The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye was Raymond Chandler's sixth novel featuring private detective Philip Marlowe, published in 1953. I honestly can't remember if I've ever read a Chandler novel--I think I read The Big Sleep, but most of the good lines from the book were in the great film version, so I'm not sure.

The book is a bit problematic, which is why perhaps it's only been made into a movie once, in 1973, directed by Robert Altman and updated to the contemporary time period (and vastly different from the book). It basically has three acts and two cases, and like many mystery novels since then, you are waiting to see how the two are related. It also has a hell of a lot of dialogue, and only sporadic action. All the deaths in the book are suicide, off page.

Marlowe is outside a night club when he assists a drunk who has been abandoned by his wife. He is Terry Lennox, and she is the daughter of a rich newspaper publisher. He and Marlowe create an uneasy friendship, usually talking over gimlets (gin and lime juice--I need to try one, they sound good). A few months later, Lennox is in a jam. He needs a ride to Tijuana because he can't fly out of L.A. Marlowe takes him, but insists he not tell him what the problem is, so that he can't be implicated.

It turns out that Lennox's wife has been murdered, and everyone thinks Lennox did it. Marlowe is hauled in as an accessory, and roughed up by the police and put in the slammer for a few days, because Marlowe refuses to talk. When Lennox turns up dead by suicide in Mexico, with a full confession by his side, Marlowe is released. He later receives a letter from Lennox, along with a "portrait of Madison"--a five-thousand dollar bill.

Marlowe is then contacted by a book publisher, Harold Spencer, who wants to hire him to find a popular writer, Roger Wade, who is probably drying out, as the author is an alcoholic. Marlowe initially declines, but is persuaded by Wade's wife, Eileen, largely because Marlowe finds her attractive and feels sorry for her.

So who killed Lennox's wife, and was Lennox really a suicide? Another suicide will take place--was it also murder? And how are the two cases connected? These are the whodunits of the book, but Chandler was not a hack, and the novel is much more than the plot. Included was a commentary not only the police, and the medical profession, and about writing (Wade is said to be modeled after Chandler himself, as he is a writer of popular fiction that isn't considered literature). It's also deeply about male friendship, and honoring it by not ratting out a pal.

Of course the writing is dazzling. Chandler is well known for his similes and quick descriptions of characters or places, here a few:

Speaking of a rich neighborhood: "I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split."

"It was so quiet in Victor's that you almost heard the temperature drop as you came in at the door."

"The coffee was overtrained and the sandwich was as full of rich flavor as piece torn off an old shirt. Americans will eat anything if it is toasted and held together with a couple of toothpicks and has lettuce sticking out of the sides, preferably a little wilted."

"There are one hundred and ninety ways of being a bastard, and Csrne knew all of them."

Despite wallowing in the mystery genre, Chandler is one of America's greatest writers and Marlowe one of our greatest characters. He's been played in movies by lots of actors, from Bogie to Elliot Gould, but he remains Chandler's creation (although it's hard not to envision Bogart while you're reading the book, even though he played Marlowe only once). He doesn't cow to authority, whether it's organized crime or the police. He carries a gun, but rarely uses it. Marlowe likes to smoke a pipe, likes classical music, working out chess problems, and most of all, remaining a lone wolf:

"The other part of me wanted to get out and stay out, but this was the part I never listened to. Because if I ever had I would have stayed in the town where I was born and worked in the hardware store and married the boss's daughter and had five kids and read them the funny paper on Sunday morning and smacked their heads when they got out of line and squabbled with the wife about what spending they were to get and what programs they could have on the radio or TV set. I might even have got rich--small town rich, an eight room house, two cars in the garage, chicken every Sunday and the Reader's Digest on the living room table, the wife with a cast iron permanent and me with a brain like a sack of Portland cement. You take it, friend. I'll take the big sordid dirty crooked city."