It is generally agreed that The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler’s 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’s Chandler and it’s 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’s Chandler and it’s 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’s going to be some actual detecting in what is supposed to be a private detective novel? It’s Chandler and it’s Marlowe.

The Marlowe part of the answer is important. It’s 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’s 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’s 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 Megan Abbott cited her own experience in doing so in an introduction to Reed Farrel Coleman’s Walking the Perfect Square (Busted Flush Press, 2008). She used Marlowe as a yardstick against which to measure the darkness of the overarching journey of Coleman’s 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’s 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’s no longer the good fight. He’s made compromises along the way, compromises Marlowe could never make. The two men contrast Chandler’s most famous quote: “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” 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’s 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’s Chandler and it’s Marlowe.

This is my fourth or fifth reading of this classic; I think it's a terrific book, probably Chandler's best, and it ought to lay to rest the question of whether crime fiction can be literature. Among other things, it just might be the Great American Novel of alcoholism.
The language, as always, is honed to a sharp edge; so many people have tried to imitate Chandler's style that it's easy to forget how good the real thing is. "The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back... I couldn’t hear the laugh but the hole in her face when she unzippered her teeth was all I needed." Chandler found fresh ways of capturing character concisely on every page.
The plot is a bit of a mess, but it's basically the story of Marlowe's friendship with Terry Lennox, a charming wastrel with a scarred face, a drinking problem and a mysterious past. Lennox is a kept man, married to a tycoon's daughter; one night he comes to Marlowe asking for help to get out of town. Marlowe helps him get to Mexico, no questions asked, and then stands up to the cops when they come calling. It turns out that Lennox's wife has been murdered, and it looks as if Lennox did it. When Lennox gets shot to death in a Mexican hotel, supposedly by the cops, the case is declared closed. Marlowe isn't buying it, and the rest of the book, of course, is a quest to find out what really happened.
It takes a while to get there; along the way Marlowe is hired to baby-sit a best-selling author who is having trouble finishing his work in progress because of his own drinking problem. It seems he and his beautiful wife knew the murdered heiress, connections begin to emerge...
The two great themes, love and death, are both there in abundance, but the main love story is the passion for alcohol shown by all and sundry. Chandler was himself an alcoholic, and the book reflects the drinker's ambivalence; there are passages that will make you want to rush out and get a drink and others that will have you looking for the nearest AA meeting.
It's not a perfect book; Chandler did some kinds of characters better than others, and the Mexican (or is he Chilean?) houseboy really doesn't ring quite true. For one thing, his Spanish is pretty bad. ("La señora es muerta.") You'd think at some point somebody would have corrected the Spanish. But that's a quibble; this is still a classic of the crime genre and American fiction in general.

When it comes to Raymond Chandler’s novels starring the smart-ass, misanthropic PI Phillip Marlowe, there’s The Long Goodbye and then there's everything else Chandler ever wrote—and it’s 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’s 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’d 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’s 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—when they are truly well-written and truly about something—as important as any other well-cherished work of literature.

I don’t really have it in me to try and give you a zesty teaser on the plot of this novel, some hokey hook that’ll make you say “Gee Wiz” and click on the want-to-read button. This book tired me emotionally, and I mean that in the best possible way. So I’m 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—in fact, especially—the narrator, Marlowe), if you enjoy a book that actually requires you to actively read, then this is a book I’d 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’s just the icing on top. What’s underneath is where things get good.

Excellent - Just wish I had the unabridged episode cuz it was over almost as soon as it started.

I like Mystery novels that are literary. I know the term "literary" is broad and hazy but let's just say that literary is a special attention that is given to the language and to the characters, and this is in addition to the creation of suspense. One of the little pleasures of life is picking a book at an airport because you have four sleepless hours ahead of you and discovering soon after take-off that the book you thought would be easy fun is making you feel and think and pause to re-read that sentence again. Or maybe the author whacks you with an unpretentious metaphor that clears your brain like a shot of mental antihistamine. Raymond Chandler died in 1959 and it is the rare airport gift shop that has any of his books. I went and looked for his books and, in particular this one, because I wanted to read one of the early masters of the genre. I wanted to see if there was some kind of essential structure to the mystery novel that the current writers that I like follow. There are certain commonalities that great mystery novels follow and looking at the authors who developed those structures is very helpful. (If you are interested in seeing what these "structures" are I recommend the book Writing Mysteries, edited by Sue Grafton.) But here I want to write, not about the essential style and structure of the genre that I found in Chandler, but about a kind of philosophical underpinning that makes this book great and which I think is also found in the greatest mystery writers. In this story you will find a kind of very human detective (the anti-hero in many ways) who has one good quality going for him. He wants to find the truth. When everyone is satisfied with the appearance of truth, he is not. When no one cares for the truth anymore, he still does. If the truth is painful (to himself and others), it doesn't matter. When the person that was killed was not of much value to society, he still believes finding the person who snuffed out that poor and miserable life, is worthwhile. The motive for this pursuit is not religious or ethical or patriotic. Most often than not the pursuit of truth seems to be the only thing that is holding the detective from giving up on himself and on life. It was Chandler, in this book, that helped me to discover why I like these "literary" mystery books. There's something about seeing Marlowe, and his detective friends, pursue and desire truth that gives me strength and some kind of faith and yes, a little courage. Maybe because watching the news with each channel offering a different version, or listening to politicians who, at best offer only partial views of the whole truth, leaves me impoverished and sad. Here in this well written work, there is solace to be found and a reminder that the truth exists and can be searched for and often found.

Bufff, qué experiencia. Ha sido como retroceder en el tiempo. Qué casposo todo.

¿Qué tiene Raymond Chandler para haberse convertido en una figura de la literatura, aunque sea de la literatura más popular? Quizás haya que leerlo con la mentalidad de los años 50. Quizás en su día fue novedoso, con ese estilo que ahora nos parece que no puede estar más cargado de clichés. No lo sé. Pero hoy me parece insufrible.

Clichés, clichés y más clichés, aderezados con varios toques de misoginia aquí y allá. Detective inteligente (mejor sería decir clarividente) y cínico, duro y mordaz, honrado y de vuelta de todo. Humphrey Bogart. Mujeres fatales. Lauren Bacall, o Rita Hayworth. Diálogos forzados e irreales, cargados de ironía, y un guión que parece de comedia de enredo aunque la comedia aquí se reduzca a algún que otro comentario cínico de vez en cuando. Mujeres de infarto (aquí lo son todas) que igual se tiran de repente a tus brazos como te dan un tortazo, para luego estallar en lágrimas y a los cinco minutos volver a ser frías como el hielo. Sí, todo muy normal, como la vida misma. Ah, sí, y muertos aquí y allá, para ir aderezando el cotarro. Qué mal le han sentado los últimos 70 años a este tipo de historias…

Lo siento, pero no, no me ha gustado lo más mínimo. Ya he conocido a Raymond Chandler, aunque no puedo decir que esté encantado de haberlo hecho. Hasta la vista, señor Chandler.

Obra maestra de la literatura. De lectura imprescindible.


Literature masterpiece. Essential reading.

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?

08/2017

2017
So I read this again after five years. I didn't remember much, I never do after one reading of Chandler. My reaction to it now is that it is extraordinarily long. It really takes its time and unpacks Marlowe's life, and it is a good book, but lengthy. I have a LOVE /HATE relationship with Chandler. I like this, the Big Sleep and the Lady in the Lake. But I really do not admire Farewell My Lovely or the Little Sister. And I have read all those twice. I've read the High Window only once, so I will have to read it again. And then... He has three other books I have not read. So... I have goals!

2012
I'd never read this one before! I usually don't watch a movie if I want to read the book it's adapted from, but this was an exception, as I've seen the 1973 Altman version 3 times at least. It's irreverent and very 1973 Altman, and Elliot Gould is the best Marlowe ever. However they of course changed so much that it didn't detract from the book. It gave away the ending, but didn't capture the mystery itself. The book was still captivating, and I didn't even picture Elliot Gould (Marlowe says he's 6 ft and 1/2 an inch, so Gould was actually too tall). I thought it was one of Chandler's best. I liked Marlowe's observations, and his maturity.

COUNTDOWN: Mid-20th Century North American Crime and Mystery
BOOK 54 (of 250)
Crime: Victim "X" is beaten to death with a Bronze Monkey (Maltese Falcon unavailable) in the Guest House...and that's not all that is derivative. Chandler, to me, wants to write a "BIG" novel in every way, like Hammett's "Dain Curse". In both, there are struggling writers. In both, there are several plot lines. Okay, I know many fans of Chandler might put this novel at the top of about any list. But I think Chandler wrote 2 better and less derivative novels and a sensational novella, all in my top 50 and coming up! So gimme a break!
HOOK - 4 stars: >>>"The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of the Dancers," <<PACE - 2: Whew! This might be the "War and Peace" of 20th Century crime. It's almost like Chandler authored 2 novels: 1 about the Lennox family and 1 about the Wade family. And it took me about a week to read, while most crime books fall into the "2-day" category, a few into the "one-sit" read. (I rated "War and Peace" 2 stars overall, by the way. Yes, absolutely, "The Long Goodbye" is better than " War and Peace"...but, "Goodbye" is no "Anna Karenina", not even close.
PLOT(s) - 4: Terry Lennox falls, drunk, out of his Rolls Royce. Lennox has married Sylvia (the very rich daughter of Harlan Potter) for the 2nd time. Terry has Vegas "friends" who "help" Terry at times. Meanwhile, Roger Wade, a best-selling author of historical romances, has writer's block. A New York publisher hires Marlowe to figure out why Wade can't deliver. (Chandler inserts himself into the book: he can't figure out how to finish this novel, apparently.) There is a murder. There is a LOT. The two stories do intersect. 4 stars for 2 good plots, but still this is a bit too derivative of Hammett's "Dain Curse".
CHARACTERS - 4: I don't recall previous novel's having Marlowe so down on himself MOST OF THE TIME. In previous novels, he has giggled on occasion: he's sort of manic/depressive. Here's an example from this novel in which he's on the depressed side. (I get that in real life the author was ill, or own his way down, healthwise.)
Marlowe: "What I don't get is why a guy with your privileges would want to drink with a private eye."
Lennox: "Are you being modest?"
Marlowe: "Nope. I'm just puzzled. I'm a reasonably friendly type but we don't live in the same world..." (Oddly, Marlowe isn't very friendly during most of this book.)
Then later, Marlowe thinks to himself, "I liked him better drunk, down and out, hungry and beaten and proud. Or did I? Maybe I just liked being top man." Marlowe/Chandler reveals (at least hints at) himself often here with terms like "I just liked being top man." And about Roger Wade, yes, he has a secret alright, one that's keeping him busy. Howard Spencer, the NY publisher, sees a big story and its not about the fact that Wade can't finish his book. Then there is the Carne Organization, otherwise known as a place where people can be "held" until they are "healed", or a place that treats criminals for their various and many gunshot and knife wounds. Dr. Verringer appears to be closing down his own facility but has a fascinating sidekick, Earl, who might appear as a cowboy to "come and take you away" or a perhaps a Latin dancer. Verringer swears Earl is almost cured! Get this great line, opening Chapter 7: "The Homicide Skipper that year was a Captain Gregorius." But just when you think Chandler can get through an entire chapter or so without obsessively hinting at his own sexuality, he writes this (and has an author say it, it's Chandler's voice): "He bothered me sitting there waiting for me to create. Mistake. Ought to have kept him. Word would have got around I was a homo. The clever boys that write book reviews because they can't write anything else would have caught on and started giving me the build up. Have to take care of their own, you know." And Chandler can't stop there, he keeps going: "They're all queers, every damn one of them. The queer is the artistic arbiter of our age, chum. The pervert is the top guy now."* Stop it already! We get it!
ATMOSPHERE - 5: People with tons of money play in California. They are mostly despicable, mostly insane, mostly typical of Chandler's crime stories. Marlowe, upon meeting Gregorius, thinks, "Right now I was his raw meat." Yea, "I was his raw meat." Terry Lennox takes off for Mexico at one point and writes a letter: "I'm sitting beside a second-floor window in a room in a not too clean hotel in a town called Otatoclan, a mountain town with a lake..." And many beauties: "A girl in a white sharkskin suit and a luscious figure was climbing the ladder to the high board....I saw her flash down in a one and a half. Spray came high enough to catch the sun and make rainbows that were almost as pretty as the girl." Lovely words, and lots of 'em!
SUMMARY - 3.8. This is a beauty in atmosphere. The cast is very good, approaching "Maltese Falcon" actually. And only after reading all 7 of Chandler's novels plus "The Annotated Deep Sleep" did I get on board the Chandler-fan train. But Chandler, sometimes, is challenging to read and not necessarily in a good way. *That said, the deep-seated "something" is just ugly. It isn't homophobia, Chandler/Marlowe aren't afraid of gay folks. But 'something' is going on, and it's a thread through all of Chandler's work. And in this respect, Chandler never changes. I'm fine with all the overtly 'bromance' (at a minimum) references. But Chandler seems to be saying, here, that if a person doesn't like his book, they must be queers. Or 'something'. Don't get me wrong, this is Chandler, this is good. I liked it very much. But I like some of his other novels better, and I've read all seven of them. And, no, this is no "Dain Curse", although I admire Chandler's attempt to duplicate one of Hammett's best.

It was good getting back to reading some Chandler and following Marlowe around as we wind up the final touches on this year. Reportedly, The Long Goodbye, the sixth of the seven books in the Marlowe series, was the most personal to Chandler. There are two characters (Lennox, Wade) who are central to the plot who are emblematic of some of the personal vices and pitfalls in Chandler’s own life. I have heard also that this was Chandler’s favorite of his novels.

I would say that in this novel more so than any of the other Marlowe’s I have read, there is less a focus on the actual plot (which does get quite a bit confusing in the second half), and more focus on the actual character of Marlowe. Within the scope of the plot, Marlowe’s commentary and cynicism is there, but also there is a bit of a more reflective, philosophical nature to him as he tries to care for a drunk friend (Lennox) and, then later, tries to solve a murder mystery that has unfolded.

I really thought Chandler’s prose through Marlowe’s point of view and perspective is so on point and sharp: “Guys with a hundred million dollars live a peculiar life, behind a screen of servants, bodyguards, secretaries, lawyers, and tame executives. Presumably, they eat, sleep, get their hair cut, and wear clothes. But you never know for sure. Everything you read or hear about them has been processed by a public relations gang of guys who are paid big money to maintain and create a usable personality….”

At one point, Marlowe becomes entangled and embroiled himself in the murder case and suspected, and, along the way, must deal with many seedy, unpredictable, and unsavory characters in the city as he tries to solve the case on his own. There are quite a few shenanigans pulled by these said characters, and it is always interesting how Marlowe tries to read them and size up the potential damage before he proceeds.

I would venture to say that, while The Long Goodbye is definitely a mystery (there is one key mystery at hand, but one could make the case that there are two or three other minor mysteries to be revealed), I think most of the emphasis is on the study of Marlowe.

The ending (or endings, as I felt like there were several “endings” here) does get a bit murky and muddled, and the finale might be a tad unbelievable, but I guess I could forgive it because over all I was just impressed with how Chandler put everything together.

There is also a film version, 1973’s “The Long Goodbye”, with Elliot Gould in the role of Marlowe, that I’m interested in viewing.

Brilliantly written. A portrait of a complex set of relationships revealed layer by layer in two interrelated investigations. A tour de force of Chandler's writing, where piquant verbs ramp up delightful sentences on every page.
Though Chandler has a lot to say about the way wealth can empty a person's life of meaning and purpose, this book is about a friendship, and what lengths Marlow goes to, in order to clear the name of his dead friend. I won't say more. It's a beautiful, heartbreaking book, with all the grit and angst and honorable grumpiness of his previous work, but be prepared to shed a few tears too.

"He wasn't much of a man," says a cop to Marlowe, about his friend Terry Lennox.
"What's that got to do with it?" asks Marlowe.

And that's the poignant message here, we care because we care, not because of any special quality of the person we care about, or what they've said, or done. To be oneself is enough. A fine view of the world, despite its seediness, which Chandler unflinchingly holds up to the light. As usual Chandler does not think much of women, but they are complex and troubled characters, fully formed and powerful. Above all, is the view of an independent man, "spoiled by my independence" who resists the lure of being bought, even when it seems a damn foolish thing to do.