I read this book because it is thought of as one of the classics, but for me it was very dated.
Full of racist terminology that was probably accepted back in the 1930's when the book was written.
That apart I still found the style dated when compared with the modern contemporaries.

Reading Chandler is just so darned enjoyable ! From novel to novel, Marlowe is completely consistent. Once you know him you can anticipate his self-aimed sarcasm.

Farewell, My Lovely was Chandler's second novel and came out in 1940. Marlowe witnesses the fury of a huge, loudly dressed man who just got out of prison and is looking for his girlfriend. Marlowe is then paid by an eccentric man to accompany him to a potentially dangerous meeting where money will be turned over to thieves who stole a valuable jade necklace, to secure its return. At the desolate nighttime rendezvous site, Marlowe wakes up after being cold-cocked and finds his client dead in the grassy dunes. The trail of the ex-con's girlfriend leads Marlowe to a rundown house where he exchanges mostly nonsense with an old woman who eventually spills some interesting tidbits in trade for drinks from his bottle of whisky. The two cases start to merge into one complicated one, and we're off.

I had to go back to the Wikipedia article on Chandler to refresh my memory about the life of this amazing writer. During the Depression he lost his job as an oil company executive - aren't we glad that happened ? It turns out it had less to do with the Depression and more to do with Chandler - alcoholism, frequent absences, overly familiar with women employees, threatened suicide ...

I don't feel Farewell, My Lovely had Chandler's most interesting plot, but the writing is impeccable and it's joy to read. He doesn't rush scenes. He lingers and gives us plenty of juicy details to savor.

Book on CD narrated by Elliott Gould

From the book jacket: Marlow’s about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders and more corruption than your average graveyard.

My reactions
I came late to Chandler’s series about P.I. Philip Marlowe, but I sure am enjoying them now! The action is non-stop, and the characters so vivid they virtually jump off the page. Chandler’s sentences are short and crisp, but he still has time to employ some of the most colorful metaphors and descriptions in the English language. There are plenty of twists in the plot to keep the reader guessing, and Marlowe is a marvelous lead character. I’ll definitely keep reading the series.

Elliott Gould does a fine job of voicing the audio version. He has great pacing and is a marvelous actor. I was a little concerned when I first noticed that he was the voice artist for this book; his voice is distinctive and I thought I would be picturing him throughout the book. But that was not the case at all.

«Πιστεύω πως η κλασική εκπαίδευση σε προστατεύει από την επιτήδευση που έχει κατακλύσει τα σύγχρονα μυθιστορήματα»

Raymond Chandler

Αψεγάδιαστος!

I enjoyed all of the literary gems, didn’t much care for the story.

“I lit my pipe again. It makes you look thoughtful when you are not thinking.”

“You’re not getting a little tight, are you?”
“I’ve been known to be soberer.”

“We got him in the back of the car.”
I looked in the back of the car. It was empty.
“Hell, he ain’t there,” the big one said. “Somebody must of glommed him off. You can’t leave nothing in a unlocked car any more.”

I don’t like to judge people from the past on things like racism; it’s like making fun of the clothes they wore. Different times. But…I also like people who were ahead of their time on these sins of American society. No one, and I mean absolutely no one could accuse Raymond Chandler of being ahead of his time on race relations. They probably had to drag him kicking and screaming into his era from an even worse place.

The plot—if you can call it that—was a total mess from the very beginning. The story unfolds from one chance happening to the next. He just happens to walk out of a barber shop when he sees Moose go ballistic at a club for Blacks.

Moose was wearing some unusual clothes, revealing one of Chandler’s chandlerisms that falls a bit flat, “he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.” As far as chandlerisms go, you win some and you lose many of them. He does better with the very next chandlerism: “His skin was pale and he needed a shave. He would always need a shave.

Next, Marlowe has to babysit someone during a blackmail scheme involving jewelry and some sap gets sapped by a sap, which doesn’t sound too bad, but it is, evidently. He isn’t particularly good at his job and screws up his protection job because the guy who paid him to be his bodyguard ends up dead.

Like they tell you in the Godfather about the gun and the cannelloni, read this for the dialogue, leave the story on the seat.

Raymond Chandler's writing remains the absolute best thing about this book. It lends a lot of character to Philip Marlowe who, in the hands of another writer, wouldn't be nearly so interesting. It's funny reading Chandler and realising that a lot of books I've read before were influenced by him. There's racism and misogyny and it's kind of like a time capsule from times and places I'll never see, but what I read it for is the writing style: the crisp images, the lack of cliche, the precise choice of words. Speaking synaesthetically, it tastes nice.

Somewhere in the middle I lost track of exactly what was happening and why, in between all the different parties and the (rightly) confused parts with Marlowe all drugged up and a bit incoherent. Anne Riordan isn't a bad woman or an unlikeable character, but she doesn't seem to have much point in the plot, either.

It's easy to read, even when you don't really get what's going on. It all comes straight in the end, more or less.

Not as complicated as it seems or as Chandler would like you to believe. And that's a-okay! I love a little private dick action and this is perfectly satisfying!

This story of a thug getting out of prison and trying to find his girl is fairly straightforward, but Raymond Chandler throws a bucketload of red herrings into Farewell, My Lovely in an attempt to throw you, dear reader, off the trail. Stick to the yellow brick road, Dorothy, and you'll figure it all out in short order.

Fresh off The Big Sleep detective Philip Marlowe is at it again in this sequel to that highly popular and well-written mystery. Farewell, My Lovely is an admirable followup, but it would be tough to meet or top one of the best detective novels of all time.

Book two in the Marlowe series marches forward, doing its best to recreate the original with a bevy of interesting characters that are relatively well-drawn for the crime noir genre. All that good, whip-smart, wise-crackin' dialogue you know and love is in place. It's just the plot that's a little out of whack. Chandler attempts to confuse the situation, and generally succeeds, but not in a particularly clever way. It's like a muddied up pond, but a pond nonetheless, so you can swim fairly easily through the murky waters to the other side.

Don't get me wrong, Farewell, My Lovely is still really good reading and any fan of the genre will enjoy it. Just don't expect a masterpiece.

Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

I read 'Farewell, My Lovely' recently & it's my first reading of this second novel by Chandler to feature his private eye, Phillip Marlowe. I've read a couple of Chandler's novels before, most recently, I re-read 'The Big Sleep', which I first read some 30+ years ago. His novels seem to improve with age. The age of the reader, that is. Or at least, that is my experience. More about that later in this review.

Briefly, I'd like to touch on Raymond Chandler's life;

“Chandler was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1888, but spent his early years in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, living with his mother and father near his cousins, aunt (mother's sister) and uncle. After Chandler's family was abandoned by his father, an alcoholic civil engineer who worked for the railway, and to obtain the best possible education for Ray, his mother, originally from Ireland, moved them to London, England in 1900. Another uncle, a successful lawyer in Waterford, Ireland, supported them, while they lived with his maternal grandmother. Chandler was classically educated at Dulwich College, London (a public school whose alumni include the authors P. G. Wodehouse and C. S. Forester). He spent some of his childhood summers in Waterford with his maternal family. He did not go to college, instead spending time in Paris and Munich improving his foreign language skills. In 1907, he was naturalized as a British subject in order to take the civil service examination, which he passed, and then took an Admiralty job, lasting just over a year. His first poem was published during that time. Chandler regained his US citizenship in 1956.”

“In 1917, when the US entered World War I, he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, saw combat in the trenches in France with the Gordon Highlanders, and was undergoing flight training in the fledgling Royal Air Force (RAF) when the war ended.”

Both the above are excerpts from Wikipedia. The full article can be found here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_...

Chandler was 44 years old when wrote his first novel (The Big Sleep), which was published in 1939. His 2nd, 'Farewell, My Lovely' followed in 1940.

The Plot (Farewell, My Lovely);

As with all Raymond Chandler's novels, he sets up the story in the opening sequence. In 'The Big Sleep', it's the unforgettable interview with the elderly General Sternwood. In 'Farewell, My Lovely', it's Marlowe's encounter with Moose Malloy.
"He was a big man, but not much more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck." (Chapter 1, page 1)
Marlowe is investigating a dead end case when he encounters Malloy outside a nightclub his girlfriend used to work in, 8 years previously. Malloy is dressed in ludicrously loud clothing, which together with his size, is what attracts Marlowe's attention. The nightclub has changed hands & is now a “black joint”. Upon entering the nightclub & the chaos which ensues, the reader sees Malloy's rage for the first time.
I didn't feel Chandler's opening was as strong in this novel as 'The Big Sleep'. I felt it was almost a parody of Chandler's style. The over sized Malloy. His loud clothing;

"Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake."

It's a minor thing & didn't detract from my enjoyment of this story, & hey, it's Chandler/Marlowe. Let's not be too picky.

What ensues is a search for Malloy's girlfriend, with Chandler's usual wonderfully evocative prose, and detours in plot, with wonderfully drawn characters & naturally, the atmosphere one expects in a Chandler/ Marlowe novel.

The thing I love about Chandler's work, is even though they're stuffed with lots of descriptive prose, it never intrudes on ones enjoyment of his stories. Quite the contrary. Having said that, Chandler leaves his readers space to use their imaginations. I'm not really sure how he manages that, but it's a testament to his genius that he is able to do what so many authors since have attempted & failed to do. For example; regarding the source of Malloy's rage. Marlowe comes to like Malloy & doesn't consider him to be a killer, even though he is responsible for the deaths of several individuals in the course of the story. Where did this rage come from? Of course Malloy is a fictional character. But I couldn't help wondering, if he were real, how would he come to have this uncontrollable rage? Consider; He's a man-mountain & not particularly bright. Could it be, as a child he was bullied? Did he get to puberty & go through a rapid growth spurt? Was he then able to vent his rage with his increased size, but have little or no control over it? I imagine such a man would be a loner. It would be easy for him to fall into a criminal life, where his intimidating size & relatively low intelligence could be used by others. Fanciful perhaps, but that's my experience.

Some of my favorite quotes from 'Farewell, My Lovely':

"Well, you do get up," she said, wrinkling her nose at the faded red settee, the two odd semi-easy chairs, the net curtains that needed laundering and the boy's size library table with the venerable magazines on it to give the place a professional touch. "I was beginning to think perhaps you worked in bed, like Marcel Proust."

"Who's he?" I put a cigarette in my mouth and stared at her. She looked a little pale and strained, but she looked like a girl who could function under a strain.

"A French writer, a connoisseur in degenerates. You wouldn't know him."
"Tut, tut," I said. "Come into my boudoir."


"The big foreign car drove itself, but I held the wheel for the sake of appearances." (Chapter 9)

"She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket" (Chapter 18)

"I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun." (Chapter 34)

"She's a charming middle age lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she's washed her hair since Coolidge's second term, I'll eat my spare tire, rim and all." (Chapter 6)

"The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building. I sneaked over to the side entrance and pressed a bell and somewhere a set of chimes made a deep mellow sound like church bells. A man in a striped vest and gilt buttons opened the door, bowed, took my hat and was through for the day." (Chapter 18)

"I sat beside her on the yellow leather chesterfield. 'Aren't you a pretty fast worker?' she asked quietly. I didn't answer her. 'Do you do much of this sort of thing?' she asked with a sidelong look. 'Practically none. I'm a Tibetan monk, in my spare time.' 'Only you don't have any spare time." (Chapter 18)

Chandler... smart, conflicted, wry, dry & always a delight to read. I read somewhere that he was considered to be one of America's preeminent writers & the fact he wrote detective novels is almost irrelevant. I can only concur & luckily for fans of Chandler/Marlowe he did write detective novels.

When Chandler wrote his wonderful series of Marlowe novels, he was a mature man of 44, as i stated earlier. He had the maturity of those years & he invested that maturity & those years of experiences (good & bad) into his novels. Something no fresh-faced author can hope to achieve today, i believe.

Did i enjoy 'Farewell, My Lovely' as much as 'The Big Sleep'? No. Did i enjoy 'Farewell, My Lovely' more than most books I've read in the last few years? Hell yes!!
I'm giving this 4 stars, one less than 'The Big Sleep'. But a 4 carat diamond, surely glitters imperceptibly less than a 5 carat diamond.

Good reading!

Με κούρασε λίγο....

Chandler's writing is sometimes so stupendously clever you have to quietly applaud. But his stories and even his characters aren't deep. Although I'm a fan of police procedurals and the detective genre, noir isn't my thing and I struggle with the bottomless references to dames and blondes. I'm bored by the evenings of endless whiskey sours followed by vomitous nights and more sips of whiskey in the morning.

I've learned new slang here: "dinge" was a disparaging and contemptuous term for a black person. A "dinge joint" was a place of entertainment and alcoholic drinks, frequented by black people.

As part of my continuing (very informal) project documenting the use of "nigger" in mainstream white literature - (I feel like 1940 must be getting towards the end of its acceptable usage):

p 14: He came to the bar. "Rise up, nigger," he said softly. (The white Moose Malloy speaking.)

p. 33: "He's loose," I said. "Out of jail. He's wandering with a 45-gun in his hand. He killed a nigger over on Central this morning because he wouldn't tell him where Velma was." (Marlowe speaking.)

p. 87: "When is the inquest of the nigger coming up?" (Marlowe speaking.)

p. 114: "I was with him yesterday - when he killed the nigger over on Central." (Marlowe speaking.)

Other random ethnic disparagement:

p. 121: Through a green gate I saw a Jap gardener at work weeding a huge lawn. He was pulling a piece of weed out of the vast velvet expanse and sneering at it the way Jap gardeners do.

Винаги е удоволствие да четеш Чандлър! Фактът, че не помнех почти нищо от книгата, направи удоволствието още по-голямо. Вярно, преводът на места ми звучеше малко странно, но трябва да се има предвид, че е правен преди почти 40 години. Така или иначе, това е бял кахър. Безапелационна петица!

a powerful follow up to ‘the big sleep’ and possibly even better. i haven’t been able to make up my mind just yet. both are towering achievements (not to mention intimidating as a writer) in detective fiction, but to my mind what chandler accomplished in the big sleep in regards to revealing the despair and depravity of the rich in a way that felt like pulling the curtain back just a tiny bit and not at all liking what you saw. revolting even.

and that’s reading it in 2023. which just shows you the timeless power of good storytelling.

which brings me to ‘farewell my lovely’ — a book which doesn’t have that unifying thematic quality, but what it makes up with in spades is chandler’s new found confidence in his writing ability after his debut. marlowe’s gritty sarcasm has been cranked up to 11, and it’s music to the ears, my friends. makes me want to walk around and answer everyone i know with sardonic replies that cut like a sharp knife, but only a few seconds later when the other person realizes the joke.

just fantastic dialogue all throughout.

and there’s a chapter where marlowe gets drugged and stumbles around trying to get a grip on things, that might be the funniest thing you’ll read all year. i was laughing out loud throughout.

to sum it up: i’m rereading this book as i post this.

that’s how good it is.