{"id":3952,"date":"2015-01-30T08:12:28","date_gmt":"2015-01-30T13:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3952"},"modified":"2015-01-30T08:57:55","modified_gmt":"2015-01-30T13:57:55","slug":"the-long-goodbye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3952","title":{"rendered":"****The Long Goodbye"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"$5000

“The Madison” (photo: wikimedia.org)<\/p><\/div>\n

By Raymond Chandler <\/a>\u2013 This hardboiled detective story from 1953 is one of Chandler\u2019s last featuring detective Philip Marlowe, and all the usual appeal is here\u2014Los Angeles riffraff, a complex plot, and the sly, ironic first-person tone of wiseass Marlowe, who narrates. Although the prose conjures the voice of the ultimate Marlowe interpreter, Humphrey Bogart, the movie version was on ice for two decades, awaiting the deft touch of Robert Altman, with Elliott Gould as Marlowe. (FYI, the Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics give this one a 96% rating, so it\u2019s now on my Netflix list!)<\/p>\n

Lots of alcohol gets sloshed in this story, written at a period when Chandler\u2014an alcoholic himself\u2014was at a serious low point (his wife was dying) and discouraged about his writing. It was late in his career, and he wanted to be taken more seriously. A few plot elements don\u2019t quite hang together, and \u201cthe Madison\u201d (a $5000 bill a client sent him) is not the unbelievable windfall it was in 1950, yet the writing propels you forward from sentence one: \u201cThe first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keep reading, and you\u2019re rewarded with thrilling descriptions (\u201cHis eyebrows waved gently, like the antennae of some suspicious insect.\u201d \u201cOn the window sill a bee with tattered wings was crawling along the woodwork, buzzing in a tired remote sort of way, as if she knew it wasn\u2019t any use, she was finished, she had flown too many missions and would never get back to the hive again.\u201d A metaphor that probably says as much about how Chandler\u2014and Marlowe\u2014were feeling at that moment as it does about how the fictional bee may have felt.) Of course, Chandler was equally observant and precise in his descriptions of people: \u201cThere was the usual light scattering of compulsive drinkers getting tuned up at the bar . . ., the kind that reach very slowly for the first one and watch their hands so they won\u2019t knock anything over.\u201d Oh yeah.<\/p>\n

In a crime fiction anthology published in 1995, mystery writer Bill Pronzini called The Long Goodbye<\/em> \u201ca serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery.\u201d Contemporary novelist Paul Auster wrote, \u201cRaymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since.\u201d A pity Chandler didn\u2019t anticipate that the critics\u2019 unwavering praise<\/a> of him ultimately would extend beyond genre borders.<\/p>\n

If the books leave you wanting more, take the awesome Esotouric Raymond Chandler Tour or get the map of his Los Angeles settings, described in this popular post<\/a> from last fall.
\n