This time around Marlowe runs into a drunken writer, a wounded beauty and a lot of headaches. Narrated by Elliot Gould.

MY GRADE: B plus.

Three-ish stars for storytelling that’s complex and layered with reflection and social commentary, on a platform of direct, uncomplicated language and a singular voice that helped define the steely private eye navigating a dark, gritty world.

The powerful writing and, in historical context, the story are certainly worth more than three stars. But for me, the rear view mirror of many decades of shifting context greatly diminishes the effect.

As deft, iconic, and commendable as the writing is, it is of a time and doesn’t necessarily hold up as a contemporary read.

The snappy patter, armor of sarcasm, and hardened world view have been done, and overdone, so much that the real thing, the standard-setter, suffers at this point.

The how-many-varieties-of-tough-guy-can-I-shove-into-a-story approach was surely more appreciated seventy years ago than it is generations later.

This is a classic in the genre that I wanted to experience. So I did and now it’s done. I appreciate Chandler the writer and the writing, and find he’s better left on the shelves of crime fiction history than on my reading list today.

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.

Triste, solitario y final

Il congegno narrativo – coppie scoppiate, ricconi e gansters, omicidi-suicidi, usa-europa-mexico, nuove identità - intrattiene ancora bene nonostante letto oggi sia un po’ scontato, ma questo è inevitabile perché qui siamo in presenza del canone del noir/hard boiled.

E’ Marlowe che ci rimane dentro. Abbastanza duro da navigare tra poliziotti rudi e di pochi scrupoli e pericolosi malavitosi. Cinico al punto giusto per non lasciarsi travolgere dagli eventi. Tenero e malinconico quando inizia o finisce un amore o un’amicizia.

Dal suo rifugio sulle alture di Lauren Canyon osserva la grande LA.
“Laggiù, nella notte intessuta di mille delitti, individui morivano, venivano mutilati, tagliuzzati da schegge di vetro, schiacciati contro i volanti delle automobili o sotto le ruote di pesanti veicoli. Altri individui venivano percossi, derubati, strangolati, violentati e assassinati. Altri individui ancora erano affamati, ammalati, annoiati, disperati, tormentati dalla solitudine, o dal rimorso, o dal terrore, o dallʼira, erano crudeli, febbricitanti, squassati dai singhiozzi. Una città non peggiore delle altre, una città perduta e corrotta e colma di vacuità. Tutto dipende dalla posizione in cui ci si trova, dagli interessi personali. Io non ne avevo alcuno. E me ne infischiavo.”

Frequentatore di bar in penombra e silenziosi, in cerca del dolce stordimento dell’alcool.
“Mi piace gustare adagio il liquore. Il primo sorso tranquillo del pomeriggio in un bar silenzioso... è stupendo.”
Fui dʼaccordo con lui.
“Lʼalcool è come lʼamore,” disse. “Il primo bacio è magico, il secondo intimo, il terzo unʼabitudine. E poi si spoglia la donna.”

Un addio, dopo una notte d’amore ed il rifiuto di una fuga a Parigi.
Ci dicemmo addio. Seguii con lo sguardo il tassì fino a quando non fu scomparso. Salii la rampa di scale, entrai nella camera da letto e disfeci il letto completamente e lo rifeci. Vʼera un lungo capello nero su uno dei cuscini. Vʼera un grumo di piombo nel mio stomaco.
I francesi hanno un modo di dire per situazioni del genere. Quei bastardi hanno un modo di dire per tutto, ed è sempre giusto.
Dirsi addio è un poʼ come morire.”

E l’addio finale all'amico.
“Avete avuto molto da me, Terry. In cambio di un sorriso, e di un cenno del capo e di un saluto fatto con la mano e di qualche minuto di serenità in un bar silenzioso, di quando in quando. È stato bello finché è durato. Arrivederci, amigo. Non vi dico addio. Vi dissi addio quando significava qualcosa. Vi dissi addio in un momento di tristezza e di solitudine, quando sembrava definitivo.”

Sarà anche l’addio di Chandler che dopo aver scritto il suo miglior libro, questo, produrrà poco altro, proverà il grande dolore per la perdita dell’amata moglie, si perderà sempre più nell’abisso dell’alcool e tenterà il suicidio prima di lasciarci qualche anno dopo.


Robert Altman, Nina Van Pallandt, Elliott Gould, nell'omonimo adattamento cinematografico (1973), non proprio fedele.
Sulle note di John Williams (“...It's too late to try When a missed hello Becomes the long goodbye”).

An excellent 6th Philip Marlowe novel, this was excellently put together with an intriguing intricate plot that is bigger in scope and detail than previous Marlowe novels coming in at 450 pages. This moved along in a nice manner with great dialogue and humour which aids the well put together plot. Really enjoyable and highly recommended..

Private investigator Philip Marlowe is 42 years old and does not exercise. His sport is chess yet he does not play against anybody. He just replays games of chess masters and solves chess puzzles. His brushes with danger and death he just narrates matter-of-factly. In one scene a rich, powerful, mean-spirited guy comes to his office. After some tough guy dialogue Marlowe slugs the visitor which made the latter double up in pain while his bodyguard--certainly armed--is just outside. When Marlowe later meets the bodyguard he insults him on his face. Yet they left Marlowe unharmed.

I remember watching an action film. There was a long sequence of running, jumping, fighting, shooting and car chases. Then there was a close-up shot of the handsome face of the same loner-type hero: his face was completely clean, he wasn't even sweating. All throughout the film, even in the scariest situation, his face did not reflect any stress or panic. The most he managed to do was to harden his jaws to reflect grim determination to conquer seemingly impossible odds. Or maybe just to hide his boredom during the film shoot.

Philip Marlowe is such a guy. Calm, stoic, self-assured and fearless. I remember, too, those Arab guys who crashed the planes during 9-11. They accomplished their gruesome task with the same sangfroid as the fictional heroes of films and novels.

Indeed, certitude erases fear completely. Those plane crashers had no doubt that the atomization of their earthly bodies will make them martyrs of the faith and will instantly transport them to Allah's Paradise where they will meet Muhammad with 40 beautiful virgins for each of them ready for distribution. The movie ass-kicking heroes do not sweat or panic because they know, beyond the shadow of doubt, that the director won't kill them no matter how perilous the situation the script puts them in. And Philip Marlowe, like all great characters in fiction, including James Bond himself, knows that in sequel upon sequel, for as long as the books sell, he shall be immortal and indestructible.

Towards the end of this novel, after the crimes had been solved and Marlowe had no more need for macho dialogues, the author finally rewards him naked in bed with a 36-year-old rich, beautiful woman. Then the reader finally realizes that this is not really a detective novel but a religious tract: it teaches that faith works. A firm belief in salvation-no-matter-what can make one live life to the fullest, without fear, and that in the end he shall reap all the pleasures of Paradise.

I found an abridged version,a good thing too as the original length of nearly 400 pages would have tested my patience.

Prior to this,I had watched the movie version of Chandler's The Big Sleep,which despite the presence of Bogart and Bacall wasn't all that memorable.

Chandler reportedly called The Long Goodbye his best work.If that was the case,it dampens my enthusiasm for the rest of his books.

I liked it to start with,but as it progressed,it became increasingly convoluted.Philip Marlowe,private detective,resembles the private eyes I've frequently encountered in the books of James Hadley Chase.

Although the writing style is similar,the books of James Hadley Chase move at a much faster pace and are certainly not as convoluted.Chase was also a much more prolific author compared to Chandler.

Anyway,my first book by one of the pioneers of hardboiled pulp fiction didn't leave too great an impression.

I loved this book. Absolutely.

I'm not going into plot here, but if you want to know what little I'm comfortable with divulging about this novel, you can find it at the crime page of my  online reading journal.

The Long Goodbye just might be my favorite Marlowe book yet. Loved The Big Sleep and The Little Sister, but this one trumps both of them. When I started reading this series, it was because I wanted to read Benjamin Black's new book The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel (which I got yesterday!), another Marlowe novel, and I wanted to see how his Marlowe stacks up to Chandler's, but I'd never read any Chandler. Since The Big Sleep, however, I've discovered that I genuinely love these old books; and before you say that they're too old to be relevant, think again. Reading pleasure is not all about new and contemporary -- especially considering that Chandler has been an influence on many authors on down the crime-writing line; he also, as far back as 1939, touched on many facets of social criticism that continue to have resonance in our modern world.

After reading and reporting on the five previous Marlowe novels, there's very little left for me to say about my favorite PI except for the fact that here his penchant for doing the right thing will turn into one of the most severe and personal betrayals of his career. However, it's really what Chandler says in and around Marlowe's work that I found most intriguing. He is no stranger to social criticism in these books, but here it's like he's also inserting much more of his personal life into the story. Everyone knows that Chandler was himself an alcoholic, and in this novel, alcoholism plays an extremely large and important role, with two alcoholic characters. One of them, the novelist Roger Wade, who admires F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the best drunken writer since Coleridge, who took dope," writes mass-appeal, popular historical books and is so drunk much of the time that he can't finish his latest one. Once he refers to himself as "a literary pimp." Through Wade, Chandler seems to be evoking his own emotional and other struggles with alcoholism as well as the whole writing biz. There is a most telling scene where Marlowe reads something "really wild" Wade wants him to get rid of before Mrs. Wade sees it (203-206), where Wade describes his ambivalence about drinking and writing. I must say, while I love all of the Marlowe novels, this one probably is Chandler at his ultimate finest.

I'm so loving this series, and I loved this book. The Long Goodbye appeals to my need for edge, for in-depth character study, for traces of social criticism, and my constant search for intelligently-written crime fiction. These books are, as I've said a number of times, some of the best literary works in the crime genre. If you have not yet made the acquaintance of Philip Marlowe, it's something you need to do and soon.

Οι αποχαιρετισμοί αποτελούν ευγενές υλικό, στο οποίο η τέχνη καταφεύγει ακάματα. Παράδοξο, καθότι η καθημερινότητά μας είναι γεμάτη από τέτοιους, πάσης φύσεως, σε βαθμό κοινοτοπίας. Κι αν η κοινοτοπία παραμένει η συγκολλητική ουσία της καθημερινότητάς μας, το αυτό δεν ισχύει ευτυχώς στην περίπτωση της τέχνης.

Εκεί, ο αποχαιρετισμός λαμβάνει διαστάσεις δυσθεώρητες, αποτελεί υλικό άξιο τραγωδίας, οι χειρονομίες μετατρέπονται σε διακηρύξεις και οι σιωπές -πριν ή μετά- σε ουρανομήκεις κραυγές. Στα χέρια ενός συγγραφέα-στιλίστα όπως ο Ρ. Τσάντλερ, το μυστήριο, το έγκλημα, η δράση και όλα εκείνα τα στοιχεία που συναποτελούν το noir είδος καθαίρονται από την παραδοσιακή και κυριολεκτική τους χρήση για να ανέλθουν σε μια άλλη σφαίρα, εκείνη της τέχνης (γι’ αυτό και δεν έχει καμία σχέση με το βρετανικό, απλοϊκής γραφής, whodunit).

Αν ο Hammett υπήρξε ας πούμε ο ιδρυτής του είδους, ο Chandler υπήρξε ο θεμελιωτής, ο καλλιτέχνης, ο Προμηθέας που έκρυψε τη φλόγα της τέχνης και εμφύσησε ζωή σε κάτι που μέχρι πρότινος θεωρείτο περιθωριακό. Το noir είναι αμερικανικό δημιούργημα. Είναι η εκδίκηση της Δημοκρατίας του Νέου Κόσμου ενάντια στο σάπιο, ολιγαρχικό φάντασμα του Παλιού Κόσμου (κυρίως της Βρετανίας) που αντιμετώπιζε τους χαρακτήρες ως πιόνια σε μια σκακιέρα, ως χάρτινες φιγούρες.

Το noir έκανε μια σαφή ταξική στροφή και έφερε το…ρεμπέτικο στην όπερα. Βούτηξε στα λύματα, αλίευσε από τον υπόνομο, αγάπησε το περιθώριο, τους πένητες, τους λοξίες, τους αποτυχημένους, τους παρίες. Έδειξε ότι το έγκλημα διαπράττεται όχι χάριν της αισθητικής φύσεως ευχαρίστησης που θα αποφέρει σε εκείνον που επιλύει τον γρίφο, αλλά ως αποτέλεσμα πασχόντων ανθρώπων. Ανθρώπων που έχουν σπρωχτεί στο περιθώριο, ανθρώπων που ο έρωτας, η ζήλια, οι ενοχές, η απληστία οδήγησε εκεί. Και πίσω από εκείνους ένα εξίσου διεφθαρμένο σύστημα, μαικήνες και κροίσοι που χειραγωγούν, εξουσίες όπως ο τύπος έτοιμες να ξεπουληθούν στον μεγαλύτερο πλειοδότη, αρχές αστυνομικές και δικαστικές έρμαια των ισχυρών.

Και εν τω μέσω αυτών, μια ηθική αρχή: ο ιδιωτικός ντετέκτιβ (εν προκειμένω, ονόματι Φ. Μάρλοου). Ένας απευθείας απόγονος του Δον Κιχώτη, κι ακριβώς όπως εκείνος, ένας ήρωας μισερός, χθόνιος όχι υπερκόσμιος, με αδυναμίες και σημαντικά ελλείματα. Η επιλογή του ντετέκτιβ ως κεντρικού ήρωα, προσφέρει δύο σημαντικά πλεονεκτήματα: αφενός δεν ανήκει υποχρεωτικά στο σύστημα (αν και λειτουργεί εντός του), αφού σε αντίθεση με τον αστυνομικό δεν είναι υπάλληλος του κράτους, επομένως αυτονομείται τόσο όσον αφορά την επιλογή των πελατών του όσο και στον τρόπο δράσης του.

Αφετέρου, λόγω των αστυνομικών δεξιοτήτων του και του ρόλου του, χρησιμοποιείται ως «δίκης οφθαλμός», ως όργανο δικαιοσύνης, όχι με την τυπική και νομικίστικη μορφή της (είπαμε, δεν είναι κρατικός λειτουργός) αλλά στην πλέον αφηρημένη, ενίοτε αφελή, αλλά συγκινητικά δονκιχωτική εκδοχή απονομής Δικαιοσύνης. Η οποία μπορεί να μην είναι καθ’ όλα ή σε κάθε περίπτωση νόμιμη, πλην όμως στοιχίζεται απόλυτα με το γνωστό (αναγνωστικό) «κοινό περί δικαίου αίσθημα».

Ο ντετέκτιβ όσο κι αν βυθίζεται στο τέναγος του εγκλήματος και της διαφθοράς, όσο κι αν τον μολύνει η περιρρέουσα ατμόσφαιρα σήψης, βγαίνει πάντα αλώβητος. Όχι, εδώ δεν ισχύει ο μανιχαϊστικός τρόπος σκέψης του τύπου «μέρος του προβλήματος ή μέρος της λύσης» – όλοι είναι αναπόφευκτα μέρος και των δύο. Όπως έχω ξαναγράψει, ο ήρωας μένει σχεδόν πάντα στο παρασκήνιο αφήνοντας τις πληγωμένες ψυχές που βρίσκει στον δρόμο του να αφηγηθούν τις αλήθειες τους που είναι σχεδόν πάντα ψέματα – όχι απαραίτητα εσκεμμένα, κυρίως διότι οι άνθρωποι πρώτιστα ψεύδονται στον εαυτό τους. Είναι ο ιδανικός παρατηρητής (όπως κι ο συγγραφέας εξάλλου), το private eye που επισκοπεί τα ανθρώπινα πάθη, τις αδυναμίες, τα ελαττώματα των παραβατικών, των πενθούντων, των εγκληματιών και των θυμάτων τους, όλων εκείνων που διέρρηξαν τους δεσμούς τους με το κοινωνικό σύνολο.

Στο, κατά τον συγγραφέα, κορυφαίο έργο του, ο Μάρλοου καλείται να επιλύσει εγκλήματα, αν κι αυτό αποτελεί το έναυσμα για τον συγγραφέα να μιλήσει για τη φιλία, για τον έρωτα, το πάθος και τη ζωή. Γράφει για ανθρώπους που υποφέρουν γιατί δεν είναι τέλειοι, γιατί είναι ελαττωματικοί, γιατί συχνότερα υποπίπτουν στα πάθη και τις ανασφάλειές τους και γι’ αυτό εγκληματούν. Γράφει για την εξουσία που διαφθείρει, αλλά και για ανθρώπους που διαφθείρουν άλλους ανθρώπους. Και μετά σταματάει τη δράση για λίγο και στρέφεται σε ένα νεύμα, σε μια κίνηση, σε ένα ποτήρι ουίσκι και στον σερβιτόρο του οποίου το βλέμμα δηλώνει παραίτηση, σε έναν τύπο γυναίκας, στο παιχνίδι του φλερτ, στο υπαρξιακό άγχος του πρωταγωνιστή.

Και εκεί ακριβώς μεγαλουργεί ο μεγάλος συγγραφέας αναδεικνύοντας την ομορφιά, σύμφωνα με τα λεγόμενα του Αντόρνο: «Να θεωρήσουμε όλα τα πράγματα όπως αυτά θα εμφανίζονταν από τη σκοπιά της λύτρωσης… να δούμε τον κόσμο όπως θα εμφανιστεί κάποια ημέρα στο μεσσιανικό φως». Και ο Φίλιπ Μάρλοου του Τσάντλερ είναι ένας εκπεσών άγγελος που αναζητά ματαίως τα «φτερά τα πρωτινά του τα μεγάλα», προσδοκώντας την επιστροφή, την ίδια στιγμή γνωρίζοντας πόσο μάταιη είναι η ελπίδα του.

https://fotiskblog.home.blog/2021/05/...

(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 Raymond Chandler, 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.

What follows, of course, is just my (generally worthless) opinion. As genre (the crime/detective novel), High Window is Chandler's peak. It's a perfect specimen. His next book, Little Sister, though good, ran into trouble (see my review). It was somewhat deeper, more ambitious, a little literary..., but Chandler didn't know how to get an increasingly bitter, frightened, alcoholic 62 year-old author, with great craft-skills, to continue to write a 38 year-old, hardboiled character. It was a crisis of middle age, and the seams showed.

In the Long Goodbye, Chandler solved the problem by putting the aging alcoholic self into other characters -- and that then left him free to treat Marlowe (now 42) from a more objective point of view. And the result, though not as taut as a genre-piece, is a fine, deep, sad, piece of literature: Raymond Chandler's Long Goodbye.

He died, from alcoholism, a few years later. But he was a fine and important 20th century American writer, who anticipated without pretense, and without any prompous literary shennanigans, much of the sorrow of what would prove to be the early stages of our moral and material decay. The contrast with the hopefulness of his early novels, when he describes an L.A. not yet even built... just rising from the hills... itself is a large part of the pathos that is Chandler.

"Mallory s-a ridicat și s-a dus pășind lateral spre bărbatul cu păr roșcat. Când a ajuns pe la jumătatea distanței, polițistul cu păr cenușiu, Jim, a scos un țipăt înăbușit și a sărit spre Macdonald, agățându-se de buzunarul lui. Macdonald l-a privit surprins. A întins mâna lui mare, l-a apucat pe Jim de ambele revere ale hainei și l-a ridicat. Jim a agitat pumnii spre el și l-a lovit în față de două ori. Macdonald a strâns din buze."
"Am stat nemișcat, ascultând intens. Dincolo de mine nu era nici sunet, nici lumină. Am scos pistolul din tocul de la subraț și strângând patul, l-am coborât pe lângă corp. Respiram superficial, din vârful plămânilor. Atunci s-a petrecut ceva neașteptat. O rază de lumină a apărut pe sub ușa batantă care dădea spre sufragerie. Umbra aprinsese lumina. Ce umbră imprudentă! Am traversat bucătăria, am împins ușa, deschizându-o, și am ținut-o așa. Lumina se revărsa în alcovul care era sufrageria, dincolo de arcadă. M-am îndreptat într-acolo și, neatent-mult prea neatent! -, am trecut de arcadă."