in front of other lawyers to dissect in front of other lawyers called judges so that other judges can say the first judges were wrong and the Supreme Court can say the second lot were wrong. Sure there鈥檚 such as a thing as law. We鈥檙e up to our necks in it. About all it does is make business for lawyers. How long do you think the big-shot mobsters would last if the lawyers didn鈥檛 show them how to operate?鈥�
Chandler seems to have some fun with frustrations of the police over mental health concerns in society鈥檚 response to crime:
鈥淵ou two characters been seeing any psychiatrists lately?鈥�
鈥淛esus,鈥� Ohls said, 鈥渉adn鈥檛 you heard? We got them in our hair all the time these days. 鈥his ain鈥檛 police business any more. It鈥檚 getting to be a branch of the medical racket. They鈥檙e in and out of jail, the courts, the interrogation rooms. They write reports fifteen pages long on why some punk of a juvenile held up a liquor store or raped a schoolgirl or peddled her to the senior class. Ten years from now guys like Hernandez and me will be doing Rohrschach tests and word associations instead of chin-ups and target practice.
So you get the picture that there is a bit of preaching in this story. But we often never sure which attitudes align with Chandler鈥檚 own. I choose to believe the following words of Marlowe are close to his own, and I appreciate the tongue-in-cheek aspects behind them:
鈥淵ou鈥檙e a damn good cop, Bernie, but just the same you鈥檙e all wet. In one way cops are all the same. They blame the wrong things. 鈥rime isn鈥檛 a disease, it鈥檚 a symptom. Cops are like a doctor that gives you aspirin for a brain tumor, except that the cop would rather cure it with a blackjack. We鈥檙e a big tough rich wild people and crime is the price we pay for it, and organized crime is the price we pay for organization. We鈥檒l have it with us for a long time. Organized crime is just the dirty side of the sharp dollar.鈥�
鈥淲hat鈥檚 the clean side?鈥�
鈥淚 never saw it. 鈥et鈥檚 have a drink.鈥�
Through this tale we get a dose of the metaphor for the detective as a cynical but good hearted agent who strives to address the social ills of corruption and greed with truth and justice. But here the heroic aspects are infused with the tragic element of impotence in the face of rank consumerism and selfishness in society in the early 50s. Altman as the director of the movie version in 1973 (starring Elliot Gould as a surprise) highlighted the existential and chaotic aspects of this outlook and put a Don Quixote-like aspect to Marlowe鈥檚 tilting at windmills.
August 19, 2015
When it comes to Raymond Chandler鈥檚 novels starring the smart-ass, misanthropic PI Phillip Marlowe, there鈥檚 The Long Goodbye and then there's everything else Chandler ever wrote鈥攁nd it鈥檚 a long, lonely drive in-between. The Big Sleep, Farwell, My Lovely, and The Little Sister are all seminal works of the hard-boiled genre, too be sure; and on any other day of the week each is its own fuel-injected suicide machine; but in a bare-knuckled brawl, these books are packing wet noodles for arms when they walk into the Thunderdome and go up against the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla that is The Long Goodbye.
I was worried going into this book, on account of one of my most-loved and worshipped novels of all time, James Crumley鈥檚 The Last Good Kiss, is in part based off of this book (Crumley has said more than once in interviews that every good idea he had, he stole from Raymond Chandler). Luckily, these two novels are very separate beasts; while both feature plot-threads involving alcoholic, asshole authors, they go their own separate, heart-stomping ways.
If put on the spot for a fortune-cookie summarization of the two books, I鈥檇 say the The Last Good Kiss is about the fleeting temporality of love and the lingering heaviness of its loss, while The Long Goodbye, more than anything, is a slow-burning rumination on the nature of friendship.
In the earlier novels, all the events transpire usually under 48 hours, with Marlowe getting assigned a case in the first few pages, and then finding the first in a long trail of dead bodies by page 20. The Long Goodbye begins with a jarring but lovely change of pacing and tone, with Marlowe forging a chance-friendship with a charming loser of a war veteran. Weeks and months pass before the first body shows up around the fifty page mark, and it鈥檚 not until somewhere around the 100-page mark that the first signs of a case actually appear.
For a certain breed of mystery reader, this will probably sound like a terrible prospect, but then again, I am a different kind of mystery reader. I believe the genre can be a powerful medium for morality tales that can tackle all sorts of issues that I find important (i.e. the nature of good and evil, mortality, social injustice, the fallible nature of the American dream) and can be written in prose that is subtle, poetic, and painful. Bottom line: I consider mystery novels鈥攚hen they are truly well-written and truly about something鈥攁s important as any other well-cherished work of literature.
I don鈥檛 really have it in me to try and give you a zesty teaser on the plot of this novel, some hokey hook that鈥檒l make you say 鈥淕ee Wiz鈥� and click on the want-to-read button. This book tired me emotionally, and I mean that in the best possible way. So I鈥檓 going to take my curtain call with this last bit: if you are a reader who loves a layered, complex story with characters whose motivations are hidden behind the veil of what is being said at any moment (including鈥攊n fact, especially鈥攖he narrator, Marlowe), if you enjoy a book that actually requires you to actively read, then this is a book I鈥檇 recommend.
Rest assured, there are murders and criminals and femme fatales and tough talk and shady characters and two-timing lovers and dirty cops and mysteries intertwined with mysteries, but all that鈥檚 just the icing on top. What鈥檚 underneath is where things get good.
I was worried going into this book, on account of one of my most-loved and worshipped novels of all time, James Crumley鈥檚 The Last Good Kiss, is in part based off of this book (Crumley has said more than once in interviews that every good idea he had, he stole from Raymond Chandler). Luckily, these two novels are very separate beasts; while both feature plot-threads involving alcoholic, asshole authors, they go their own separate, heart-stomping ways.
If put on the spot for a fortune-cookie summarization of the two books, I鈥檇 say the The Last Good Kiss is about the fleeting temporality of love and the lingering heaviness of its loss, while The Long Goodbye, more than anything, is a slow-burning rumination on the nature of friendship.
In the earlier novels, all the events transpire usually under 48 hours, with Marlowe getting assigned a case in the first few pages, and then finding the first in a long trail of dead bodies by page 20. The Long Goodbye begins with a jarring but lovely change of pacing and tone, with Marlowe forging a chance-friendship with a charming loser of a war veteran. Weeks and months pass before the first body shows up around the fifty page mark, and it鈥檚 not until somewhere around the 100-page mark that the first signs of a case actually appear.
For a certain breed of mystery reader, this will probably sound like a terrible prospect, but then again, I am a different kind of mystery reader. I believe the genre can be a powerful medium for morality tales that can tackle all sorts of issues that I find important (i.e. the nature of good and evil, mortality, social injustice, the fallible nature of the American dream) and can be written in prose that is subtle, poetic, and painful. Bottom line: I consider mystery novels鈥攚hen they are truly well-written and truly about something鈥攁s important as any other well-cherished work of literature.
I don鈥檛 really have it in me to try and give you a zesty teaser on the plot of this novel, some hokey hook that鈥檒l make you say 鈥淕ee Wiz鈥� and click on the want-to-read button. This book tired me emotionally, and I mean that in the best possible way. So I鈥檓 going to take my curtain call with this last bit: if you are a reader who loves a layered, complex story with characters whose motivations are hidden behind the veil of what is being said at any moment (including鈥攊n fact, especially鈥攖he narrator, Marlowe), if you enjoy a book that actually requires you to actively read, then this is a book I鈥檇 recommend.
Rest assured, there are murders and criminals and femme fatales and tough talk and shady characters and two-timing lovers and dirty cops and mysteries intertwined with mysteries, but all that鈥檚 just the icing on top. What鈥檚 underneath is where things get good.
February 8, 2025
"賱丿賶 丕賱賮乇賳爻賷賷賳 毓亘丕乇丞 鬲氐賮 匕賱賰. 丕賱兀賵睾丕丿 賱丿賷賴賲 賵氐賮 賰賱 卮賷亍 賵賴賲 丿丕卅賲丕賸 毓賱賶 丨賯:
兀賳 鬲賯賵賱 丕賱賵丿丕毓 賴賵 兀賳 鬲賲賵鬲 賯賱賷賱丕賸."
賯乇兀鬲 賴匕賴 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 亘爻亘亘 "賴丕乇賵賰賷 賲賵乇丕賰丕賲賷" 丕賱匕賷 賯丕賱 兀賳賴 賯乇兀賴丕 賮賵賯 丕賱爻鬲丞 賲乇丕鬲貙 賵鬲乇噩賲賴丕 廿賱賶 丕賱賷丕亘丕賳賷丞 賱卮丿丞 鬲兀孬乇賴 亘兀爻賱賵亘賴貙 賵亘毓丿賲丕 丕賳賴賷鬲 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 賳爻賷鬲 賴丕乇賵賰賷 賵賵噩丿鬲賳賷 兀賯賵賱 賱賲丕匕丕 賱賲 賳爻賲毓 亘乇賷賲賵賳丿 鬲卮丕賳丿賱乇 賰孬賷乇丕賸 賵賷購匕丕毓 爻賷胤賴 賵鬲購鬲乇噩賲 賰鬲亘賴 -丕賱匕賷 賵噩丿鬲 兀賳賴丕 賰孬賷乇丞- 賮乇賵丕賷丞 "賵丿丕毓 胤賵賷賱" 亘賱丕 兀丿賳賶 卮賰 賴賷 賵丕丨丿丞 賲賳 兀賮囟賱 乇賵丕賷丕鬲 丕賱噩乇賷賲丞 賵丕賱鬲丨賯賷賯丕鬲 丕賱鬲賷 賯乇兀鬲賴丕 賮賷 丨賷丕鬲賷貙 賵丕賱賲丨賯賯 "賮賷賱賷亘 賲丕乇賱賵" 賲賳 兀匕賰賶 丕賱賲購丨賯賯賷賳 丕賱匕賷 賯乇兀鬲 毓賳賴賲貙 賵匕賵 卮禺氐賷丞 賮乇賷丿丞 賱賱睾丕賷丞貙 賵匕賰丕亍 賷賱賲毓 亘毓賷賳賷賴.
賲丕 賷購賲賷夭 賴匕賴 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 毓賳 兀賷丞 乇賵丕賷丞 噩乇賷賲丞 兀禺乇賶貙 兀賳賴丕 鬲丨賲賱 毓購賲賯丕賸 賵賲賳丕賯卮丕鬲 賵賯囟丕賷丕 賲購毓氐丿丞 鬲鬲卮丕亘賰 賵鬲賳丨賱 賱鬲鬲卮丕亘賰 兀賰孬乇貙 孬賲 鬲賳丨賱 賮賷 丕賱賳賴丕賷丞 亘廿賱鬲賵丕亍丞 噩賷丿丞貙 賵賲購賮丕噩卅丞貙 賵丕賱兀賰孬乇 噩丕匕亘賷丞 兀賳賴 賲購賲賴丿 賱賴丕 胤賵丕賱 丕賱兀丨丿丕孬貙 賵賱賰賳賳丕 賱丕 賳乇賶 匕賱賰 廿賱丕 亘丕賱鬲賮噩乇 丕賱兀禺賷乇 毓賳丿賲丕 馗賳賳丕 兀賳 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 丕賳鬲賴鬲貙 賵賱賰賳 賰丕賳 賴賳丕賰 賯賳亘賱丞 賮賷 丕賱賳賴丕賷丞貙 爻鬲購睾賷乇 乇兀賷賰 賮賷 兀睾賱亘 丕賱卮禺氐賷丕鬲貙 賵賱賰賳賴丕 爻鬲噩毓賱賰 賵丕孬賯丕賸 兀賳 "賮賷賱賷亘 賲丕乇賱賵" 乇噩賱 匕賵 賲亘丿兀 賲購丨鬲乇賲 賱丕 賷禺賱 亘賴 兀亘丿丕賸貙 賵胤賵丕賱 兀丨丿丕孬 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 賵賲購卮丕賰爻丕鬲 "賮賷賱賷亘 賲丕乇賱賵" 丕賱匕賷 賷毓賲賱 賰賲丨賯賯 禺丕氐貙 賲毓 丕賱卮乇胤丞 賵丕賱毓氐丕亘丕鬲貙 賱賰賷 賷鬲賵氐賱 廿賱賶 丕賱丨賯賷賯丞貙 賵丕賱丨賯賷賯丞 賵丨丿賴丕貙 胤乇賷賯 賲購毓匕亘 賲賱賷亍 亘丕賱鬲爻丕丐賱丕鬲 丨鬲賶 丨賵賱 賳賮爻賴貙 賷賳禺乇胤 "賲丕乇賱賵" 賮賷 丕賱賯囟賷丞 丨鬲賶 鬲氐賷乇 丨賷丕鬲賴貙 賱丕 毓噩亘 兀賳賴 毓賳丿賲丕 丕賳鬲賴鬲 丕賱丨賰丕賷丞 馗賱 賵丨丿賴 亘賱丕 乇賮賯丞貙 賮賯丿 鬲兀孬乇 賵丕賳禺乇胤 賮賷賴丕貙 賵賱賲爻賴丕貙 丕乇鬲亘胤 亘賴丕 毓丕胤賮賷丕賸 賵賱賷爻 賮賯胤 賲賳 丕賱亘丿丕賷丞貙 賵賲購爻丕毓丿鬲賴 賱兀丨丿 丕賱卮禺氐賷丕鬲貙 賵賱賰賳 胤賵丕賱 丕賱兀丨丿丕孬 賵丨鬲賶 丕賱賳賴丕賷丞.
丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 兀賷囟丕賸 鬲爻鬲毓乇囟 丕賱丨賯亘丞 丕賱夭賲賳賷丞 亘爻鬲賷賳賷丕鬲 丕賱賯乇賳 丕賱賲丕囟賷貙 賲賳 禺賱丕賱 亘毓囟 丕賱卮禺氐賷丕鬲 丕賱鬲賷 賲孬賱鬲 丕賱卮乇胤丞 賵乇噩丕賱 丕賱兀毓賲丕賱 賵乇噩丕賱 丕賱毓氐丕亘丕鬲貙 賵兀氐丨丕亘 丕賱氐購丨賮貙 賵賰賷賮 賷禺丿賲賵賳 亘毓囟賴賲 丕賱亘毓囟貙 賵賯丿 賷鬲毓賲丿賵丕 賮賷 鬲夭賷賷賮 丕賱丨賯賷賯丞 賲賳 兀噩賱 丕賱賲氐丕賱丨 丕賱賲購卮鬲乇賰丞. 賵賰賷賮 賷購賲賰賳 兀賳 賷氐賱 鬲夭賷賷賮 丕賱丨賯賷賯丞 廿賱賶 丕賱鬲賱丕毓亘 賮賷 丕賱賵賯丕卅毓 丨鬲賶貙 賵鬲睾賷賷乇 賲爻丕乇 丕賱兀丨丿丕孬貙 賵賰賷賮 兀賳 賱睾丞 丕賱賲丕賱 賴賷 丕賱賱睾丞 丕賱賵丨賷丿丞 丕賱爻丕卅丿丞 丨鬲賶 亘賷賳 兀毓賱賶 丕賱賯賷丕丿丕鬲 賮賷 丕賱卮乇胤丞 賵丕賱賯囟丕丞 賵兀賷囟丕賸 丕賱氐丨賮 賵乇噩丕賱 丕賱毓氐丕亘丕鬲貙 丕賱賰賱 毓亘丿丕賸 賱賱賲丕賱 亘卮賰賱丕賸 賲丕. 賵賱賲 鬲購睾賮賱 丕賱噩丕賳亘 丕賱丕噩鬲賲丕毓賷 兀賷囟丕賸 賵鬲兀孬賷乇 丕賱丨乇亘 毓賱賶 丕賱卮禺氐賷丕鬲貙 兀丨丿 丕賱卮禺氐賷丕鬲 丨氐賱 毓賱賶 賳丿亘丕鬲 亘爻亘亘 丕賱丨乇亘貙 賵亘卮賰賱丕賸 賲丕 賰丕賳鬲 丕賱丨乇亘 賴賷 賴夭丞 賳賮爻賷丞 賱賴 丨賵賱鬲賴 賰賲丕 乇兀賷賳丕 賮賷 丕賱兀丨丿丕孬貙 兀賷囟丕賸 賵噩賵丿 毓賳氐乇 丕賱賳爻丕亍 賰丕賳 賮毓丕賱丕賸 賵丨賯賷賯賷丕賸貙 丕賱廿睾賵丕亍 丕賱兀賰孬乇 卮乇丕賴丞 賲賳 丕賱賲丕賱貙 賵賱賰賳 賲賳 賯丕賱 兀賳 丕賱噩賲丕賱 賱丕 賷賯鬲賱責
禺鬲丕賲丕賸..
乇賵丕賷丞 亘賵賱賷爻賷丞 賰賱丕爻賷賰賷丞 賲賳 丕賱胤乇丕夭 丕賱兀賰孬乇 賲賳 噩賷丿貙 賲賰鬲賵亘丞 亘兀賱睾丕夭 鬲購丨賱 鬲賵丕賱賷丕賸貙 丨鬲賶 鬲鬲賮噩乇 毓賳丿 丕賱賳賴丕賷丞貙 兀丨丿丕孬賴丕 噩匕丕亘丞 睾賷乇 賲購賲賱丞 毓賱賶 丕賱廿胤賱丕賯貙 賵毓賲賱賷丞 丕賱鬲丨賯賷賯 賵丕賱亘丨孬 賳賮爻賴丕 賱賲 兀賯乇兀 賲孬賱賴丕 賲賳 賯亘賱貙 賵噩丕亍鬲 丕賱鬲乇噩賲丞 噩賷丿丞貙 賱賰賳賴丕 賰丕賳鬲 鬲丨鬲丕噩 賲乇丕噩毓丞 兀禺賷乇丞 賲賳 兀噩賱 丕賱鬲丿賯賷賯 賮賷 亘毓囟 丕賱賰賱賲丕鬲.
亘賰賱 鬲兀賰賷丿 賷購賳氐丨 亘賴丕.
November 4, 2024
鈥淭o say goodbye is to die a little.鈥�
While we may know The Big Sleep (1939) best of all Raymond Chandler鈥檚 works maybe primarily because of its film adaptation featuring Humphrey Bogart as Phillip Marlowe, and indeed it is (as a book, I mean, in addition to the film) a masterpiece, one of the best novels ever--and if you have only seen the film, you should also read it--I am here to say that The Long Goodbye (1953) is even better, that takes my 鈥渕asterpiece鈥� and raises it to eleven. Oh, you could make arguments for Farewell, My Lovely and a couple others as masterpieces, too. But I鈥檓 in good company in voting for Goodbye; Chandler himself thought it was his best book.
Chandler is the great stylist of detective fiction, but sometimes he can come off as just delightfully clever (which is still a lot, really, if you like entertaining reading, of course!). But in these books he uses his style to invent Marlowe, who is a terrific character, and this character-making is his chief priority.
Here鈥檚 Marlowe鈥檚 own quick sketch of his character: 鈥淚'm a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been in jail more than once and I don't do divorce business. I like liquor and women and chess and a few other things. The cops don't like me too well, but I know a couple I get along with. I'm a native son, born in Santa Rosa, both parents dead, no brothers or sisters, and when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in my business, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life.鈥�
So to be fair, saying Chandler is 鈥渏ust鈥� clever means you still highlight half the sentences in each of his books. But in addition to bringing to life Marlowe, the cleverness in this book pays serious attention to something he sometimes finds less important in many of his other books: A well-designed plot. The Big Sleep is sometimes seen as convoluted (though I personally don鈥檛 care), but The Long Goodbye is a carefully complicated tale, with a lot of parallelism and (I鈥檒l call them) doppelgangers (all the guys reflecting on each other in certain ways), and there鈥檚 a couple surprises in the ending that are also very satisfying.
There is serious attention in an auto-fictional way to alcoholism, too, from the alcoholic Chandler, as both of the chief secondary characters Marlowe befriends, Terry Lennox and Roger Wade, are alcoholics. Marlowe (who is not, by the by, Chandler) sips his drinks, and stops drinking them when he is around these clearly needy friends, so that鈥檚 interesting.
Sure, we know now alcoholism is a disease, and hard to cure, but then even more than now it was seen as an issue of personal responsibility and commitment (which it may be; I am not a doctor): 鈥淭here is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.鈥�
Chandler famously told producer John Houseman that he could not complete the manuscript for The Black Dahlia unless he was drunk, to which Houseman agreed, providing him all the booze he asked for, and the screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award. But his insights about the disease run throughout: 鈥淎 man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.鈥�
Here Wade says, about drinking, to Marlowe:
鈥淚 like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation.鈥�
鈥淢aybe I can quit drinking one of these days. They all say that, don't they?" "It takes about three years." "Three years?" He looked shocked. "Usually it does. It's a different world. You have to get used to a paler set of colors, a quieter lot of sounds. You have to allow for relapses. All the people you used to know well will get to be just a little strange. You won't even like most of them, and they won't like you too well.鈥�
Lawrence Block, an alcoholic who wrote a detective series featuring a detective Matt Scudder, may have been in part inspired in his depiction of Scudder鈥檚 struggles with drinking by Chandler especially in this book.
The book isn鈥檛 exclusively about alcoholism, though it is there on almost every page; it is as much about one of the typical base human emotions we see in noir novels (desire/jealousy), as we see there are links in this book between one central woman and the two men. There鈥檚 also the promise of a more serious relationship the promiscuous Marlowe may have with a woman, Linda Loring, though that does not come to fruition until his last, unfinished book, Poodle (for Palm) Springs.
Another topic: Writing and writers. Wade sells out his talent to make a lot of money writing crappy books that everyone wants. There鈥檚 an innovative chapter, too, that is comprised solely of the notes the drunk Wade wrote to himself about writing. This is in part a reflection of Chandler as writer and an insightful reflection on writing and drinking.
As with most noir writers, Chandler鈥檚 target is capitalism, where the rich grind their heels into the poor, and where 鈥渃rime isn鈥檛 a disease, it鈥檚 a symptom,鈥� and where 鈥淥rganized crime is just the dirty side of a dollar.鈥�
鈥淭here ain鈥檛 no clean way to make a million bucks.鈥�
鈥淢an has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of war, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation 鈥� all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can鈥檛 afford ideals.鈥�
鈥淭here's always something to do if you don't have to work or consider the cost. It's no real fun but the rich don't know that. They never had any. They never want anything very hard except maybe somebody else's wife and that's a pretty pale desire compared with the way a plumber's wife wants new curtains for the living room.鈥�
More examples of vintage Chandler-noir speak:
鈥淢ostly I just kill time," he said, "and it dies hard.鈥�
鈥淭here was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.鈥�
鈥淭wenty four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.鈥�
*I like good cop Ohls.
As Graham Greene said of Chandler, he was in comparison to Patricia Highsmith a Boy Scout of virtues; a cynical man, like Highsmith was cynical, but unlike Highsmith, Chandler also is essentially a good man, who operates according to a code of ethics, doing the right thing, advocating for the poor in a brutal capitalist society. 鈥淚 hear voices crying in the night and go and see what鈥檚 the matter.鈥� I like Chandler for that; there's a little hope in his otherwise existentialist tone.
One thing that makes this a superb book, better than most of his other books, is the plot, which I can鈥檛 discuss without giving too many things away, but I love it. There is a murderer, and people die, and Marlowe figures that out. I like the 1973 neo-noir Robert Altman adaptation featuring Elliot Gould as Marlowe, too, though I much prefer Bogart. But I love this book.
While we may know The Big Sleep (1939) best of all Raymond Chandler鈥檚 works maybe primarily because of its film adaptation featuring Humphrey Bogart as Phillip Marlowe, and indeed it is (as a book, I mean, in addition to the film) a masterpiece, one of the best novels ever--and if you have only seen the film, you should also read it--I am here to say that The Long Goodbye (1953) is even better, that takes my 鈥渕asterpiece鈥� and raises it to eleven. Oh, you could make arguments for Farewell, My Lovely and a couple others as masterpieces, too. But I鈥檓 in good company in voting for Goodbye; Chandler himself thought it was his best book.
Chandler is the great stylist of detective fiction, but sometimes he can come off as just delightfully clever (which is still a lot, really, if you like entertaining reading, of course!). But in these books he uses his style to invent Marlowe, who is a terrific character, and this character-making is his chief priority.
Here鈥檚 Marlowe鈥檚 own quick sketch of his character: 鈥淚'm a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been in jail more than once and I don't do divorce business. I like liquor and women and chess and a few other things. The cops don't like me too well, but I know a couple I get along with. I'm a native son, born in Santa Rosa, both parents dead, no brothers or sisters, and when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in my business, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life.鈥�
So to be fair, saying Chandler is 鈥渏ust鈥� clever means you still highlight half the sentences in each of his books. But in addition to bringing to life Marlowe, the cleverness in this book pays serious attention to something he sometimes finds less important in many of his other books: A well-designed plot. The Big Sleep is sometimes seen as convoluted (though I personally don鈥檛 care), but The Long Goodbye is a carefully complicated tale, with a lot of parallelism and (I鈥檒l call them) doppelgangers (all the guys reflecting on each other in certain ways), and there鈥檚 a couple surprises in the ending that are also very satisfying.
There is serious attention in an auto-fictional way to alcoholism, too, from the alcoholic Chandler, as both of the chief secondary characters Marlowe befriends, Terry Lennox and Roger Wade, are alcoholics. Marlowe (who is not, by the by, Chandler) sips his drinks, and stops drinking them when he is around these clearly needy friends, so that鈥檚 interesting.
Sure, we know now alcoholism is a disease, and hard to cure, but then even more than now it was seen as an issue of personal responsibility and commitment (which it may be; I am not a doctor): 鈥淭here is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.鈥�
Chandler famously told producer John Houseman that he could not complete the manuscript for The Black Dahlia unless he was drunk, to which Houseman agreed, providing him all the booze he asked for, and the screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award. But his insights about the disease run throughout: 鈥淎 man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.鈥�
Here Wade says, about drinking, to Marlowe:
鈥淚 like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation.鈥�
鈥淢aybe I can quit drinking one of these days. They all say that, don't they?" "It takes about three years." "Three years?" He looked shocked. "Usually it does. It's a different world. You have to get used to a paler set of colors, a quieter lot of sounds. You have to allow for relapses. All the people you used to know well will get to be just a little strange. You won't even like most of them, and they won't like you too well.鈥�
Lawrence Block, an alcoholic who wrote a detective series featuring a detective Matt Scudder, may have been in part inspired in his depiction of Scudder鈥檚 struggles with drinking by Chandler especially in this book.
The book isn鈥檛 exclusively about alcoholism, though it is there on almost every page; it is as much about one of the typical base human emotions we see in noir novels (desire/jealousy), as we see there are links in this book between one central woman and the two men. There鈥檚 also the promise of a more serious relationship the promiscuous Marlowe may have with a woman, Linda Loring, though that does not come to fruition until his last, unfinished book, Poodle (for Palm) Springs.
Another topic: Writing and writers. Wade sells out his talent to make a lot of money writing crappy books that everyone wants. There鈥檚 an innovative chapter, too, that is comprised solely of the notes the drunk Wade wrote to himself about writing. This is in part a reflection of Chandler as writer and an insightful reflection on writing and drinking.
As with most noir writers, Chandler鈥檚 target is capitalism, where the rich grind their heels into the poor, and where 鈥渃rime isn鈥檛 a disease, it鈥檚 a symptom,鈥� and where 鈥淥rganized crime is just the dirty side of a dollar.鈥�
鈥淭here ain鈥檛 no clean way to make a million bucks.鈥�
鈥淢an has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of war, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation 鈥� all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can鈥檛 afford ideals.鈥�
鈥淭here's always something to do if you don't have to work or consider the cost. It's no real fun but the rich don't know that. They never had any. They never want anything very hard except maybe somebody else's wife and that's a pretty pale desire compared with the way a plumber's wife wants new curtains for the living room.鈥�
More examples of vintage Chandler-noir speak:
鈥淢ostly I just kill time," he said, "and it dies hard.鈥�
鈥淭here was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.鈥�
鈥淭wenty four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.鈥�
*I like good cop Ohls.
As Graham Greene said of Chandler, he was in comparison to Patricia Highsmith a Boy Scout of virtues; a cynical man, like Highsmith was cynical, but unlike Highsmith, Chandler also is essentially a good man, who operates according to a code of ethics, doing the right thing, advocating for the poor in a brutal capitalist society. 鈥淚 hear voices crying in the night and go and see what鈥檚 the matter.鈥� I like Chandler for that; there's a little hope in his otherwise existentialist tone.
One thing that makes this a superb book, better than most of his other books, is the plot, which I can鈥檛 discuss without giving too many things away, but I love it. There is a murderer, and people die, and Marlowe figures that out. I like the 1973 neo-noir Robert Altman adaptation featuring Elliot Gould as Marlowe, too, though I much prefer Bogart. But I love this book.
February 2, 2016
鈥淚 was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.鈥�
鈥� Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Labels like genius and masterpiece get thrown around a lot in the arts. Certain writers are deemed to be brilliant and yet their stars fade quickly. Their notable books are soon forgotten, misplaced, unread and eventually pulped. Other writers seem to have the opposite trajectory. They are viewed as pulp or genre writers, but over time they seem to transcend the genre and even seem to dance on the graves of labels. They are iconic. Raymond Chandler is one of those later writers.
He is one of the Holy Trinity of detective novelists (along with and ). These are the men who built the hard-boiled noir house that everyone else lives in. He is a god and a poet. His dialogue seems to have just fallen directly from the swollen lips of a trash-talking demiurge. His novels are both the burn and the bush. His prose is both the wilderness and the mountain. He can kill-off the Alpha and seduce the Omega before you recognize your own face in the cracked mirror.
I can't think of a modern writer of detective or crime fiction that shouldn't be paying Chander's heirs some form of rent. I can't imagine a writer who wants to include a gun and a woman and a detective in a novel NOT consulting Chandler's novels for hints of inspiration. Obviously, I adore the genre and the writer, but even if I work hard to remove my own biases it is difficult to walk away from 'The Long Goodbye' without recognizing what a gift was thrown at our underserving, flat feet.
鈥� Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Labels like genius and masterpiece get thrown around a lot in the arts. Certain writers are deemed to be brilliant and yet their stars fade quickly. Their notable books are soon forgotten, misplaced, unread and eventually pulped. Other writers seem to have the opposite trajectory. They are viewed as pulp or genre writers, but over time they seem to transcend the genre and even seem to dance on the graves of labels. They are iconic. Raymond Chandler is one of those later writers.
He is one of the Holy Trinity of detective novelists (along with and ). These are the men who built the hard-boiled noir house that everyone else lives in. He is a god and a poet. His dialogue seems to have just fallen directly from the swollen lips of a trash-talking demiurge. His novels are both the burn and the bush. His prose is both the wilderness and the mountain. He can kill-off the Alpha and seduce the Omega before you recognize your own face in the cracked mirror.
I can't think of a modern writer of detective or crime fiction that shouldn't be paying Chander's heirs some form of rent. I can't imagine a writer who wants to include a gun and a woman and a detective in a novel NOT consulting Chandler's novels for hints of inspiration. Obviously, I adore the genre and the writer, but even if I work hard to remove my own biases it is difficult to walk away from 'The Long Goodbye' without recognizing what a gift was thrown at our underserving, flat feet.
May 14, 2025
I鈥檝e read all of Raymond Chandler鈥檚 Philip Marlowe books at least twice. Most of my questions about him were already settled. Yes, he was the single greatest master of the Noir detective tale, edging both of his close competitors, Hammett and Cain. And yes, he was a literary genius who transcended the genre ghetto, turning pulp into literary masterpieces. (Chandler is an American Dostoevsky with a more economical word count and snappier dialogue.) All that remained to be settled was whether his single greatest masterpiece was The Big Sleep or The Long Goodbye.
So this month I reread both books, my third time through each. Both are brilliant. But I no longer have a question. The Long Goodbye is Chandler鈥檚 best, and it鈥檚 not close.
The Long Goodbye focuses on the personal. It begins not with a case, but with a friendship gone sideways. The familiar noir furnishings 鈥� brutal cops, venal politicians, swaggering wise guys, the idle rich 鈥� all are here, but function to reflect Marlowe鈥檚 despair. His cracking wise, mulishness, and bravado are all the defense he has against a tainted world.
鈥滻 was as hollow and empty as the space between the stars,鈥� says Marlowe.
The Long Goodbye is his Dark Night of the Soul.
So this month I reread both books, my third time through each. Both are brilliant. But I no longer have a question. The Long Goodbye is Chandler鈥檚 best, and it鈥檚 not close.
The Long Goodbye focuses on the personal. It begins not with a case, but with a friendship gone sideways. The familiar noir furnishings 鈥� brutal cops, venal politicians, swaggering wise guys, the idle rich 鈥� all are here, but function to reflect Marlowe鈥檚 despair. His cracking wise, mulishness, and bravado are all the defense he has against a tainted world.
鈥滻 was as hollow and empty as the space between the stars,鈥� says Marlowe.
The Long Goodbye is his Dark Night of the Soul.
September 7, 2017
"Mallory s-a ridicat 葯i s-a dus p膬葯ind lateral spre b膬rbatul cu p膬r ro葯cat. C芒nd a ajuns pe la jum膬tatea distan葲ei, poli葲istul cu p膬r cenu葯iu, Jim, a scos un 葲ip膬t 卯n膬bu葯it 葯i a s膬rit spre Macdonald, ag膬葲芒ndu-se de buzunarul lui. Macdonald l-a privit surprins. A 卯ntins m芒na lui mare, l-a apucat pe Jim de ambele revere ale hainei 葯i l-a ridicat. Jim a agitat pumnii spre el 葯i l-a lovit 卯n fa葲膬 de dou膬 ori. Macdonald a str芒ns din buze."
"Am stat nemi葯cat, ascult芒nd intens. Dincolo de mine nu era nici sunet, nici lumin膬. Am scos pistolul din tocul de la subra葲 葯i str芒ng芒nd patul, l-am cobor芒t pe l芒ng膬 corp. Respiram superficial, din v芒rful pl膬m芒nilor. Atunci s-a petrecut ceva nea葯teptat. O raz膬 de lumin膬 a ap膬rut pe sub u葯a batant膬 care d膬dea spre sufragerie. Umbra aprinsese lumina. Ce umbr膬 imprudent膬! Am traversat buc膬t膬ria, am 卯mpins u葯a, deschiz芒ndu-o, 葯i am 葲inut-o a葯a. Lumina se rev膬rsa 卯n alcovul care era sufrageria, dincolo de arcad膬. M-am 卯ndreptat 卯ntr-acolo 葯i, neatent-mult prea neatent! -, am trecut de arcad膬."
"Am stat nemi葯cat, ascult芒nd intens. Dincolo de mine nu era nici sunet, nici lumin膬. Am scos pistolul din tocul de la subra葲 葯i str芒ng芒nd patul, l-am cobor芒t pe l芒ng膬 corp. Respiram superficial, din v芒rful pl膬m芒nilor. Atunci s-a petrecut ceva nea葯teptat. O raz膬 de lumin膬 a ap膬rut pe sub u葯a batant膬 care d膬dea spre sufragerie. Umbra aprinsese lumina. Ce umbr膬 imprudent膬! Am traversat buc膬t膬ria, am 卯mpins u葯a, deschiz芒ndu-o, 葯i am 葲inut-o a葯a. Lumina se rev膬rsa 卯n alcovul care era sufrageria, dincolo de arcad膬. M-am 卯ndreptat 卯ntr-acolo 葯i, neatent-mult prea neatent! -, am trecut de arcad膬."
April 5, 2022
Marlow is back and drawn into the nightmare world of rich alcoholics, adulterers, and of course, of murder. A solid Philip Marlow story full of twists and ever increasing complications that kept me there right to the end. I enjoyed the experience even I felt it was a tad too long and the Marlow of the books never seems as powerful a character as the one that I got from the movies in my youth.
June 29, 2023
Outside of a 1940's Hollywood nightclub, a congenial drunk falls out of a Rolls Royce as his lady friend drives away leaving him on the pavement. Surprisingly, Raymond Chandler's alter ego, the cynical, private detective Philip Marlowe, picks the lad up and takes him to his home to sober him up.
Within the first few pages the window has been opened from the stifling, antiseptic culture of political correctness that is suffocating us today. The reader encounters a refreshing noir breeze from a writer who is not afraid to step on someone's toes or kick them in the shins with a little smack mouth:
- The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.
- "He's just a lost dog," she added with a cool smile. "Perhaps you can find him a home. He's housebroken - more or less."
- She brightened up suddenly, "Oh- Las Vegas? How sentimental of him. That's where we were married."
"I guess he forgot," I said, "or he would have gone somewhere else."
- I caught the rest of it in one of those snob columns in the society section of the paper. I don't read those often, only when I run out of things to dislike.
The drunk is Terry Lennox. The lady is his ex-wife, daughter of a multi-millionaire, reclusive newspaper tycoon. Marlowe helps the badly wounded war veteran make his way to Las Vegas for a fresh start in life where a wartime buddy will give him a job. Shortly thereafter, he gets a letter from Lennox saying that he and his wife have not only reconciled, but have remarried.
A casual friendship develops upon his return. Marlowe feels sorry for the war hero who is little more than a kept man to cover up his wife's promiscuous lifestyle from the gossip columns and her strict father.
Late one night, Lennox shows up at Marlowe's door begging for a ride to Tijuana where he can catch a flight deeper into rural Mexico. He has to get away. His wife has been murdered. Marlowe complies and is no sooner back home than he is taken into custody to be repeatedly beaten and interrogated by the cops. He says nothing and is finally released after Lennox allegedly commits suicide in Mexico after leaving behind a confession.
Shortly after Lennox is buried in Mexico, Marlowe is threatened by the cops, the family's attorney, the District Attorney's office as well as a gangster who shared a foxhole with Lennox in Europe, to keep well away from any further inquiry into this matter. In spite of receiving a $5000 bill from Lennox as a token of their friendship that was mailed before his alleged suicide, what can Marlowe do? Lennox is dead and buried and the case is closed. For your historical perspective, may I add here that a brand new Cadillac club coupe cost $2700 in 1948 and yes, they actually had $5,000 bills back in the day! In fact Benny Binion, that congenial gangster-turned-businessman, had a wall of one hundred $10,000 bills hanging in his Las Vegas casino to inflame the Mom and Pop slots players into dreams of winning their way into a mansion of their own on Easy Street if only they would keep feeding his machines.
Life goes on. Marlowe is finally distracted from his friend's death when the publisher of a best-selling author wants to hire him to find out if his writer is being blackmailed for something from his past since he has gone on a violent drinking binge and cannot finish his latest pulp masterpiece. It is not about the novelist's contribution to mankind. The publisher needs the cash flow. Marlowe is reluctant to take this case which sounds like little more than "intervention" until the author's drop-dead, gorgeous wife gets him aside and explains that not only is her husband a violent drunk, but he has been missing for three days. Will Marlowe please find him? The prescient crime reader will intuit that this new assignment will somehow lead back to Terry Lennox's bludgeoned wife. Just do not expect a straight line across the pages to finger the real murderer. That would take all the fun out of this jaunty noir romp through 1940鈥檚 Hollywood.
Chandler's character etchings are as indelible as his smack mouth language. From cops with varying degrees of violence and inferiority to equally violent gangsters with a touch more of class, from the comfortable, cocktail party carriage trade lacking every component of class except oodles of money to their sultry wives bearing every shade of guile and adultery, from shyster doctors preying on the sick, the vulnerable and the elderly to everyday folks just trying to make a buck before heading home and popping a cold beer, Chandler populates his novels with an aquarium full of colorful, shimmering, unforgettable species.
Let me sprinkle a few more quotes into the aquarium:
- It was so quiet in the bar that you could almost hear the temperature drop as you came in at the door.
- Once in a while in this much too sex-conscious country a man and a woman can meet and talk without dragging bedrooms into it.
- "I have a good idea, Doctor. Why don't you see a good doctor?"
- He had short red hair and a face like a collapsed lung.
And from the femme fatales:
- "I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it anymore."
- "Please be kind to me. I'm no bargain to anyone."
Promise me, promise me, do not, I repeat, do not peek at the ending! There are not many such surprises left on this side of glory.
Bonjour amigos,
David Gustafson
Las Vegas
Within the first few pages the window has been opened from the stifling, antiseptic culture of political correctness that is suffocating us today. The reader encounters a refreshing noir breeze from a writer who is not afraid to step on someone's toes or kick them in the shins with a little smack mouth:
- The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.
- "He's just a lost dog," she added with a cool smile. "Perhaps you can find him a home. He's housebroken - more or less."
- She brightened up suddenly, "Oh- Las Vegas? How sentimental of him. That's where we were married."
"I guess he forgot," I said, "or he would have gone somewhere else."
- I caught the rest of it in one of those snob columns in the society section of the paper. I don't read those often, only when I run out of things to dislike.
The drunk is Terry Lennox. The lady is his ex-wife, daughter of a multi-millionaire, reclusive newspaper tycoon. Marlowe helps the badly wounded war veteran make his way to Las Vegas for a fresh start in life where a wartime buddy will give him a job. Shortly thereafter, he gets a letter from Lennox saying that he and his wife have not only reconciled, but have remarried.
A casual friendship develops upon his return. Marlowe feels sorry for the war hero who is little more than a kept man to cover up his wife's promiscuous lifestyle from the gossip columns and her strict father.
Late one night, Lennox shows up at Marlowe's door begging for a ride to Tijuana where he can catch a flight deeper into rural Mexico. He has to get away. His wife has been murdered. Marlowe complies and is no sooner back home than he is taken into custody to be repeatedly beaten and interrogated by the cops. He says nothing and is finally released after Lennox allegedly commits suicide in Mexico after leaving behind a confession.
Shortly after Lennox is buried in Mexico, Marlowe is threatened by the cops, the family's attorney, the District Attorney's office as well as a gangster who shared a foxhole with Lennox in Europe, to keep well away from any further inquiry into this matter. In spite of receiving a $5000 bill from Lennox as a token of their friendship that was mailed before his alleged suicide, what can Marlowe do? Lennox is dead and buried and the case is closed. For your historical perspective, may I add here that a brand new Cadillac club coupe cost $2700 in 1948 and yes, they actually had $5,000 bills back in the day! In fact Benny Binion, that congenial gangster-turned-businessman, had a wall of one hundred $10,000 bills hanging in his Las Vegas casino to inflame the Mom and Pop slots players into dreams of winning their way into a mansion of their own on Easy Street if only they would keep feeding his machines.
Life goes on. Marlowe is finally distracted from his friend's death when the publisher of a best-selling author wants to hire him to find out if his writer is being blackmailed for something from his past since he has gone on a violent drinking binge and cannot finish his latest pulp masterpiece. It is not about the novelist's contribution to mankind. The publisher needs the cash flow. Marlowe is reluctant to take this case which sounds like little more than "intervention" until the author's drop-dead, gorgeous wife gets him aside and explains that not only is her husband a violent drunk, but he has been missing for three days. Will Marlowe please find him? The prescient crime reader will intuit that this new assignment will somehow lead back to Terry Lennox's bludgeoned wife. Just do not expect a straight line across the pages to finger the real murderer. That would take all the fun out of this jaunty noir romp through 1940鈥檚 Hollywood.
Chandler's character etchings are as indelible as his smack mouth language. From cops with varying degrees of violence and inferiority to equally violent gangsters with a touch more of class, from the comfortable, cocktail party carriage trade lacking every component of class except oodles of money to their sultry wives bearing every shade of guile and adultery, from shyster doctors preying on the sick, the vulnerable and the elderly to everyday folks just trying to make a buck before heading home and popping a cold beer, Chandler populates his novels with an aquarium full of colorful, shimmering, unforgettable species.
Let me sprinkle a few more quotes into the aquarium:
- It was so quiet in the bar that you could almost hear the temperature drop as you came in at the door.
- Once in a while in this much too sex-conscious country a man and a woman can meet and talk without dragging bedrooms into it.
- "I have a good idea, Doctor. Why don't you see a good doctor?"
- He had short red hair and a face like a collapsed lung.
And from the femme fatales:
- "I always find what I want. But when I find it, I don't want it anymore."
- "Please be kind to me. I'm no bargain to anyone."
Promise me, promise me, do not, I repeat, do not peek at the ending! There are not many such surprises left on this side of glory.
Bonjour amigos,
David Gustafson
Las Vegas
May 2, 2025
鈥�...袨褌 褌芯蟹懈 屑芯屑械薪褌 薪邪褌邪褌褗泻 薪褟屑邪 写邪 薪邪褍褔懈褌械 芯褌 屑械薪 懈 泻芯谢泻芯 褔邪褋邪 锌芯泻邪蟹胁邪 褋芯斜褋褌胁械薪懈褟褌 胁懈 褔邪褋芯胁薪懈泻.
袧械懈蟹胁械褋褌薪芯 蟹邪褖芯, 褌芯泄 锌褉械蟹 褑褟谢芯褌芯 胁褉械屑械 薪械 锌芯屑褉褗写薪邪 懈 屑械 芯褋褌邪胁懈 写邪 褋械 懈蟹泻邪卸邪 写芯泻褉邪泄. 袩芯褋谢械 褋械 褍褏懈谢懈.
鈥� 孝懈 褋懈 锌褉芯褋褌芯 芯褌 芯薪械蟹懈 褔械薪谐械褌邪, 写械褌芯 屑褉邪蟹褟褌 锌芯谢懈褑邪懈褌械 鈥� 薪懈褖芯 锌芯胁械褔械.
鈥� 袠屑邪 屑械褋褌邪, 泻褗写械褌芯 锌芯谢懈褑邪懈褌械 薪懈泻芯泄 薪械 谐懈 屑褉邪蟹懈, 泻邪锌懈褌邪薪械, 薪芯 褌邪屑 胁懈械 薪褟屑邪 写邪 褋褌械 锌芯谢懈褑邪泄.鈥�
鈥炐斞娦恍承狙傂� 褋斜芯谐褍胁邪薪械鈥� 械 懈蟹泻谢褞褔懈褌械谢薪芯 褋懈谢械薪 泻褉懈屑懈薪邪谢械薪 褉芯屑邪薪! 袩褉芯褋谢械写褟胁邪泄泻懈 褋谢芯卸薪懈褌械 懈 胁褗谢薪褍胁邪褖懈 锌械褉懈锌械褌懈懈 薪邪 肖懈谢懈锌 袦邪褉谢芯褍, 锌褉械写 褔懈褌邪褌械谢懈褌械 褋械 褉邪蟹泻褉懈胁邪 写芯褋褌芯胁械褉薪邪 泻邪褉褌懈薪邪 薪邪 邪屑械褉懈泻邪薪褋泻懈褌械 芯斜褖械褋褌胁械薪懈 薪械写芯褋褌邪褌褗褑懈. 效邪褋褌薪懈褟褌 写械褌械泻褌懈胁 薪械 褋邪屑芯 褉邪蟹褋谢械写胁邪 蟹邪锌谢械褌械薪懈 褋谢褍褔邪懈, 薪芯 懈 褔械褋褌芯 褋械 褋斜谢褗褋泻胁邪 褋 屑褉邪褔薪邪褌邪 褋褌褉邪薪邪 薪邪 斜芯谐邪褌邪褕泻懈褌械 懈谢懈 锌芯谢懈褑械泄褋泻懈褌械 褋褉械写懈. 袪械泄屑褗薪写 效邪薪写谢褗褉 械谢械谐邪薪褌薪芯 械 褋褗褔械褌邪谢 褋械褉懈芯蟹薪懈 褉邪蟹屑懈褋谢懈 锌芯 胁邪卸薪懈 褌械屑懈 懈 褋褌褉邪褏芯褌薪芯 褔褍胁褋褌胁芯 蟹邪 褏褍屑芯褉.
肖懈谢懈锌 袦邪褉谢芯褍 锌芯屑邪谐邪 薪邪 锌懈褟薪懈褟 懈 蟹邪褌褗薪邪谢 胁 薪械锌褉懈褟褌薪芯褋褌懈 孝械褉懈 袥械薪褗泻褋 懈 褋泻芯褉芯 写胁邪屑邪褌邪 褋械 褋锌褉懈褟褌械谢褟胁邪褌. 袣褗屑 写邪写械薪 屑芯屑械薪褌 写械褌械泻褌懈胁褗褌 屑褍 芯泻邪蟹胁邪 锌芯屑芯褖 写邪 薪邪锌褍褋薪械 褋褌褉邪薪邪褌邪, 邪 胁锌芯褋谢械写褋褌胁懈械 蟹邪锌芯褔胁邪 写邪 褉邪蟹褋谢械写胁邪 蟹邪谐邪写褗褔薪芯褌芯 屑褍 褋邪屑芯褍斜懈泄褋褌胁芯, 蟹邪斜褗褉泻胁邪泄泻懈 褋械 胁 谐芯谢械屑懈 芯锌邪褋薪芯褋褌懈...
鈥炐炑佈傂靶叫靶恍把傂� 褔邪褋褌 芯褌 懈褋褌芯褉懈褟褌邪 薪邪褍褔懈褏 芯褌 褋褗谢蟹谢懈胁邪褌邪 褉褍斜褉懈泻邪 蟹邪 褋胁械褌褋泻懈 泻谢褞泻懈. 袪褟写泻芯 谐懈 褔械褌邪, 褋邪屑芯 泻芯谐邪褌芯 薪褟屑邪屑 蟹邪 泻邪泻胁芯 写邪 褋械 褟写芯褋胁邪屑.鈥�
鈥炐犘靶沸毖娧€泻邪褏 泻邪褎械褌芯 懈 谐芯 蟹邪褏谢褍锌懈褏. 小谢芯卸懈褏 泻褍褏薪械薪褋泻懈褟 褔邪褋芯胁薪懈泻 薪邪 褌褉懈 屑懈薪褍褌懈. 孝懈 褋懈 斜懈谢 谐芯谢褟屑 屑邪薪懈邪泻 斜械, 袦邪褉谢芯褍! 袧懈褖芯 薪械 屑芯卸械 写邪 褌懈 锌芯锌褉械褔懈, 泻邪褌芯 褋懈 胁邪褉懈褕 泻邪褎械褌芯. 袧懈褌芯 写芯褉懈 锌懈褋褌芯谢械褌 胁 褉褗泻邪褌邪 薪邪 薪褟泻芯泄 芯褌褔邪褟薪 褌懈锌.鈥�
鈥炐溞拘缎� 谢懈 写邪 褋褌械 褌芯谢泻芯胁邪 薪邪懈胁械薪, 袦邪褉谢芯褍? 袠 褌芯 褔芯胁械泻 泻邪褌芯 胁邪褋, 胁褉褟谢 懈 泻懈锌褟谢 胁 褌械蟹懈 褉邪斜芯褌懈. 袟邪泻芯薪褗褌 薪械 蟹薪邪褔懈 褋锌褉邪胁械写谢懈胁芯褋褌. 孝芯泄 械 械写懈薪 屑薪芯谐芯 薪械褋褗胁褗褉褕械薪 屑械褏邪薪懈蟹褗屑. 袗泻芯 薪邪褌懈褋薪械褌械 泻芯锌褔械褌邪褌邪 泻邪泻褌芯 褌褉褟斜胁邪 懈 懈蟹胁邪写懈褌械 泻褗褋屑械褌, 胁褗蟹屑芯卸薪芯 械 胁 芯褌谐芯胁芯褉 写邪 锌芯谢褍褔懈褌械 褋锌褉邪胁械写谢懈胁芯褋褌. 袧芯 蟹邪泻芯薪褗褌 薪械 械 懈蟹屑懈褋谢械薪 写邪 斜褗写械 薪械褖芯 锌芯胁械褔械 芯褌 屑械褏邪薪懈蟹褗屑.鈥�
鈥炐捫笛佈傂叫秆喰秆傂� 褋械 锌褉懈褌械卸邪胁邪褌 懈 懈蟹写邪胁邪褌 芯褌 斜芯谐邪褌懈 褏芯褉邪. 袗 褌械 胁褋懈褔泻懈 褔谢械薪褍胁邪褌 胁 械写懈薪 懈 褋褗褖 泻谢褍斜. 袣芯薪泻褍褉械薪褑懈褟 褋褗褖械褋褌胁褍胁邪, 懈 褌芯 屑薪芯谐芯 芯褋褌褉邪, 蟹邪 褌懈褉邪卸, 锌懈泻邪薪褌薪懈 蟹邪谐谢邪胁懈褟, 谐芯谢械屑懈 薪芯胁懈薪懈. 袧芯 褋邪屑芯 写芯褌芯谢泻芯胁邪, 写芯泻芯谢泻芯褌芯 褌芯胁邪 薪械 蟹邪褋褟谐邪 邪胁褌芯褉懈褌械褌邪 懈 芯斜褖械褋褌胁械薪芯褌芯 锌芯谢芯卸械薪懈械 薪邪 褋芯斜褋褌胁械薪懈褑懈褌械. 袙 褋谢褍褔邪泄 薪邪 薪械褖芯 褌邪泻芯胁邪 胁械写薪邪谐邪 褋锌褍褋泻邪褌 锌芯褏谢褍锌邪泻邪. 袗 写械谢芯褌芯 袥械薪褗泻褋, 屑芯屑褔械褌芯 屑懈, 胁械褔械 械 锌芯写 锌芯褏谢褍锌邪泻.鈥�
鈥炐熜狙佇恍� 屑懈 褋褌邪薪邪 褋泻褍褔薪芯. 袙懈械, 谐邪薪谐褋褌械褉懈褌械, 锌芯 薪邪褔邪谢芯 褉邪斜芯褌懈褌械 褋泻褍褔薪芯. 袙褋械 械写薪芯, 褔械 懈谐褉邪械褌械 泻邪褉褌懈 褋邪屑芯 褋 邪褋邪. 啸械屑 懈屑邪褌械 胁褋懈褔泻芯, 褏械屑 薪懈褖芯...鈥�
鈥�...袣邪泻胁懈 谢懈 薪械 谐谢褍锌芯褋褌懈 褉邪蟹锌褉邪胁褟褌. 袣邪蟹胁邪褌 褋褗褖芯, 褔械 斜芯谐邪褌懈褌械 胁懈薪邪谐懈 褋械 谐褉懈卸邪褌 写芯斜褉械 蟹邪 褋械斜械 褋懈 懈 褔械 胁 褌械褏薪懈褟 褋胁褟褌 褑邪褉懈 胁械褔薪芯 谢褟褌芯. 袞懈胁褟褏 褋褉械写 褌褟褏 懈 胁懈写褟褏, 褔械 褋邪 芯褌械谐褔械薪懈 褋邪屑芯褌薪懈 褏芯褉邪.鈥�
鈥炐澭徯夹� 锌芯-褋屑褗褉褌芯薪芯褋械薪 泻邪锌邪薪 芯褌 褋芯斜褋褌胁械薪芯褉褗褔薪芯 锌芯褋褌邪胁械薪懈褟.鈥�
鈥炩€� 孝芯泄 薪械 斜械褕械 邪薪谐谢懈褔邪薪懈薪 鈥� 蟹邪谐芯胁芯褉懈褏 褋谢械写 屑邪谢泻芯. 鈥� 袩褉械写锌芯谢邪谐邪屑, 褔械 械 斜懈谢 褌邪屑 锌褉械蟹 胁芯泄薪邪褌邪. 袠写胁邪褏屑械 褌褍泻 芯褌 写褗卸写 薪邪 胁褟褌褗褉, 锌芯 褌芯胁邪 胁褉械屑械, 锌褉械写邪 写邪 薪邪褏谢褍械 褌褗谢锌邪褌邪.
鈥� 袛邪, 褌芯胁邪 械 薪邪泄-锌褉懈褟褌薪懈褟褌 褔邪褋. 袝写懈薪褋褌胁械薪懈褟褌 锌褉懈褟褌械薪 褔邪褋 写邪 褋懈 胁 薪褟泻芯泄 斜邪褉.鈥�
鈥炐⒀� 蟹邪褌胁芯褉懈 懈 邪蟹 懈蟹胁邪写懈褏 褕邪褏屑邪褌薪邪褌邪 写褗褋泻邪. 袧邪锌褗谢薪懈褏 械写薪邪 谢褍谢邪, 锌芯写褉械写懈褏 褎懈谐褍褉懈褌械 泻邪褌芯 蟹邪 锌邪褉邪写 懈 屑懈薪邪褏 薪邪 锌褉芯胁械褉泻邪 写邪 胁懈写褟 写邪谢懈 胁褋懈褔泻懈 褋邪 懈蟹斜褉褗褋薪邪褌懈 懈 褋褗褋 蟹邪褕懈褌懈 泻芯锌褔械褌邪, 褋谢械写 泻芯械褌芯 懈蟹懈谐褉邪褏 褕邪屑锌懈芯薪褋泻邪 褋褉械褖邪 屑械卸写褍 袚芯褉褔邪泻芯胁 懈 袦械薪懈薪泻懈薪 鈥� 褉邪胁械薪 屑邪褔 薪邪 褋械写械屑写械褋械褌 懈 胁褌芯褉懈褟 褏芯写 鈥� 薪械薪邪写屑懈薪邪褌 芯斜褉邪蟹械褑 蟹邪 褌芯胁邪, 泻邪泻 薪械锌芯斜械写懈屑邪褌邪 褋懈谢邪 褋械 褋斜谢褗褋泻胁邪 褋 薪械锌褉械芯写芯谢懈屑邪 锌褉械谐褉邪写邪: 斜懈褌泻邪 斜械蟹 芯褉褗卸懈械, 胁芯泄薪邪 斜械蟹 泻褉褗胁芯锌褉芯谢懈褌懈械 懈 薪邪泄-褋谢芯卸薪芯褌芯 锌褉邪褏芯褋胁邪薪械 薪邪 褔芯胁械褕泻邪 懈蟹芯斜褉械褌邪褌械谢薪芯褋褌, 泻芯械褌芯 屑芯卸械 写邪 褋械 褋褉械褖薪械 懈蟹胁褗薪 褋褌械薪懈褌械 薪邪 薪褟泻芯褟 褉械泻谢邪屑薪邪 邪谐械薪褑懈褟.鈥�
鈥炩€� 袠屑邪 薪械褖芯 屑薪芯谐芯 芯褋芯斜械薪芯 胁 锌邪褉懈褌械 鈥� 锌褉芯写褗谢卸懈 啸邪褉谢邪薪 袩芯褌褗褉. 鈥� 袣芯谐邪褌芯 褋邪 胁 谐芯谢械屑懈 泻芯谢懈褔械褋褌胁邪, 褌械 卸懈胁械褟褌 褋胁芯泄 褋芯斜褋褌胁械薪 卸懈胁芯褌, 写芯褉懈 懈屑邪褌 褋芯斜褋褌胁械薪邪 褋褗胁械褋褌. 效芯胁械泻褗褌 胁懈薪邪谐懈 械 斜懈谢 锌褉芯写邪卸薪芯 卸懈胁芯褌薪芯. 袧邪褉邪褋褌胁邪薪械褌芯 薪邪 薪邪褋械谢械薪懈械褌芯, 芯谐褉芯屑薪懈褌械 褉邪蟹褏芯写懈 锌芯 胁褉械屑械 薪邪 胁芯泄薪懈褌械, 薪械锌褉械泻褗褋薪邪褌懈褟褌 薪邪褌懈褋泻, 褍锌褉邪卸薪褟胁邪薪 褔褉械蟹 写邪薪褗褑懈褌械 鈥� 胁褋懈褔泻芯 褌芯胁邪 谐芯 锌褉邪胁懈 芯褖械 锌芯-锌褉芯写邪卸械薪. 小褉械写薪懈褟褌 谐褉邪卸写邪薪懈薪 械 褍屑芯褉械薪 懈 褍锌谢邪褕械薪, 邪 褍锌谢邪褕械薪懈褟褌 褍屑芯褉械薪 褔芯胁械泻 薪械 屑芯卸械 写邪 褋懈 锌芯蟹胁芯谢懈 写邪 懈屑邪 懈写械邪谢懈. 孝芯泄 褌褉褟斜胁邪 写邪 芯褋懈谐褍褉褟胁邪 褏褉邪薪邪 薪邪 褋械屑械泄褋褌胁芯褌芯 褋懈. 袙 薪邪褕懈 写薪懈 薪邪斜谢褞写邪胁邪屑械 褕芯泻懈褉邪褖芯 褋锌邪写邪薪械 薪邪 芯斜褖械褋褌胁械薪懈褟 懈 谢懈褔薪懈褟 屑芯褉邪谢. 袧械 屑芯卸械褌械 写邪 懈褋泻邪褌械 泻邪褔械褋褌胁芯 芯褌 褏芯褉邪, 褔懈泄褌芯 卸懈胁芯褌 械 锌芯写褔懈薪械薪 薪邪 谢懈锌褋邪褌邪 薪邪 泻邪褔械褋褌胁芯. 袧械 屑芯卸械 写邪 懈屑邪 泻邪褔械褋褌胁芯 胁 屑邪褋芯胁芯褌芯 锌褉芯懈蟹胁芯写褋褌胁芯. 袧械 褋械 懈 褋褌褉械屑懈屑 泻褗屑 薪械谐芯, 蟹邪褖芯褌芯 泻邪褔械褋褌胁械薪懈褌械 褋褌芯泻懈 褋邪 锌褉械泻邪谢械薪芯 写褗谢谐芯褌褉邪泄薪懈. 袟邪褌芯胁邪 谐芯 蟹邪屑械褋褌胁邪屑械 褋 屑芯写邪褌邪, 泻芯褟褌芯 械 褌褗褉谐芯胁褋泻邪 褏懈褌褉芯褋褌, 褑械谢褟褖邪 懈蟹泻褍褋褌胁械薪芯 芯褋褌邪褉褟胁邪薪械. 袦邪褋芯胁芯褌芯 锌褉芯懈蟹胁芯写褋褌胁芯 薪械 斜懈 屑芯谐谢芯 写邪 锌谢邪褋懈褉邪 褋褌芯泻懈褌械 褋懈 懈写薪邪褌邪 谐芯写懈薪邪, 邪泻芯 褌邪蟹谐芯写懈褕薪邪褌邪 锌褉芯写褍泻褑懈褟 薪械 褋褌邪薪械 褋褌邪褉芯屑芯写薪邪.鈥�
鈥炐炑� 褋芯斜褋褌胁械薪懈褌械 屑懈 薪邪斜谢褞写械薪懈褟 胁褗褉褏褍 卸懈胁械械褖懈褌械 胁 斜芯谐邪褌懈褌械 泻胁邪褉褌邪谢懈 褋褌懈谐邪屑 写芯 蟹邪泻谢褞褔械薪懈械褌芯, 褔械 袪芯写卸褗褉 屑薪芯谐芯 褋斜褗褉泻邪, 写械褌芯 写芯泄写械 写邪 卸懈胁械械 褌褍泻. 袩懈褋邪褌械谢褟褌 懈屑邪 薪褍卸写邪 芯褌 胁写褗褏薪芯胁械薪懈械, 薪芯 薪械 斜褍褌懈谢懈褉邪薪芯. 孝褍泻 薪褟屑邪 薪懈褖芯 写褉褍谐芯 芯褋胁械薪 械写懈薪 斜械蟹泻褉邪械薪 屑邪褏屑褍褉谢褍泻. 袠屑邪屑 锌褉械写胁懈写 泻邪泄屑邪泻邪 薪邪 芯斜褖械褋褌胁芯褌芯, 褉邪蟹斜懈褉邪 褋械.鈥�
鈥炐⌒恍敌沸� 锌芯 褋褌褗谢斜懈褌械, 泻邪褔懈 褋械 胁 泻芯谢邪褌邪 褋懈 懈 锌芯褌械谐谢懈. 袩芯谢懈褑邪懈褌械 薪懈泻芯谐邪 薪械 泻邪蟹胁邪褌 褋斜芯谐芯屑. 袟邪褖芯褌芯 胁褋械 褋械 薪邪写褟胁邪褌 械写懈薪 写械薪 锌邪泻 写邪 褌械 褋褉械褖薪邪褌 胁 褉械写懈褑邪褌邪 蟹邪 芯锌芯蟹薪邪胁邪薪械 薪邪 锌褉械褋褌褗锌薪懈褑懈.鈥�
鈥�... 袛邪 薪械 屑懈褋谢懈褕, 褔械 泻邪蟹懈薪邪褌邪 胁 袪懈薪芯 懈 袙械谐邪褋 褋邪 褋褗蟹写邪写械薪懈 蟹邪 斜械蟹芯斜懈写薪懈 褉邪蟹胁谢械褔械薪懈褟? 孝械 褋邪 蟹邪 写褉械斜薪懈褌械 褉懈斜懈, 蟹邪 谐谢褍锌邪褑懈褌械, 写械褌芯 懈褋泻邪褌 屑邪谢泻芯 写邪 锌褍褋薪邪褌, 屑薪芯谐芯 写邪 褋锌械褔械谢褟褌, 蟹邪 屑芯屑褔械褌芯, 泻芯械褌芯 褖械 褋械 芯褌斜懈械 褋 锌谢懈泻邪 褋褗褋 蟹邪锌谢邪褌邪褌邪 懈 锌芯褋谢械 薪褟屑邪 写邪 懈屑邪 泻邪泻胁芯 写邪 褟写械 锌褉械蟹 褋械写屑懈褑邪褌邪. 袘芯谐邪褌懈褟褌 褖械 懈蟹谐褍斜懈 褔械褌懈褉懈泄褋械褌 斜芯薪邪, 褖械 褋械 懈蟹褏懈谢懈 懈 褖械 褋械 斜褉褗泻薪械 蟹邪 芯褖械. 袧芯 谐芯谢褟屑邪褌邪 锌械褔邪谢斜邪 胁 褌芯蟹懈 斜懈蟹薪械褋 薪械 械 芯褌 斜芯谐邪褌懈褌械 懈谐褉邪褔懈. 孝褟 褋械 褌褉褍锌邪 褑械薪褌 锌芯 褑械薪褌, 写芯谢邪褉 锌芯 写芯谢邪褉, 褉褟写泻芯 芯褌 锌芯 锌械褌 写芯谢邪褉邪. 袚芯谢械屑懈褌械 锌邪褉懈 胁 泻芯屑邪褉邪 褌械泻邪褌 泻邪褌芯 胁芯写邪 芯褌 褔械褕屑邪褌邪 鈥� 械写薪邪 锌芯褋褌芯褟薪薪邪 褋褌褉褍褟, 泻芯褟褌芯 薪械 褋锌懈褉邪.鈥�
鈥炐ぱ€邪薪褑褍蟹懈褌械 褋懈 懈屑邪褌 锌芯谐芯胁芯褉泻邪 蟹邪 褌芯胁邪. 孝械蟹懈 泻芯锌械谢械褌邪 蟹邪 胁褋懈褔泻芯 褋懈 懈屑邪褌 锌芯谐芯胁芯褉泻邪 懈 胁懈薪邪谐懈 褋邪 锌褉邪胁懈. 袛邪 泻邪卸械褕 褋斜芯谐芯屑, 胁 懈蟹胁械褋褌械薪 褋屑懈褋褗谢 蟹薪邪褔懈 写邪 褍屑褉械褕.鈥�
鈥炩€� 袚芯谢褟屑 懈薪邪褌 褋褌械, 薪械 褋褗屑 褋褉械褖邪谢 胁褌芯褉懈 泻邪褌芯 胁邪褋. 袧懈屑邪 锌褉芯写褗谢卸邪胁邪褌械 写邪 褉芯胁懈褌械 懈蟹 芯薪邪蟹懈 泻邪褕邪?
鈥� 袠屑邪 械写薪芯-写胁械 薪械褖邪, 泻芯懈褌芯 屑械 褋屑褍褖邪胁邪褌...鈥�
袧械懈蟹胁械褋褌薪芯 蟹邪褖芯, 褌芯泄 锌褉械蟹 褑褟谢芯褌芯 胁褉械屑械 薪械 锌芯屑褉褗写薪邪 懈 屑械 芯褋褌邪胁懈 写邪 褋械 懈蟹泻邪卸邪 写芯泻褉邪泄. 袩芯褋谢械 褋械 褍褏懈谢懈.
鈥� 孝懈 褋懈 锌褉芯褋褌芯 芯褌 芯薪械蟹懈 褔械薪谐械褌邪, 写械褌芯 屑褉邪蟹褟褌 锌芯谢懈褑邪懈褌械 鈥� 薪懈褖芯 锌芯胁械褔械.
鈥� 袠屑邪 屑械褋褌邪, 泻褗写械褌芯 锌芯谢懈褑邪懈褌械 薪懈泻芯泄 薪械 谐懈 屑褉邪蟹懈, 泻邪锌懈褌邪薪械, 薪芯 褌邪屑 胁懈械 薪褟屑邪 写邪 褋褌械 锌芯谢懈褑邪泄.鈥�
鈥炐斞娦恍承狙傂� 褋斜芯谐褍胁邪薪械鈥� 械 懈蟹泻谢褞褔懈褌械谢薪芯 褋懈谢械薪 泻褉懈屑懈薪邪谢械薪 褉芯屑邪薪! 袩褉芯褋谢械写褟胁邪泄泻懈 褋谢芯卸薪懈褌械 懈 胁褗谢薪褍胁邪褖懈 锌械褉懈锌械褌懈懈 薪邪 肖懈谢懈锌 袦邪褉谢芯褍, 锌褉械写 褔懈褌邪褌械谢懈褌械 褋械 褉邪蟹泻褉懈胁邪 写芯褋褌芯胁械褉薪邪 泻邪褉褌懈薪邪 薪邪 邪屑械褉懈泻邪薪褋泻懈褌械 芯斜褖械褋褌胁械薪懈 薪械写芯褋褌邪褌褗褑懈. 效邪褋褌薪懈褟褌 写械褌械泻褌懈胁 薪械 褋邪屑芯 褉邪蟹褋谢械写胁邪 蟹邪锌谢械褌械薪懈 褋谢褍褔邪懈, 薪芯 懈 褔械褋褌芯 褋械 褋斜谢褗褋泻胁邪 褋 屑褉邪褔薪邪褌邪 褋褌褉邪薪邪 薪邪 斜芯谐邪褌邪褕泻懈褌械 懈谢懈 锌芯谢懈褑械泄褋泻懈褌械 褋褉械写懈. 袪械泄屑褗薪写 效邪薪写谢褗褉 械谢械谐邪薪褌薪芯 械 褋褗褔械褌邪谢 褋械褉懈芯蟹薪懈 褉邪蟹屑懈褋谢懈 锌芯 胁邪卸薪懈 褌械屑懈 懈 褋褌褉邪褏芯褌薪芯 褔褍胁褋褌胁芯 蟹邪 褏褍屑芯褉.
肖懈谢懈锌 袦邪褉谢芯褍 锌芯屑邪谐邪 薪邪 锌懈褟薪懈褟 懈 蟹邪褌褗薪邪谢 胁 薪械锌褉懈褟褌薪芯褋褌懈 孝械褉懈 袥械薪褗泻褋 懈 褋泻芯褉芯 写胁邪屑邪褌邪 褋械 褋锌褉懈褟褌械谢褟胁邪褌. 袣褗屑 写邪写械薪 屑芯屑械薪褌 写械褌械泻褌懈胁褗褌 屑褍 芯泻邪蟹胁邪 锌芯屑芯褖 写邪 薪邪锌褍褋薪械 褋褌褉邪薪邪褌邪, 邪 胁锌芯褋谢械写褋褌胁懈械 蟹邪锌芯褔胁邪 写邪 褉邪蟹褋谢械写胁邪 蟹邪谐邪写褗褔薪芯褌芯 屑褍 褋邪屑芯褍斜懈泄褋褌胁芯, 蟹邪斜褗褉泻胁邪泄泻懈 褋械 胁 谐芯谢械屑懈 芯锌邪褋薪芯褋褌懈...
鈥炐炑佈傂靶叫靶恍把傂� 褔邪褋褌 芯褌 懈褋褌芯褉懈褟褌邪 薪邪褍褔懈褏 芯褌 褋褗谢蟹谢懈胁邪褌邪 褉褍斜褉懈泻邪 蟹邪 褋胁械褌褋泻懈 泻谢褞泻懈. 袪褟写泻芯 谐懈 褔械褌邪, 褋邪屑芯 泻芯谐邪褌芯 薪褟屑邪屑 蟹邪 泻邪泻胁芯 写邪 褋械 褟写芯褋胁邪屑.鈥�
鈥炐犘靶沸毖娧€泻邪褏 泻邪褎械褌芯 懈 谐芯 蟹邪褏谢褍锌懈褏. 小谢芯卸懈褏 泻褍褏薪械薪褋泻懈褟 褔邪褋芯胁薪懈泻 薪邪 褌褉懈 屑懈薪褍褌懈. 孝懈 褋懈 斜懈谢 谐芯谢褟屑 屑邪薪懈邪泻 斜械, 袦邪褉谢芯褍! 袧懈褖芯 薪械 屑芯卸械 写邪 褌懈 锌芯锌褉械褔懈, 泻邪褌芯 褋懈 胁邪褉懈褕 泻邪褎械褌芯. 袧懈褌芯 写芯褉懈 锌懈褋褌芯谢械褌 胁 褉褗泻邪褌邪 薪邪 薪褟泻芯泄 芯褌褔邪褟薪 褌懈锌.鈥�
鈥炐溞拘缎� 谢懈 写邪 褋褌械 褌芯谢泻芯胁邪 薪邪懈胁械薪, 袦邪褉谢芯褍? 袠 褌芯 褔芯胁械泻 泻邪褌芯 胁邪褋, 胁褉褟谢 懈 泻懈锌褟谢 胁 褌械蟹懈 褉邪斜芯褌懈. 袟邪泻芯薪褗褌 薪械 蟹薪邪褔懈 褋锌褉邪胁械写谢懈胁芯褋褌. 孝芯泄 械 械写懈薪 屑薪芯谐芯 薪械褋褗胁褗褉褕械薪 屑械褏邪薪懈蟹褗屑. 袗泻芯 薪邪褌懈褋薪械褌械 泻芯锌褔械褌邪褌邪 泻邪泻褌芯 褌褉褟斜胁邪 懈 懈蟹胁邪写懈褌械 泻褗褋屑械褌, 胁褗蟹屑芯卸薪芯 械 胁 芯褌谐芯胁芯褉 写邪 锌芯谢褍褔懈褌械 褋锌褉邪胁械写谢懈胁芯褋褌. 袧芯 蟹邪泻芯薪褗褌 薪械 械 懈蟹屑懈褋谢械薪 写邪 斜褗写械 薪械褖芯 锌芯胁械褔械 芯褌 屑械褏邪薪懈蟹褗屑.鈥�
鈥炐捫笛佈傂叫秆喰秆傂� 褋械 锌褉懈褌械卸邪胁邪褌 懈 懈蟹写邪胁邪褌 芯褌 斜芯谐邪褌懈 褏芯褉邪. 袗 褌械 胁褋懈褔泻懈 褔谢械薪褍胁邪褌 胁 械写懈薪 懈 褋褗褖 泻谢褍斜. 袣芯薪泻褍褉械薪褑懈褟 褋褗褖械褋褌胁褍胁邪, 懈 褌芯 屑薪芯谐芯 芯褋褌褉邪, 蟹邪 褌懈褉邪卸, 锌懈泻邪薪褌薪懈 蟹邪谐谢邪胁懈褟, 谐芯谢械屑懈 薪芯胁懈薪懈. 袧芯 褋邪屑芯 写芯褌芯谢泻芯胁邪, 写芯泻芯谢泻芯褌芯 褌芯胁邪 薪械 蟹邪褋褟谐邪 邪胁褌芯褉懈褌械褌邪 懈 芯斜褖械褋褌胁械薪芯褌芯 锌芯谢芯卸械薪懈械 薪邪 褋芯斜褋褌胁械薪懈褑懈褌械. 袙 褋谢褍褔邪泄 薪邪 薪械褖芯 褌邪泻芯胁邪 胁械写薪邪谐邪 褋锌褍褋泻邪褌 锌芯褏谢褍锌邪泻邪. 袗 写械谢芯褌芯 袥械薪褗泻褋, 屑芯屑褔械褌芯 屑懈, 胁械褔械 械 锌芯写 锌芯褏谢褍锌邪泻.鈥�
鈥炐熜狙佇恍� 屑懈 褋褌邪薪邪 褋泻褍褔薪芯. 袙懈械, 谐邪薪谐褋褌械褉懈褌械, 锌芯 薪邪褔邪谢芯 褉邪斜芯褌懈褌械 褋泻褍褔薪芯. 袙褋械 械写薪芯, 褔械 懈谐褉邪械褌械 泻邪褉褌懈 褋邪屑芯 褋 邪褋邪. 啸械屑 懈屑邪褌械 胁褋懈褔泻芯, 褏械屑 薪懈褖芯...鈥�
鈥�...袣邪泻胁懈 谢懈 薪械 谐谢褍锌芯褋褌懈 褉邪蟹锌褉邪胁褟褌. 袣邪蟹胁邪褌 褋褗褖芯, 褔械 斜芯谐邪褌懈褌械 胁懈薪邪谐懈 褋械 谐褉懈卸邪褌 写芯斜褉械 蟹邪 褋械斜械 褋懈 懈 褔械 胁 褌械褏薪懈褟 褋胁褟褌 褑邪褉懈 胁械褔薪芯 谢褟褌芯. 袞懈胁褟褏 褋褉械写 褌褟褏 懈 胁懈写褟褏, 褔械 褋邪 芯褌械谐褔械薪懈 褋邪屑芯褌薪懈 褏芯褉邪.鈥�
鈥炐澭徯夹� 锌芯-褋屑褗褉褌芯薪芯褋械薪 泻邪锌邪薪 芯褌 褋芯斜褋褌胁械薪芯褉褗褔薪芯 锌芯褋褌邪胁械薪懈褟.鈥�
鈥炩€� 孝芯泄 薪械 斜械褕械 邪薪谐谢懈褔邪薪懈薪 鈥� 蟹邪谐芯胁芯褉懈褏 褋谢械写 屑邪谢泻芯. 鈥� 袩褉械写锌芯谢邪谐邪屑, 褔械 械 斜懈谢 褌邪屑 锌褉械蟹 胁芯泄薪邪褌邪. 袠写胁邪褏屑械 褌褍泻 芯褌 写褗卸写 薪邪 胁褟褌褗褉, 锌芯 褌芯胁邪 胁褉械屑械, 锌褉械写邪 写邪 薪邪褏谢褍械 褌褗谢锌邪褌邪.
鈥� 袛邪, 褌芯胁邪 械 薪邪泄-锌褉懈褟褌薪懈褟褌 褔邪褋. 袝写懈薪褋褌胁械薪懈褟褌 锌褉懈褟褌械薪 褔邪褋 写邪 褋懈 胁 薪褟泻芯泄 斜邪褉.鈥�
鈥炐⒀� 蟹邪褌胁芯褉懈 懈 邪蟹 懈蟹胁邪写懈褏 褕邪褏屑邪褌薪邪褌邪 写褗褋泻邪. 袧邪锌褗谢薪懈褏 械写薪邪 谢褍谢邪, 锌芯写褉械写懈褏 褎懈谐褍褉懈褌械 泻邪褌芯 蟹邪 锌邪褉邪写 懈 屑懈薪邪褏 薪邪 锌褉芯胁械褉泻邪 写邪 胁懈写褟 写邪谢懈 胁褋懈褔泻懈 褋邪 懈蟹斜褉褗褋薪邪褌懈 懈 褋褗褋 蟹邪褕懈褌懈 泻芯锌褔械褌邪, 褋谢械写 泻芯械褌芯 懈蟹懈谐褉邪褏 褕邪屑锌懈芯薪褋泻邪 褋褉械褖邪 屑械卸写褍 袚芯褉褔邪泻芯胁 懈 袦械薪懈薪泻懈薪 鈥� 褉邪胁械薪 屑邪褔 薪邪 褋械写械屑写械褋械褌 懈 胁褌芯褉懈褟 褏芯写 鈥� 薪械薪邪写屑懈薪邪褌 芯斜褉邪蟹械褑 蟹邪 褌芯胁邪, 泻邪泻 薪械锌芯斜械写懈屑邪褌邪 褋懈谢邪 褋械 褋斜谢褗褋泻胁邪 褋 薪械锌褉械芯写芯谢懈屑邪 锌褉械谐褉邪写邪: 斜懈褌泻邪 斜械蟹 芯褉褗卸懈械, 胁芯泄薪邪 斜械蟹 泻褉褗胁芯锌褉芯谢懈褌懈械 懈 薪邪泄-褋谢芯卸薪芯褌芯 锌褉邪褏芯褋胁邪薪械 薪邪 褔芯胁械褕泻邪 懈蟹芯斜褉械褌邪褌械谢薪芯褋褌, 泻芯械褌芯 屑芯卸械 写邪 褋械 褋褉械褖薪械 懈蟹胁褗薪 褋褌械薪懈褌械 薪邪 薪褟泻芯褟 褉械泻谢邪屑薪邪 邪谐械薪褑懈褟.鈥�
鈥炩€� 袠屑邪 薪械褖芯 屑薪芯谐芯 芯褋芯斜械薪芯 胁 锌邪褉懈褌械 鈥� 锌褉芯写褗谢卸懈 啸邪褉谢邪薪 袩芯褌褗褉. 鈥� 袣芯谐邪褌芯 褋邪 胁 谐芯谢械屑懈 泻芯谢懈褔械褋褌胁邪, 褌械 卸懈胁械褟褌 褋胁芯泄 褋芯斜褋褌胁械薪 卸懈胁芯褌, 写芯褉懈 懈屑邪褌 褋芯斜褋褌胁械薪邪 褋褗胁械褋褌. 效芯胁械泻褗褌 胁懈薪邪谐懈 械 斜懈谢 锌褉芯写邪卸薪芯 卸懈胁芯褌薪芯. 袧邪褉邪褋褌胁邪薪械褌芯 薪邪 薪邪褋械谢械薪懈械褌芯, 芯谐褉芯屑薪懈褌械 褉邪蟹褏芯写懈 锌芯 胁褉械屑械 薪邪 胁芯泄薪懈褌械, 薪械锌褉械泻褗褋薪邪褌懈褟褌 薪邪褌懈褋泻, 褍锌褉邪卸薪褟胁邪薪 褔褉械蟹 写邪薪褗褑懈褌械 鈥� 胁褋懈褔泻芯 褌芯胁邪 谐芯 锌褉邪胁懈 芯褖械 锌芯-锌褉芯写邪卸械薪. 小褉械写薪懈褟褌 谐褉邪卸写邪薪懈薪 械 褍屑芯褉械薪 懈 褍锌谢邪褕械薪, 邪 褍锌谢邪褕械薪懈褟褌 褍屑芯褉械薪 褔芯胁械泻 薪械 屑芯卸械 写邪 褋懈 锌芯蟹胁芯谢懈 写邪 懈屑邪 懈写械邪谢懈. 孝芯泄 褌褉褟斜胁邪 写邪 芯褋懈谐褍褉褟胁邪 褏褉邪薪邪 薪邪 褋械屑械泄褋褌胁芯褌芯 褋懈. 袙 薪邪褕懈 写薪懈 薪邪斜谢褞写邪胁邪屑械 褕芯泻懈褉邪褖芯 褋锌邪写邪薪械 薪邪 芯斜褖械褋褌胁械薪懈褟 懈 谢懈褔薪懈褟 屑芯褉邪谢. 袧械 屑芯卸械褌械 写邪 懈褋泻邪褌械 泻邪褔械褋褌胁芯 芯褌 褏芯褉邪, 褔懈泄褌芯 卸懈胁芯褌 械 锌芯写褔懈薪械薪 薪邪 谢懈锌褋邪褌邪 薪邪 泻邪褔械褋褌胁芯. 袧械 屑芯卸械 写邪 懈屑邪 泻邪褔械褋褌胁芯 胁 屑邪褋芯胁芯褌芯 锌褉芯懈蟹胁芯写褋褌胁芯. 袧械 褋械 懈 褋褌褉械屑懈屑 泻褗屑 薪械谐芯, 蟹邪褖芯褌芯 泻邪褔械褋褌胁械薪懈褌械 褋褌芯泻懈 褋邪 锌褉械泻邪谢械薪芯 写褗谢谐芯褌褉邪泄薪懈. 袟邪褌芯胁邪 谐芯 蟹邪屑械褋褌胁邪屑械 褋 屑芯写邪褌邪, 泻芯褟褌芯 械 褌褗褉谐芯胁褋泻邪 褏懈褌褉芯褋褌, 褑械谢褟褖邪 懈蟹泻褍褋褌胁械薪芯 芯褋褌邪褉褟胁邪薪械. 袦邪褋芯胁芯褌芯 锌褉芯懈蟹胁芯写褋褌胁芯 薪械 斜懈 屑芯谐谢芯 写邪 锌谢邪褋懈褉邪 褋褌芯泻懈褌械 褋懈 懈写薪邪褌邪 谐芯写懈薪邪, 邪泻芯 褌邪蟹谐芯写懈褕薪邪褌邪 锌褉芯写褍泻褑懈褟 薪械 褋褌邪薪械 褋褌邪褉芯屑芯写薪邪.鈥�
鈥炐炑� 褋芯斜褋褌胁械薪懈褌械 屑懈 薪邪斜谢褞写械薪懈褟 胁褗褉褏褍 卸懈胁械械褖懈褌械 胁 斜芯谐邪褌懈褌械 泻胁邪褉褌邪谢懈 褋褌懈谐邪屑 写芯 蟹邪泻谢褞褔械薪懈械褌芯, 褔械 袪芯写卸褗褉 屑薪芯谐芯 褋斜褗褉泻邪, 写械褌芯 写芯泄写械 写邪 卸懈胁械械 褌褍泻. 袩懈褋邪褌械谢褟褌 懈屑邪 薪褍卸写邪 芯褌 胁写褗褏薪芯胁械薪懈械, 薪芯 薪械 斜褍褌懈谢懈褉邪薪芯. 孝褍泻 薪褟屑邪 薪懈褖芯 写褉褍谐芯 芯褋胁械薪 械写懈薪 斜械蟹泻褉邪械薪 屑邪褏屑褍褉谢褍泻. 袠屑邪屑 锌褉械写胁懈写 泻邪泄屑邪泻邪 薪邪 芯斜褖械褋褌胁芯褌芯, 褉邪蟹斜懈褉邪 褋械.鈥�
鈥炐⌒恍敌沸� 锌芯 褋褌褗谢斜懈褌械, 泻邪褔懈 褋械 胁 泻芯谢邪褌邪 褋懈 懈 锌芯褌械谐谢懈. 袩芯谢懈褑邪懈褌械 薪懈泻芯谐邪 薪械 泻邪蟹胁邪褌 褋斜芯谐芯屑. 袟邪褖芯褌芯 胁褋械 褋械 薪邪写褟胁邪褌 械写懈薪 写械薪 锌邪泻 写邪 褌械 褋褉械褖薪邪褌 胁 褉械写懈褑邪褌邪 蟹邪 芯锌芯蟹薪邪胁邪薪械 薪邪 锌褉械褋褌褗锌薪懈褑懈.鈥�
鈥�... 袛邪 薪械 屑懈褋谢懈褕, 褔械 泻邪蟹懈薪邪褌邪 胁 袪懈薪芯 懈 袙械谐邪褋 褋邪 褋褗蟹写邪写械薪懈 蟹邪 斜械蟹芯斜懈写薪懈 褉邪蟹胁谢械褔械薪懈褟? 孝械 褋邪 蟹邪 写褉械斜薪懈褌械 褉懈斜懈, 蟹邪 谐谢褍锌邪褑懈褌械, 写械褌芯 懈褋泻邪褌 屑邪谢泻芯 写邪 锌褍褋薪邪褌, 屑薪芯谐芯 写邪 褋锌械褔械谢褟褌, 蟹邪 屑芯屑褔械褌芯, 泻芯械褌芯 褖械 褋械 芯褌斜懈械 褋 锌谢懈泻邪 褋褗褋 蟹邪锌谢邪褌邪褌邪 懈 锌芯褋谢械 薪褟屑邪 写邪 懈屑邪 泻邪泻胁芯 写邪 褟写械 锌褉械蟹 褋械写屑懈褑邪褌邪. 袘芯谐邪褌懈褟褌 褖械 懈蟹谐褍斜懈 褔械褌懈褉懈泄褋械褌 斜芯薪邪, 褖械 褋械 懈蟹褏懈谢懈 懈 褖械 褋械 斜褉褗泻薪械 蟹邪 芯褖械. 袧芯 谐芯谢褟屑邪褌邪 锌械褔邪谢斜邪 胁 褌芯蟹懈 斜懈蟹薪械褋 薪械 械 芯褌 斜芯谐邪褌懈褌械 懈谐褉邪褔懈. 孝褟 褋械 褌褉褍锌邪 褑械薪褌 锌芯 褑械薪褌, 写芯谢邪褉 锌芯 写芯谢邪褉, 褉褟写泻芯 芯褌 锌芯 锌械褌 写芯谢邪褉邪. 袚芯谢械屑懈褌械 锌邪褉懈 胁 泻芯屑邪褉邪 褌械泻邪褌 泻邪褌芯 胁芯写邪 芯褌 褔械褕屑邪褌邪 鈥� 械写薪邪 锌芯褋褌芯褟薪薪邪 褋褌褉褍褟, 泻芯褟褌芯 薪械 褋锌懈褉邪.鈥�
鈥炐ぱ€邪薪褑褍蟹懈褌械 褋懈 懈屑邪褌 锌芯谐芯胁芯褉泻邪 蟹邪 褌芯胁邪. 孝械蟹懈 泻芯锌械谢械褌邪 蟹邪 胁褋懈褔泻芯 褋懈 懈屑邪褌 锌芯谐芯胁芯褉泻邪 懈 胁懈薪邪谐懈 褋邪 锌褉邪胁懈. 袛邪 泻邪卸械褕 褋斜芯谐芯屑, 胁 懈蟹胁械褋褌械薪 褋屑懈褋褗谢 蟹薪邪褔懈 写邪 褍屑褉械褕.鈥�
鈥炩€� 袚芯谢褟屑 懈薪邪褌 褋褌械, 薪械 褋褗屑 褋褉械褖邪谢 胁褌芯褉懈 泻邪褌芯 胁邪褋. 袧懈屑邪 锌褉芯写褗谢卸邪胁邪褌械 写邪 褉芯胁懈褌械 懈蟹 芯薪邪蟹懈 泻邪褕邪?
鈥� 袠屑邪 械写薪芯-写胁械 薪械褖邪, 泻芯懈褌芯 屑械 褋屑褍褖邪胁邪褌...鈥�
September 17, 2014
People. They pass through your life, your mind, your heart, bundled in their own worlds with their wants and needs and feelings. And they'll tangle you up and drag you with and leave you with a lump in your throat and a weight in your gut. That's the best case scenario. Worst case scenario you end up broken, in jail, dead. Philip avoids the latter case with an insight into the human condition so instinctive and accurate it is frankly terrifying. Doesn't help him at all with the former though.
Besides all that, he is a singular character with singular motives. He would have been an excellent knight in the medieval ages, but I have a feeling that he wouldn't have been drawn to such an auspicious living. His inherent moral code is tempered by a fixation on the seedier side of living. He craves the city, a filthy machine that rests on a vicious underbelly and is topped with a slathering of sickening gilt. Guilt? Same difference. He lives to solve the problem without regard to both those he affects and those who affect him; he must have an indifference to life made of steel, if not a mental complex the size of the city he resides in. I'd have to read more into him to find out. Which I think I shall.
All discussion of the main character aside, the crime was tantalizing, the plot moved at a compulsively readable place, and you have to love witty banter, even if much of it was bluffing and bullshit. That's why we have Marlowe though, to carve through all the things people say and find what they actually mean. You know, I think he also would've made a cool English professor. I'm not sure how well street smarts would have translated to character and plot analysis, but humans really haven't changed that much in the past millennium or so. Different words, but our motives and thought patterns still follow stupidly predictable ways for those who can see it. Raymond Chandler can definitely see it, and shows it to the rest of us in a way that leaves us craving more. There's no greater escape from the bullshit of your own life than through a novel that cuts through its own, and it is inherently addicting.
Besides all that, he is a singular character with singular motives. He would have been an excellent knight in the medieval ages, but I have a feeling that he wouldn't have been drawn to such an auspicious living. His inherent moral code is tempered by a fixation on the seedier side of living. He craves the city, a filthy machine that rests on a vicious underbelly and is topped with a slathering of sickening gilt. Guilt? Same difference. He lives to solve the problem without regard to both those he affects and those who affect him; he must have an indifference to life made of steel, if not a mental complex the size of the city he resides in. I'd have to read more into him to find out. Which I think I shall.
All discussion of the main character aside, the crime was tantalizing, the plot moved at a compulsively readable place, and you have to love witty banter, even if much of it was bluffing and bullshit. That's why we have Marlowe though, to carve through all the things people say and find what they actually mean. You know, I think he also would've made a cool English professor. I'm not sure how well street smarts would have translated to character and plot analysis, but humans really haven't changed that much in the past millennium or so. Different words, but our motives and thought patterns still follow stupidly predictable ways for those who can see it. Raymond Chandler can definitely see it, and shows it to the rest of us in a way that leaves us craving more. There's no greater escape from the bullshit of your own life than through a novel that cuts through its own, and it is inherently addicting.
June 10, 2017
鈥淟鈥檃lcool 猫 come l鈥檃more. Il primo bacio 猫 magico, il secondo intimo, il terzo un鈥檃bitudine. E poi si spoglia la donna鈥�
C鈥櫭� tutto quello che deve esserci in un romanzo del genere. Come principale protagonista c鈥櫭� l鈥檃lcool, motore e spinta propulsiva della storia, che scorre a fiumi nelle case eleganti dei quartieri pi霉 esclusivi e nei bar silenziosi di Los Angeles; ci sono i bulli dal grilletto facile, grandi criminali tenutari di case da gioco in Nevada, messicani dal sangue caliente e con la violenza a fior di pelle; ci sono le pupe, splendide donne eleganti e sensuali che provocano bollori al primo sguardo (anche se poi, quando vai a guardare meglio, trovi marcio sotto pelle); ci sono poliziotti corrotti che girano scortati da gangster nelle strade di Los Angeles; ci sono anche poliziotti onesti che si sentono falliti per aver pensato che il mondo 猫 diviso in due, i buoni e i cattivi da sterminare; ed infine c鈥櫭� lui, Philip Marlowe, un duro, un cinico, un saggio che ha capito come va il mondo, cui 猫 chiaro come 鈥渋l potere d鈥檃cquisto del dollaro鈥� sia ci貌 che fa girare le cose, ed il caso che gli si presenta ne 猫 la lampante dimostrazione: la morte della figlia di un milionario californiano, magnate dell鈥檈ditoria. Marlowe ci si imbatte perch茅 il marito della donna 猫 un suo 鈥渁mico鈥�, Terry Lennox, con il quale 猫 abituato a condividere succhielli (bibite tipiche californiane, non pensate male!) malinconicamente seduti su uno sgabello del bar Victor. Cosa significa l鈥檃micizia? Per Marlowe molto, tanto da spingerlo a immischiarsi in faccende pericolose, mettendosi in gioco seriamente, pur di salvaguardarla.
Il miglior Chandler letto finora, con un finale imprevisto e molto triste, che lascia con l鈥檃maro in bocca, ma sempre pi霉 affezionati al rude investigatore.
C鈥櫭� tutto quello che deve esserci in un romanzo del genere. Come principale protagonista c鈥櫭� l鈥檃lcool, motore e spinta propulsiva della storia, che scorre a fiumi nelle case eleganti dei quartieri pi霉 esclusivi e nei bar silenziosi di Los Angeles; ci sono i bulli dal grilletto facile, grandi criminali tenutari di case da gioco in Nevada, messicani dal sangue caliente e con la violenza a fior di pelle; ci sono le pupe, splendide donne eleganti e sensuali che provocano bollori al primo sguardo (anche se poi, quando vai a guardare meglio, trovi marcio sotto pelle); ci sono poliziotti corrotti che girano scortati da gangster nelle strade di Los Angeles; ci sono anche poliziotti onesti che si sentono falliti per aver pensato che il mondo 猫 diviso in due, i buoni e i cattivi da sterminare; ed infine c鈥櫭� lui, Philip Marlowe, un duro, un cinico, un saggio che ha capito come va il mondo, cui 猫 chiaro come 鈥渋l potere d鈥檃cquisto del dollaro鈥� sia ci貌 che fa girare le cose, ed il caso che gli si presenta ne 猫 la lampante dimostrazione: la morte della figlia di un milionario californiano, magnate dell鈥檈ditoria. Marlowe ci si imbatte perch茅 il marito della donna 猫 un suo 鈥渁mico鈥�, Terry Lennox, con il quale 猫 abituato a condividere succhielli (bibite tipiche californiane, non pensate male!) malinconicamente seduti su uno sgabello del bar Victor. Cosa significa l鈥檃micizia? Per Marlowe molto, tanto da spingerlo a immischiarsi in faccende pericolose, mettendosi in gioco seriamente, pur di salvaguardarla.
Il miglior Chandler letto finora, con un finale imprevisto e molto triste, che lascia con l鈥檃maro in bocca, ma sempre pi霉 affezionati al rude investigatore.
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November 25, 2015
Tom was a quiet, reserved kind of guy. Which at the time was unusual within my circle of friends. Most everyone I knew back when I first returned to Sheffield was a lush, a druggie or just plain crazy. I made friends in pubs and clubs. My friends didn鈥檛 exist in the daytime. Except Tom. He was 24/7. Normal. I was in a bad way myself, although I couldn鈥檛 see it. Perhaps the company I kept gave me a false sense of my emotional and physical well-being. When J is getting the sack because he has been on a Ketamine binge and can鈥檛 stand up for two days, and Alison is turning up for lectures with semen in her hair, you don鈥檛 feel so crummy. Everything is relative.
And everything pointed to Tom outlasting every one of us. You didn鈥檛 talk about it. You just knew. Only a fool would have thought otherwise. Yeah, Tom made fools of us all. He didn鈥檛 dance in clubs, and so you thought he was shy, standing off by himself most of the evening. He made comments about his appearance, and you credited him with a dry, deprecating sense of humour. He didn鈥檛 do drugs, didn鈥檛 take nameless girls home, and you didn鈥檛 judge, you admired him for it. What a sensible guy. If only we could be like him.
Yet sometimes I would wonder. And in my wisdom would take Tom for a drink. It is all I knew how to do. I hoped that would help somehow, that he would see it for what it was: an inadequate but heartfelt gesture of solidarity or empathy. I didn鈥檛 know what he was really thinking. You didn鈥檛 ask; he didn鈥檛 tell. That is just the way it was. And all the while he carried on slipping. A little at a time; almost imperceptibly. Until one day he was gone. The guy we thought would go places, did. And he didn鈥檛 come back.
I think about those times a lot. About Tom in particular. Mop-haired Tom, so unassuming. If his name ever now comes up people like to say his situation was hopeless. That is their comfort blanket. That he couldn鈥檛 deal with the things that were bothering him, and he couldn鈥檛 have been saved. I guess it makes them feel better to think that way. All I know is that whatever he was up against, whatever he was grappling with, he lost. That no longer surprises me. Life is a dirty fighter, I鈥檝e found. Of course, I wish I could have done more. I wish I had. It hurts to know I failed him. Maybe there is nothing I could have done. Some people are not made to endure. But futile effort is like a shot of whisky, it can calm the nerves.
Raymond Chandler once wrote that to say goodbye is to die a little. Well, I never even got to say goodbye. It was a surprise to me that reading The Long Goodbye brought all this back up. It is not something I had expected. I was ready for wise-cracking PI鈥檚, sultry dames, tough guys, and all-round dumb fun, but I wasn鈥檛 prepared to be so moved, to have some of my personal sore spots fingered so aggressively. I guess guilt is like a blood stain, it takes a long time to fade. But I don鈥檛 want to give the impression that the book is only worthwhile as a kind of Proustian madeleine. The truth is that many of the characters 鈥� including Eileen Wade, strangely enough 鈥� got to me on their own terms, just like they got to Philip Marlowe. And the credit for that goes to the author.
The novel centres around the lives, and deaths, of two men, Terry Lennox and Roger Wade. As introductions go, Terry鈥檚 is one of the best. Marlowe first encounters the man hanging out of a Rolls, blind-drunk. Also in the car is his beautiful ex-wife. Immediately one gets a sense of each character鈥檚 personality, or role-to-be in the novel. The ex-wife is hard-nosed, unsympathetic, dispensable; Marlowe is, against his better judgement, and for no personal gain, drawn to Lennox and wants to help him; and Terry is vulnerable, in need of help, and likely to bring in his wake a whole lot of trouble. One understands very quickly that he is one of life鈥檚 perennial losers [a word I use without any negative connotation].
Lennox鈥檚 physical appearance is also significant. He鈥檚 a young man with a shock of white hair and comprehensive scarring on his face [which a doctor has attempted to fix with plastic surgery]. The scars were picked up during the war [and this is also significant, but I鈥檒l touch upon that later]; they act within the novel as a physical representation of his emotional, inner life. Lennox is, both emotionally and physically, damaged goods. Marlowe isn鈥檛 in much better condition himself. He鈥檚 getting older [he鈥檚 42], wearier. His wise-cracks, which readers seem to so cherish, struck me as angrier, or more bitter than usual, rather than admirable bravado or swagger.
[Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe, in Robert Altman鈥檚 film version of the book]
What ties Marlowe and Lennox together is that both are, essentially, alone and feeling it. They drift towards each other out of a pretty basic human desire for contact or friendship. It is worth noting that Marlowe doesn鈥檛 know why he cares about Lennox. The men do not share interests, they do not really talk to each other all that much, but they could be said to need each other. At the beginning Terry is described by his ex-wife as 鈥榓 lost dog,鈥� which is apt, but that phrase could also be applied to Marlowe too; in fact, it could be applied to every character in the book. It is interesting that the focus throughout is on moneyed people, privileged people; Chandler seems to be at pains to point out that being flush doesn鈥檛 stop you from fucking up, or getting sad. Indeed, The Long Goodbye is a terribly sad book, bleak even; its overriding message is that, as a result of two wars, the world is quickly going down the toilet, that humanity is starting to collapse under the weight of its own faeces. The wars, Chandler suggests, have taken our innocence, and left us worn-out, seedy, cynical and self-obsessed.
I鈥檝e read elsewhere that Chandler intended for The Long Goodbye to be different from his other books. Apparently, he did not set out to write a Marlowe novel, but eventually lost his nerve. Wanting to ditch his famous narrator would indicate that the author was aching to spread his proverbial wings, was perhaps gunning for something more personal and with more depth. If that is so, then one might look to Roger Wade, the alcoholic writer, as the most obvious example, for not only is he different from what one would usually encounter in Chandler鈥檚 stuff, but he could even be said to be a stand-in for the man himself. Chandler鈥檚 own problems with drink are well-documented, but the parallels between him and Wade are not restricted to that. Both are writers, of course, but both are also struggling with their work. Wade considers himself to be a hack [he writes genre novels, historical bodice-rippers] and is tired of conforming to a formula. He even mentions his reliance upon similes, which is something that Marlowe [and by extension Chandler] also relies upon. Yet if he was taking a shot at himself here, I think Chandler is wrong to put himself down; for me, great similes are an art, and he was something of a master [he describes one man as having a face like a collapsed lung, for example]. In any case, it is clear that he felt dissatisfied with the writing process, that he found working within the PI, hard-boiled genre restricting.
To this end, one finds the author experimenting a little. For example, during the Wade storyline one is allowed to read something he wrote while drunk out of his mind, which turns out to be a strange, stream-of-consciousness self-pitying ramble reminiscent of Gass鈥� The Tunnel or Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry鈥檚 great masterpiece. In fact, all the Wade chapters reminded me of Lowry, and that is a big compliment. This is not to say, however, that there isn鈥檛 any of the dumb fun I mentioned earlier. There are still dames, and femme fatales; there are murders and mysteries; there are crooks and hoodlums; and there are plenty of great one-liners, and square-jawed, big-balled machismo. It is simply that these familiar, well-worn things run alongside broader, more satisfying existential, moral concerns, while also delivering characters that we feel as though he get to know and care about.
Having said all this, it would be remiss of me to finish this review without mentioning some of the book鈥檚 less successful aspects, because it is certainly not flawless. It is episodic, and the structure is pretty poor, but then structure was never Chandler鈥檚 strong point. Nor was plot, which, here and elsewhere, is plodding and anti-climatic [although I think that is less of a problem with this particular novel]. A bigger issue, however, is the ending. Indeed, it would be a service to the author to quit about ten pages before the finish line, because the ultimate twist, the reveal [quite literally] is more than a bit silly. It is such a shame that the book ends in disappointment [for the reader and for Marlowe, I guess], because what precedes those final few pages is fantastic. In any case, The Long Goodbye is fit to stand beside any novel you care to name; it is a Shakespearean tragedy, with a two-day hangover and old lipstick smears on its pillow.
And everything pointed to Tom outlasting every one of us. You didn鈥檛 talk about it. You just knew. Only a fool would have thought otherwise. Yeah, Tom made fools of us all. He didn鈥檛 dance in clubs, and so you thought he was shy, standing off by himself most of the evening. He made comments about his appearance, and you credited him with a dry, deprecating sense of humour. He didn鈥檛 do drugs, didn鈥檛 take nameless girls home, and you didn鈥檛 judge, you admired him for it. What a sensible guy. If only we could be like him.
Yet sometimes I would wonder. And in my wisdom would take Tom for a drink. It is all I knew how to do. I hoped that would help somehow, that he would see it for what it was: an inadequate but heartfelt gesture of solidarity or empathy. I didn鈥檛 know what he was really thinking. You didn鈥檛 ask; he didn鈥檛 tell. That is just the way it was. And all the while he carried on slipping. A little at a time; almost imperceptibly. Until one day he was gone. The guy we thought would go places, did. And he didn鈥檛 come back.
I think about those times a lot. About Tom in particular. Mop-haired Tom, so unassuming. If his name ever now comes up people like to say his situation was hopeless. That is their comfort blanket. That he couldn鈥檛 deal with the things that were bothering him, and he couldn鈥檛 have been saved. I guess it makes them feel better to think that way. All I know is that whatever he was up against, whatever he was grappling with, he lost. That no longer surprises me. Life is a dirty fighter, I鈥檝e found. Of course, I wish I could have done more. I wish I had. It hurts to know I failed him. Maybe there is nothing I could have done. Some people are not made to endure. But futile effort is like a shot of whisky, it can calm the nerves.
Raymond Chandler once wrote that to say goodbye is to die a little. Well, I never even got to say goodbye. It was a surprise to me that reading The Long Goodbye brought all this back up. It is not something I had expected. I was ready for wise-cracking PI鈥檚, sultry dames, tough guys, and all-round dumb fun, but I wasn鈥檛 prepared to be so moved, to have some of my personal sore spots fingered so aggressively. I guess guilt is like a blood stain, it takes a long time to fade. But I don鈥檛 want to give the impression that the book is only worthwhile as a kind of Proustian madeleine. The truth is that many of the characters 鈥� including Eileen Wade, strangely enough 鈥� got to me on their own terms, just like they got to Philip Marlowe. And the credit for that goes to the author.
鈥淭he tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me.鈥�
The novel centres around the lives, and deaths, of two men, Terry Lennox and Roger Wade. As introductions go, Terry鈥檚 is one of the best. Marlowe first encounters the man hanging out of a Rolls, blind-drunk. Also in the car is his beautiful ex-wife. Immediately one gets a sense of each character鈥檚 personality, or role-to-be in the novel. The ex-wife is hard-nosed, unsympathetic, dispensable; Marlowe is, against his better judgement, and for no personal gain, drawn to Lennox and wants to help him; and Terry is vulnerable, in need of help, and likely to bring in his wake a whole lot of trouble. One understands very quickly that he is one of life鈥檚 perennial losers [a word I use without any negative connotation].
Lennox鈥檚 physical appearance is also significant. He鈥檚 a young man with a shock of white hair and comprehensive scarring on his face [which a doctor has attempted to fix with plastic surgery]. The scars were picked up during the war [and this is also significant, but I鈥檒l touch upon that later]; they act within the novel as a physical representation of his emotional, inner life. Lennox is, both emotionally and physically, damaged goods. Marlowe isn鈥檛 in much better condition himself. He鈥檚 getting older [he鈥檚 42], wearier. His wise-cracks, which readers seem to so cherish, struck me as angrier, or more bitter than usual, rather than admirable bravado or swagger.
[Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe, in Robert Altman鈥檚 film version of the book]
What ties Marlowe and Lennox together is that both are, essentially, alone and feeling it. They drift towards each other out of a pretty basic human desire for contact or friendship. It is worth noting that Marlowe doesn鈥檛 know why he cares about Lennox. The men do not share interests, they do not really talk to each other all that much, but they could be said to need each other. At the beginning Terry is described by his ex-wife as 鈥榓 lost dog,鈥� which is apt, but that phrase could also be applied to Marlowe too; in fact, it could be applied to every character in the book. It is interesting that the focus throughout is on moneyed people, privileged people; Chandler seems to be at pains to point out that being flush doesn鈥檛 stop you from fucking up, or getting sad. Indeed, The Long Goodbye is a terribly sad book, bleak even; its overriding message is that, as a result of two wars, the world is quickly going down the toilet, that humanity is starting to collapse under the weight of its own faeces. The wars, Chandler suggests, have taken our innocence, and left us worn-out, seedy, cynical and self-obsessed.
I鈥檝e read elsewhere that Chandler intended for The Long Goodbye to be different from his other books. Apparently, he did not set out to write a Marlowe novel, but eventually lost his nerve. Wanting to ditch his famous narrator would indicate that the author was aching to spread his proverbial wings, was perhaps gunning for something more personal and with more depth. If that is so, then one might look to Roger Wade, the alcoholic writer, as the most obvious example, for not only is he different from what one would usually encounter in Chandler鈥檚 stuff, but he could even be said to be a stand-in for the man himself. Chandler鈥檚 own problems with drink are well-documented, but the parallels between him and Wade are not restricted to that. Both are writers, of course, but both are also struggling with their work. Wade considers himself to be a hack [he writes genre novels, historical bodice-rippers] and is tired of conforming to a formula. He even mentions his reliance upon similes, which is something that Marlowe [and by extension Chandler] also relies upon. Yet if he was taking a shot at himself here, I think Chandler is wrong to put himself down; for me, great similes are an art, and he was something of a master [he describes one man as having a face like a collapsed lung, for example]. In any case, it is clear that he felt dissatisfied with the writing process, that he found working within the PI, hard-boiled genre restricting.
鈥淎 man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can鈥檛 predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.鈥�
To this end, one finds the author experimenting a little. For example, during the Wade storyline one is allowed to read something he wrote while drunk out of his mind, which turns out to be a strange, stream-of-consciousness self-pitying ramble reminiscent of Gass鈥� The Tunnel or Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry鈥檚 great masterpiece. In fact, all the Wade chapters reminded me of Lowry, and that is a big compliment. This is not to say, however, that there isn鈥檛 any of the dumb fun I mentioned earlier. There are still dames, and femme fatales; there are murders and mysteries; there are crooks and hoodlums; and there are plenty of great one-liners, and square-jawed, big-balled machismo. It is simply that these familiar, well-worn things run alongside broader, more satisfying existential, moral concerns, while also delivering characters that we feel as though he get to know and care about.
Having said all this, it would be remiss of me to finish this review without mentioning some of the book鈥檚 less successful aspects, because it is certainly not flawless. It is episodic, and the structure is pretty poor, but then structure was never Chandler鈥檚 strong point. Nor was plot, which, here and elsewhere, is plodding and anti-climatic [although I think that is less of a problem with this particular novel]. A bigger issue, however, is the ending. Indeed, it would be a service to the author to quit about ten pages before the finish line, because the ultimate twist, the reveal [quite literally] is more than a bit silly. It is such a shame that the book ends in disappointment [for the reader and for Marlowe, I guess], because what precedes those final few pages is fantastic. In any case, The Long Goodbye is fit to stand beside any novel you care to name; it is a Shakespearean tragedy, with a two-day hangover and old lipstick smears on its pillow.
February 5, 2022
I was a little underwhelmed by The Big Sleep but liked it well enough that I thought I might over the course of a few years read all the Marlowe mysteries in order. But when late last year a friend of mine read The Long Goodbye, the sixth Marlowe mystery, and gave it a rare (for him) five stars, it occurred to me that civilization might very well collapse before I got a chance to read books #2-5, and at that point the pages of The Long Goodbye would be needed as kindling to warm the intrepid band of survivors I'd no doubt be a part of. I'd known for at least a couple of years that this book was going to be great, so why not just read it?
The plot isn't quite as difficult to follow as that of The Big Sleep, and yet there's a very elusive quality to this novel. In an early passage, as Marlowe sits in a bar waiting for a client and pitilessly observing the foibles of human nature (one of his favorite hobbies), he notices a man sitting and talking the bartender's ear off:
He wanted to talk and he couldn't have stopped even if he hadn't really wanted to talk...you knew that he got up on the bottle and only let go of it when he fell asleep at night. He would be like that for the rest of his life and that was what his life was. You would never know how he got that way because even if he told you it would not be the truth. A distorted memory of the truth as he knew it. There is a sad man like that in every quiet bar in the world.
And that's the case for most of the characters in the novel, as well. Terry doesn't know if he really killed Sylvia. Roger Wade doesn't know why he can't write anymore. The reader doesn't know if Eileen was really in love with a sailor who disappeared in Norway during the war (and doesn't know if Eileen really knows), and Marlowe doesn't know why he's so fond of Terry. But even these are just the most obvious questions, the plot points that a reader expects resolution to. What contributes to the unique atmosphere of this book, I think, is that Chandler is always hinting at something deeper.
This is very much a postwar novel, as well. We always hear that the 50s were a time of optimism and affluence in America, but Marlowe is preoccupied with the portents of a new world that's coming into being, a world of mass advertising and consumerism in which organized crime is "just the dirty side of the sharp dollar", and where the wealthy enjoy "one long suntanned hangover." Terry proposes the existence of this world to Marlowe, early on:
"Randy doesn't bother. In Las Vegas he's a legitimate businessman. You look him up next time you're there. He'll be your pal."
"Not too likely. I don't like hoodlums."
"That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it."
I guess it's not surprising to read that Chandler started writing after he lost his job in the Depression, because he writes like someone completely disillusioned with America. Not disillusioned however because of having lost, but because of the hollowness of the game itself. Sylvia's father Harlan Potter is an especially fascinating character in this respect, Marlowe at one point flippantly summing up the man's perspective- "You don't like the way the world is going so you use what power you have to close off a private corner to live in as near as possible to the way you remember people lived fifty years ago before the age of mass production. You've got a hundred million dollars and all it has bought you is a pain in the neck"- as well as the alcoholic writer Roger Wade, who's miserable despite all the money he's made on his popular sex-and-swordplay novels.
Chandler is also one of those rare writers who's able to combine profound depth of character and theme with a truly compelling plot. As I mentioned, I didn't find it as ungraspable as that of The Big Sleep, in fact I'm pretty certain I was able to follow it (having seen the Altman movie twice definitely helped, even though there are significant differences), but its complexity and precision coexist with its ambiguity- ambiguity not so much in terms of what happens, but why it happens. The greatest mysteries lie within ourselves. Another reviewer mentioned that they found Marlowe's passivity in this novel strange. But the novel is stranger than that, it's almost as if this entire story sort of happens to Marlowe, almost as if Sylvia's killer wants to be caught.
Furthermore, if Marlowe hadn't liked Terry enough to try to help him, there might not have been any story at all. Or it wouldn't have involved Marlowe, anyway. In other words, it all hinges on an impulse that even he doesn't understand. Their friendship reminded me somewhat of The Great Gatsby, although Marlowe never envies or mythologizes Terry in the way that Nick initially does Gatsby. Some might consider it a flaw that what Marlowe sees in Terry is never made explicit. But I think we know enough to speculate. Terry lives among the wealthy, sure, but deep down he despises it and despises them; Marlowe recognizes Terry as someone who's been changed forever by the war, a "moral defeatist" who can now live in any way, under any code of morality, as long as he's comfortable. Seems to me that Marlowe is a crusader at heart (it surprised me to realize this, especially given the way Elliott Gould plays him throughout most of the movie), and he's responding to someone who could have been an ally, should have been, but who no longer has the ability to care.
That's a theory, anyway. On the other hand, sometimes friendship is a mystery. And as much as I love the Altman film, the one thing that I think it's missing, that Chandler's novel depicts so movingly, is that feeling of having a friend who's doomed, who might even have done something terrible, but still you can't help but love him. As Marlowe thinks, "He had been a man it was impossible to dislike. How many do you meet in a lifetime that you can say that about?"
February 22, 2020
The Long Goodbye
"The Long Goodbye" is the sixth novel in Chandler's Philip Marlowe universe, written some years after Chandler's other Marlowe novels and at a time when Chandler was going through a rough patch. "The Long Goodbye" is a large departure in some measures from the other Marlowe novels and has a different feel and rhythm to it altogether. Gone is the frenetic pace, the snappy dialogue, the quick pulling it all together. There is a certain melancholy, a wistfulness, to this one. And, it's more personal to Marlowe as he's emotionally involved with all the players. There are no more caricatures, no more typecasts. These are all characters developed slowly over a long novel. And of course the question is how well do you really know someone. Do you know what really makes them tick?
"The Long Goodbye" is the sixth novel in Chandler's Philip Marlowe universe, written some years after Chandler's other Marlowe novels and at a time when Chandler was going through a rough patch. "The Long Goodbye" is a large departure in some measures from the other Marlowe novels and has a different feel and rhythm to it altogether. Gone is the frenetic pace, the snappy dialogue, the quick pulling it all together. There is a certain melancholy, a wistfulness, to this one. And, it's more personal to Marlowe as he's emotionally involved with all the players. There are no more caricatures, no more typecasts. These are all characters developed slowly over a long novel. And of course the question is how well do you really know someone. Do you know what really makes them tick?
June 2, 2023
鈥淚鈥檝e had some rather strange experiences in this house. Guns going off in the night. Drunks lying out on the front lawn and doctors coming who won鈥檛 do anything. Lovely women wrapping their arms around me and talking as if they thought I was someone else. Mexican house boys throwing knives. It鈥檚 a pity about that gun but you don鈥檛 really love your husband do you?鈥�
Private investigator Philip Marlowe has developed a tenuous friendship with the alcoholic and terribly scarred Terry Lennox. When Terry鈥檚 millionaire wife turns up dead, Marlowe reluctantly helps Terry run away. Marlowe鈥檚 belief in Terry鈥檚 innocence causes him to become involved with 3 terrible marriages, a drunken author, the powerful father of the dead wife, some gangsters, and the police who just won鈥檛 stop bringing Marlowe in for questioning. Good noir complicated plot and some social commentary. I loved the ending.
Private investigator Philip Marlowe has developed a tenuous friendship with the alcoholic and terribly scarred Terry Lennox. When Terry鈥檚 millionaire wife turns up dead, Marlowe reluctantly helps Terry run away. Marlowe鈥檚 belief in Terry鈥檚 innocence causes him to become involved with 3 terrible marriages, a drunken author, the powerful father of the dead wife, some gangsters, and the police who just won鈥檛 stop bringing Marlowe in for questioning. Good noir complicated plot and some social commentary. I loved the ending.
June 13, 2017
It is generally agreed that The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler鈥檚 penultimate novel, is his final masterpiece. A single reading easily affirms that. A rereading, which brings with it a foreknowledge of events and the ability to consider all its far-reaching elements collectively, creates a corollary to that longstanding assertion: yes it is a classic--but it should not have been. There are several structural flaws, though each can be quelled with the same irrefutable response. For example: the book opens with several chapters dedicated to Terry Lenox--a drunk Phillip Marlowe helps and befriends--without anything of significance or anything of much interest happening; why should we, the reader, stick around for this? The answer: It鈥檚 Chandler and it鈥檚 Marlowe. When something finally happens and after its immediate consequences are faced, we move on to another case--an actual case--with no connection to Lenox or anything that had come before; why should we believe this book will end up with anything resembling a coherent story? It鈥檚 Chandler and it鈥檚 Marlowe. And after completing the second case almost immediately--the locating and retrieving of Roger Wade, an alcoholic writer who disappeared during a bender--the people in and around said writer keep dragging Marlowe back into their lives for no apparent reason; why should we believe there鈥檚 going to be some actual detecting in what is supposed to be a private detective novel? It鈥檚 Chandler and it鈥檚 Marlowe.
The Marlowe part of the answer is important. It鈥檚 the same reason a decade later John D. MacDonald created a character named Travis McGee, through whom he could comment on cultural and environmental matters. Marlowe is as self-aware as he is aware of the world around him, a character to whom social commentary comes naturally, the perfect vehicle for Chandler鈥檚 purposes. One of the ironies of The Long Goodbye is that Chandler puts most of his observations into the mouths of other characters. That would be a problem if Phillip Marlowe were merely a mouthpiece. At his core he is, as he has always been, the moral center of any situation, any group, any environment. It鈥檚 that essential, unwavering characteristic that allows a single character to elevate what should have been an uneven and disjointed novel.
I chose to reread The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye back-to-back because cited her own experience in doing so in an introduction to Reed Farrel Coleman鈥檚 (Busted Flush Press, 2008). She used Marlowe as a yardstick against which to measure the darkness of the overarching journey of Coleman鈥檚 Moe Prager--and, yes, there is some of that present in the 14 years between the two Chandler novels. The most obvious example here is an instance where Marlowe lets himself be put in a torturous situation that seemed avoidable. And yet when it comes to the subject of darkness I am drawn more to Bernie Ohls, Marlowe鈥檚 only friend in The Big Sleep; the only other honest person in that book, certainly the only honest cop. In The Long Goodbye Bernie Ohls is still fighting the fight but it鈥檚 no longer the good fight. He鈥檚 made compromises along the way, compromises Marlowe could never make. The two men contrast Chandler鈥檚 most famous quote: 鈥淒own these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.鈥� Marlowe, even after being engulfed by the nastiness of The Big Sleep, is still a man of honor. Bernie Ohls could not remain untarnished. And he is aware of it on some level as he stands next to Marlowe. Just as Chandler鈥檚 imitators are aware that they have also fallen short, perhaps because they too often fail to realize that the mean streets in question are almost never literal. Their failure was inevitable. Is there any doubt as to why?
It鈥檚 Chandler and it鈥檚 Marlowe.
The Marlowe part of the answer is important. It鈥檚 the same reason a decade later John D. MacDonald created a character named Travis McGee, through whom he could comment on cultural and environmental matters. Marlowe is as self-aware as he is aware of the world around him, a character to whom social commentary comes naturally, the perfect vehicle for Chandler鈥檚 purposes. One of the ironies of The Long Goodbye is that Chandler puts most of his observations into the mouths of other characters. That would be a problem if Phillip Marlowe were merely a mouthpiece. At his core he is, as he has always been, the moral center of any situation, any group, any environment. It鈥檚 that essential, unwavering characteristic that allows a single character to elevate what should have been an uneven and disjointed novel.
I chose to reread The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye back-to-back because cited her own experience in doing so in an introduction to Reed Farrel Coleman鈥檚 (Busted Flush Press, 2008). She used Marlowe as a yardstick against which to measure the darkness of the overarching journey of Coleman鈥檚 Moe Prager--and, yes, there is some of that present in the 14 years between the two Chandler novels. The most obvious example here is an instance where Marlowe lets himself be put in a torturous situation that seemed avoidable. And yet when it comes to the subject of darkness I am drawn more to Bernie Ohls, Marlowe鈥檚 only friend in The Big Sleep; the only other honest person in that book, certainly the only honest cop. In The Long Goodbye Bernie Ohls is still fighting the fight but it鈥檚 no longer the good fight. He鈥檚 made compromises along the way, compromises Marlowe could never make. The two men contrast Chandler鈥檚 most famous quote: 鈥淒own these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.鈥� Marlowe, even after being engulfed by the nastiness of The Big Sleep, is still a man of honor. Bernie Ohls could not remain untarnished. And he is aware of it on some level as he stands next to Marlowe. Just as Chandler鈥檚 imitators are aware that they have also fallen short, perhaps because they too often fail to realize that the mean streets in question are almost never literal. Their failure was inevitable. Is there any doubt as to why?
It鈥檚 Chandler and it鈥檚 Marlowe.
November 12, 2019
Queer Eye for the Private Eye
"People have such queer ideas about private detectives."
Raymond Chandler, "The Long Good-Bye" (page 69)
Kiss Me Goodbye (An Ode to Philip Marlowe and Terry Lennox)
[Apologies to Martin Fry and Christopher Marlowe]
I never promised you eternity
I never meant to be unkind
All I gave, you returned to me
Now love's the last thing on your mind.
I never promised you a miracle
What you desired was a guarantee.
This song鈥檚 not meant to be satirical
Our love was just a carnal parody.
Nothing in this world's invincible
No one's heart is made of stone
Now I know I'm yours in principle
I'm the one thing you'll never own.
It only took a glass or two of bourbon
(Or were they gimlets?) downstairs at Victor鈥檚
No way could our love be that suburban
We held each other like two constrictors.
I can鈥檛 recall what I metaphor
She seemed to be like a simile
You were more queenly than sophomore
Adorned with your silver filigree.
If I promise you infinity
There's so much more to share with you
Did you expect the holy trinity
In all I say and all I do?
Let me tell you this much, man to man,
There鈥檚 no love any greater than this
If you鈥檒l be my star, I鈥檒l be your fan
Make me immortal with just one kiss.
When you left, you were invisible
Although I drove you to the airport
I thought we鈥檇 be indivisible
Even if one of us had been caught.
It's not emotional extravagance
We said farewell a thousand times
Why pretend there'll be a second chance
Unless this last kiss changes your mind?
If you can live your life without me
Turn and walk away
Minutes turn to hours
Hours turn to days
If you can't stand a single moment
Then go but kiss me goodbye.
SOUNDTRACK:
"People have such queer ideas about private detectives."
Raymond Chandler, "The Long Good-Bye" (page 69)
Kiss Me Goodbye (An Ode to Philip Marlowe and Terry Lennox)
[Apologies to Martin Fry and Christopher Marlowe]
I never promised you eternity
I never meant to be unkind
All I gave, you returned to me
Now love's the last thing on your mind.
I never promised you a miracle
What you desired was a guarantee.
This song鈥檚 not meant to be satirical
Our love was just a carnal parody.
Nothing in this world's invincible
No one's heart is made of stone
Now I know I'm yours in principle
I'm the one thing you'll never own.
It only took a glass or two of bourbon
(Or were they gimlets?) downstairs at Victor鈥檚
No way could our love be that suburban
We held each other like two constrictors.
I can鈥檛 recall what I metaphor
She seemed to be like a simile
You were more queenly than sophomore
Adorned with your silver filigree.
If I promise you infinity
There's so much more to share with you
Did you expect the holy trinity
In all I say and all I do?
Let me tell you this much, man to man,
There鈥檚 no love any greater than this
If you鈥檒l be my star, I鈥檒l be your fan
Make me immortal with just one kiss.
When you left, you were invisible
Although I drove you to the airport
I thought we鈥檇 be indivisible
Even if one of us had been caught.
It's not emotional extravagance
We said farewell a thousand times
Why pretend there'll be a second chance
Unless this last kiss changes your mind?
If you can live your life without me
Turn and walk away
Minutes turn to hours
Hours turn to days
If you can't stand a single moment
Then go but kiss me goodbye.
SOUNDTRACK:
April 8, 2008
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)
So are you familiar already with the "One Book One Chicago" (OBOC) program? We're not the first city to do it (in fact, we stole the idea from Seattle), but are definitely now the largest city in America to do so; basically, roughly three or four times a year the Mayor's Office and the public library system choose an important and popular book (usually a 20th-century novel), stock the various libraries around the city with thousands of extra copies, host a whole series of events around the city tied to the book itself (often co-sponsored by various creative and corporate organizations), and otherwise do as much as possible to convince the entire city of Chicago to read the book all at once, all in the same thirty-day period. And when it works, it really is quite the great little experience; imagine walking around a city of four million people and constantly running across others reading the same exact book you're reading, in cafes and on the train and at discussion clubs and while waiting in line at the supermarket, and all the fun little intelligent conversations such a thing inspires among complete strangers.
And the latest OBOC choice (their fourteenth) is a real doozy, too; it's The Long Goodbye by , the last great novel by one of the most truly American writers our country has ever seen, a book both popular with the mainstream and historically important to the world of arts and letters. And indeed, Chandler is so distinctly an American artist precisely because he both helped invent and perfect a truly American form of the arts, so-called "detective" or "crime" or "pulp" fiction, a genre which first gained popularity in the rough-and-tumble first half of the 20th century and is by now an international phenomenon and multi-billion-dollar industry. It's the perfect genre for Americans to have latched onto, fans say, because crime fiction examines the exact dark side of the coin which pays for the American Dream as well; this idea of a truly market-driven, truly free society, whereby busting your hump and believing in yourself can legitimately get you ahead of all the other schmucks of the world, whether that's through noble activities or criminal ones. No one is better suited than an American, the theory goes, to see the complex symbiotic nature of both these options -- the hidden dangers of capitalism, the dark seductions of crime -- and thus it is that this style of fiction is one that Americans are distinctly known for.
Now, that said, The Long Goodbye is also atypical of the usual type of work Chandler first got famous for; another detective tale to be sure, starring his usual standby antihero Philip Marlowe, but this time a wearier and more socially-conscious man than before, in a tale written late in Chandler's life (in fact, just six years before his premature death). Because that's an important thing to know about Chandler, especially to understand the mystique surrounding his work and enduring popularity, is that he was a bit of a rough-and-tumble fellow himself, although unusually so; a pipe-smoking, chess-studying, erudite nerd who was nonetheless a heavy boozer and womanizer, someone who not only managed to snag a lucrative corporate executive job in the middle of the Great Depression but also lose it because of showing up to work drunk too many times in a row. Chandler had never meant to be a full-time writer, sorta stumbled into it ass-backwards because of his vices, and was always very critical of the other things going on in his industry and the other people being published; it's because of all these things, fans claim, that Chandler writes in such a unique and distinctive style, and the fact that such stories got published at the exact moment in history they did that ended up making him so popular.
Because that's the other thing to understand about Chandler if you don't already, that along with a handful of other authors, he helped define the "smart pulp fiction" genre of the 1930s, '40s and '50s, the same genre that spawned gangster movies, film noirs and more; so in other words, not just spectacular stories of derring-do among criminal elements, tales of which had already been getting published regularly for the lower classes since Victorian times, but also bringing a slick, Modernist style to the stories, a clean minimalism to the prose inspired by such contemporary "authentic" peers as William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway and more. Reading The Long Goodbye for the first time this week, in fact my first Chandler book ever, I can easily see why people have been going so nuts for his writing style for 75 years now and counting; because Chandler had a natural ability to get it exactly exactly right, to not underwrite his stories even a tiny bit and not overwrite them either, to bump up nearly to the edge of cheesiness at all times but to rarely ever step over. That after all is why literally thousands of pulp-fiction projects have rightly faded into obscurity now over the last half-century, but with writers like Chandler still being chosen for programs like OBOC; because Chandler had a born mastery over the subtleties of it all that most other writers before and after him have lacked.
For those who don't know, as mentioned The Long Goodbye concerns a recurring character of Chandler's named Philip Marlowe, a private investigator from whom we now derive many of our stereotypes concerning the subject -- the shabby urban office with the frosted-glass window, the sudden appearance of dangerous dames with gams that just won't quit, the tough-as-nails sad-sack private dick who don't take no guff from nobody no how. Ugh, see how easy it is to fall into cheesy Chandleresque mannerisms? And this is the flipside of reading Chandler anymore, of course, something you need to actively work against while reading his books if you want any chance of deeply enjoying them; it's imperative that you forget all the cultural stereotypes and cliches that have come from the world of pulp fiction, that you not immediately think of a tough-talking Humphrey Bogart while reading this but rather approach it as a contemporary reader in the 1950s would, one who has no preconceptions about what they're getting into. Because in many ways, a trench-coated tough-talking Bogart type is bad casting when it came to the Marlowe that Chandler originally presented to the public; his Marlowe is a lot more like the author himself, a quiet intellectual who mostly enjoyed staying at home, who talked in the clipped and gruff way he did merely because he was a borderline sociopath and nihilist, who wanted as little to do with the rest of humanity as possible.
Because man, the world that Chandler paints in The Long Goodbye is certainly not the most pleasant or optimistic one you'll ever come across; a world full of spoiled, weak little hairless apes, running around flinging their own excrement at each other and succumbing to their basest vices at the slightest provocation. And indeed, this is one of the other things this particular novel is known for, much more so than any of the other novels of Chandler's career, as being one of the first truly complex and brutally honest looks at the entire subject of alcoholism, a tortured look at the subject from an active addict who bitterly blames the moral weakness of the alcoholics as much as the disease itself. In Chandler's world, the majority of bad things that happen to people happen because of those people's own actions and attitudes; because they are petty, because they are weak, because they are greedy, because they are spineless. Sure, occasionally a person might get framed for a murder they didn't actually commit, or other such unfair crime; but ultimately that person has been guilty of countless other sins in the past for which they were never caught, making it impossible to exactly feel bad for them when it comes to the one particular trumped-up charge.
It's a delicious milieu that Chandler creates, but for sure a bleak one, a remorseless universe that like I said is punctuated by this sparkling dialogue that at all times shines; it's very easy to see after reading this why his work caught on so dramatically in the first place, and why organizations like the Chicago Public Library are still finding it so important to bring him to people's attention. And unlike a lot of other so-called "Important Historical Work," actually reading through The Long Goodbye never feels like some dated chore; I mean, yes, as mentioned, the dialogue has a tendency to border on cheesy, but usually stays on the good side of that line as long as you're not reading along out loud in a wiseguy New York accent. (And by the way, to see an excellent example of how to present Chandleresque dialogue in a non-cheesy way, please see my review of the truly brilliant 2005 Rian Johnson contemporary high-school noir Brick.) It's a book that not only delivers a simple lurid entertainment, but also gets you thinking about a whole variety of deeper topics for days and weeks afterwards; I'm glad the OBOC people picked it for the program, and I'm looking forward to attending the various Chandler-related events going on around the city throughout the rest of April. I encourage you to pick up a copy as well, if you haven't already.
So are you familiar already with the "One Book One Chicago" (OBOC) program? We're not the first city to do it (in fact, we stole the idea from Seattle), but are definitely now the largest city in America to do so; basically, roughly three or four times a year the Mayor's Office and the public library system choose an important and popular book (usually a 20th-century novel), stock the various libraries around the city with thousands of extra copies, host a whole series of events around the city tied to the book itself (often co-sponsored by various creative and corporate organizations), and otherwise do as much as possible to convince the entire city of Chicago to read the book all at once, all in the same thirty-day period. And when it works, it really is quite the great little experience; imagine walking around a city of four million people and constantly running across others reading the same exact book you're reading, in cafes and on the train and at discussion clubs and while waiting in line at the supermarket, and all the fun little intelligent conversations such a thing inspires among complete strangers.
And the latest OBOC choice (their fourteenth) is a real doozy, too; it's The Long Goodbye by , the last great novel by one of the most truly American writers our country has ever seen, a book both popular with the mainstream and historically important to the world of arts and letters. And indeed, Chandler is so distinctly an American artist precisely because he both helped invent and perfect a truly American form of the arts, so-called "detective" or "crime" or "pulp" fiction, a genre which first gained popularity in the rough-and-tumble first half of the 20th century and is by now an international phenomenon and multi-billion-dollar industry. It's the perfect genre for Americans to have latched onto, fans say, because crime fiction examines the exact dark side of the coin which pays for the American Dream as well; this idea of a truly market-driven, truly free society, whereby busting your hump and believing in yourself can legitimately get you ahead of all the other schmucks of the world, whether that's through noble activities or criminal ones. No one is better suited than an American, the theory goes, to see the complex symbiotic nature of both these options -- the hidden dangers of capitalism, the dark seductions of crime -- and thus it is that this style of fiction is one that Americans are distinctly known for.
Now, that said, The Long Goodbye is also atypical of the usual type of work Chandler first got famous for; another detective tale to be sure, starring his usual standby antihero Philip Marlowe, but this time a wearier and more socially-conscious man than before, in a tale written late in Chandler's life (in fact, just six years before his premature death). Because that's an important thing to know about Chandler, especially to understand the mystique surrounding his work and enduring popularity, is that he was a bit of a rough-and-tumble fellow himself, although unusually so; a pipe-smoking, chess-studying, erudite nerd who was nonetheless a heavy boozer and womanizer, someone who not only managed to snag a lucrative corporate executive job in the middle of the Great Depression but also lose it because of showing up to work drunk too many times in a row. Chandler had never meant to be a full-time writer, sorta stumbled into it ass-backwards because of his vices, and was always very critical of the other things going on in his industry and the other people being published; it's because of all these things, fans claim, that Chandler writes in such a unique and distinctive style, and the fact that such stories got published at the exact moment in history they did that ended up making him so popular.
Because that's the other thing to understand about Chandler if you don't already, that along with a handful of other authors, he helped define the "smart pulp fiction" genre of the 1930s, '40s and '50s, the same genre that spawned gangster movies, film noirs and more; so in other words, not just spectacular stories of derring-do among criminal elements, tales of which had already been getting published regularly for the lower classes since Victorian times, but also bringing a slick, Modernist style to the stories, a clean minimalism to the prose inspired by such contemporary "authentic" peers as William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway and more. Reading The Long Goodbye for the first time this week, in fact my first Chandler book ever, I can easily see why people have been going so nuts for his writing style for 75 years now and counting; because Chandler had a natural ability to get it exactly exactly right, to not underwrite his stories even a tiny bit and not overwrite them either, to bump up nearly to the edge of cheesiness at all times but to rarely ever step over. That after all is why literally thousands of pulp-fiction projects have rightly faded into obscurity now over the last half-century, but with writers like Chandler still being chosen for programs like OBOC; because Chandler had a born mastery over the subtleties of it all that most other writers before and after him have lacked.
For those who don't know, as mentioned The Long Goodbye concerns a recurring character of Chandler's named Philip Marlowe, a private investigator from whom we now derive many of our stereotypes concerning the subject -- the shabby urban office with the frosted-glass window, the sudden appearance of dangerous dames with gams that just won't quit, the tough-as-nails sad-sack private dick who don't take no guff from nobody no how. Ugh, see how easy it is to fall into cheesy Chandleresque mannerisms? And this is the flipside of reading Chandler anymore, of course, something you need to actively work against while reading his books if you want any chance of deeply enjoying them; it's imperative that you forget all the cultural stereotypes and cliches that have come from the world of pulp fiction, that you not immediately think of a tough-talking Humphrey Bogart while reading this but rather approach it as a contemporary reader in the 1950s would, one who has no preconceptions about what they're getting into. Because in many ways, a trench-coated tough-talking Bogart type is bad casting when it came to the Marlowe that Chandler originally presented to the public; his Marlowe is a lot more like the author himself, a quiet intellectual who mostly enjoyed staying at home, who talked in the clipped and gruff way he did merely because he was a borderline sociopath and nihilist, who wanted as little to do with the rest of humanity as possible.
Because man, the world that Chandler paints in The Long Goodbye is certainly not the most pleasant or optimistic one you'll ever come across; a world full of spoiled, weak little hairless apes, running around flinging their own excrement at each other and succumbing to their basest vices at the slightest provocation. And indeed, this is one of the other things this particular novel is known for, much more so than any of the other novels of Chandler's career, as being one of the first truly complex and brutally honest looks at the entire subject of alcoholism, a tortured look at the subject from an active addict who bitterly blames the moral weakness of the alcoholics as much as the disease itself. In Chandler's world, the majority of bad things that happen to people happen because of those people's own actions and attitudes; because they are petty, because they are weak, because they are greedy, because they are spineless. Sure, occasionally a person might get framed for a murder they didn't actually commit, or other such unfair crime; but ultimately that person has been guilty of countless other sins in the past for which they were never caught, making it impossible to exactly feel bad for them when it comes to the one particular trumped-up charge.
It's a delicious milieu that Chandler creates, but for sure a bleak one, a remorseless universe that like I said is punctuated by this sparkling dialogue that at all times shines; it's very easy to see after reading this why his work caught on so dramatically in the first place, and why organizations like the Chicago Public Library are still finding it so important to bring him to people's attention. And unlike a lot of other so-called "Important Historical Work," actually reading through The Long Goodbye never feels like some dated chore; I mean, yes, as mentioned, the dialogue has a tendency to border on cheesy, but usually stays on the good side of that line as long as you're not reading along out loud in a wiseguy New York accent. (And by the way, to see an excellent example of how to present Chandleresque dialogue in a non-cheesy way, please see my review of the truly brilliant 2005 Rian Johnson contemporary high-school noir Brick.) It's a book that not only delivers a simple lurid entertainment, but also gets you thinking about a whole variety of deeper topics for days and weeks afterwards; I'm glad the OBOC people picked it for the program, and I'm looking forward to attending the various Chandler-related events going on around the city throughout the rest of April. I encourage you to pick up a copy as well, if you haven't already.
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