For quite some time now, my husband had been urging me to read "hard-boiled" detective fiction. And I chose this particular book because it won an Edgar Award, and is on the list of "1001 Books you Must Read Before you Die." Well, I have to say the only reason I made it all the way to the end was because I love my husband, and wanted to give this book a fair shake. But it really wasn't my cup of tea.

Philip Marlowe is a private eye in 1940s Hollywood, California. The Long Goodbye opens with Marlowe encountering a couple outside a bar. The man is quite drunk; the woman drives off in their car, leaving the man in a pretty sad state. Marlowe takes him home, gets him sober, and is drawn into friendship with this mysterious man, Terry Lennox. They meet for drinks several times. Then one night, Lennox visits Marlowe and asks to be taken to Tijuana. His wife has just been killed and although Terry didn't commit the murder, he knows he will be implicated. Marlowe helps him get away, but Terry's story is far from over. Meanwhile, Marlowe takes up another case involving an alcoholic writer. The two cases turn out to have a connection, which is gradually revealed.

But I didn't really care, and that was my problem with this book. If there's one thing I've learned about my reading, it's that I enjoy character-driven novels. In The Long Goodbye, every single character was a stereotype. The central characters were fabulously wealthy (except for Marlowe, who still managed to move within their society with relative ease). There were a few seedy characters who acted suspiciously, just to keep the reader interested. The local police were violent, ineffetive, or both. Most characters had some level of dependency on alcohol or drugs, and associated behavioral issues. There were few women in this book, but all of them were blonde bombshells with only one real function in life.

It's a shame -- Raymond Chandler is quite famous for this type of novel, and some of the film adaptations make for interesting viewing. But I think I'll take a pass on his other books. ( )

Pretty near perfect. Certainly worthy of being reprinted so many times, in so many languages, with so many interesting covers. And as far as the murderer of Terry Lennox ... he had me until the end.

Of course, there's the dialogue, especially Marlowe with these ice cool blondes. I could only imagine Bogart in the role (Elliot Gould? God help us). And I'm not sure that in a blind reading test I could pick Hammett from Chandler. But maybe: despite the ping pong dialogue, Chandler does have a habit of throwing in superfluous adverbs. How else can someone read a newspaper alone in a restaurant booth but "quietly." And these women speaking "gravely" and so on.

My biggest reservation, though, concerns the initial meeting with Lennox and why Marlowe carted the guy home. I mean, why? It may well work in the movie, but Lennox isn't particularly charming. Well, Lennox must remind Marlowe of something or someone from his past. I kept thinking we were going to get a few more hints of that, but it never came.

The 1950s. Or 1950s LA noir: so much drinking! And the discreet sex scene. ( )

Great, fun, fun, and great!

I can't say anything about that hasn't already been said better by someone else. His style is brilliant, his plots are tight, and he's a joy to read.That being said, I can't help but think he's got some serious pent-up hostility toward blondes. ( )

Immediately after finishing the Big Sleep, I went straight on to listen to this. I was disappointed in the story actually. Yes, there was Marlowe and, as before, he was hard and cynical and cool. But this novel(la?) just didn’t catch me up in its world as much as Sleep had done. Perhaps I was used to it by then.

The plot’s not as convoluted as Sleep but it does have its own twists with the, now, inevitable secrets coming to light. I won’t spoil it for anyone planning to read it. There are still great lines from Marlowe. Not as many as in Sleep but still some amazing similes in particular (see quotes below).

Reading the first Marlowe novel and then the last immediately after it, I was struck with the contrast in his attitudes and relationship across the books which made me reflect again on Chandler’s genius. There’s much more of a contempt for so-called law enforcement, much more a hatred of everything that makes California society what it is known for. And I wonder if this is what Chandler experienced in real life.

Whatever its inspiration, the progress of character development in Marlowe from Sleep to Goodbye is excellent and I’m glad I read it to at least see that. ( )

This was my first Chandler book. I was often tempted to put it aside and read something else, but I stayed with it to the end. I am left with mixed feelings. The Philip Marlowe character somehow eludes me. I can't understand the guy. His standards for accepting fees for the work her performs are so high that he always refuses payment. How does the guy survive? There is only one client in the book who is acceptably ethical to Marlowe, and he charges this client $20 and leaves it as a tip to a bartender. Any client who has the slightest character flaw encounters Marlowe's disdain, and has his money returned.
There was dialogue I truly enjoyed, the plot was interesting, and there are many good things to be said of the book. I guess I have to read more Chandler; but I won't right away.
The paperback I read was published by Pocket Books in 1964. The cover artwork is better than any of the covers shown here, in my opinion, but no credit is given in the book to the artist. ( )

One of the noir-est of the noir. Philip Marlowe, private detective. Lone wolf, paladin, man of honor. The usual philosophical drunks and women with "mink[s] that almost made the Rolls-Royce look like just another automobile". Crooked cops and crooks with a conscience.

Terry Lennox's very rich, very nymphomaniac wife is found dead, her head bashed in. Lennox takes it on the lam to Mexico, and then is found dead with a bullet in his brain and a confession in front of him. But did he really do it? A lot of people want Marlowe to think so, and not to look into the case. But then he gets dragged into trying to save an alcoholic, best-selling novelist, and, as with any good noir novel, there's a connection.

Also as in any good noir novel, nobody is what they seem or means what they say. Mysteries are "solved", but there are no tidy endings, no real heroes or villains. The atmosphere is all. And there is plenty of that here.

I never thought much about how iconic tough-PI-speak is until I started this classic and immediately felt like I'd read it before. Good stuff, in any case, although it shows its age in places. ( )

How is it that Chandler manges to write so simply and yet produce natural and vivid prose? He does it with solid plotting too and a glut of memorable characters. ( )

My favourite Phil Marlowe book - and one of my all time favourite detective stories. Very melancholic. ( )

I couldn't put it down. Even better than The Big Sleep, I thought. ( )

I followed up "The Talented Mr. Ripley" with this novel, hoping to go on a '50s noir binge. Unfortunately Raymond Chandler was less to my taste.

Though it's extremely well-constructed, I didn't like the plot that much until the twist at the very end. I guess I just wasn't connecting the pieces most of the way through, but I didn't really appreciate what was going on until the very end.

My biggest problem was probably how aggressive the characters were, though. Phillip Marlowe picked fights with everyone he ran across, and most everyone obliged him by fighting back, either verbally or physically. I just didn't understand why this was an acceptable way of getting information, or why it was necessary to fight with absolutely everyone, including a man he brushed past in a bar.

I don't know. That kind of soured it for me, I guess. ( )

One of the great American novels.

http://realmofryan.blogspot.com/2007/... ( )

You don't read Raymond Chandler for the plots--you read him for the magnificent "hard boiled" prose. The Long Goodbye is probably his most complex work, full of world weary insights and a somewhat more "tender" Marlowe. The great pleasure of The Long Goodbye is seeing how the main character, Philip Marlowe, reconciles his cynical view of humanity with a genuine desire to help a few unfortunates in life. The best Marlowe...classic... ( )

(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. ( )

Raymond Chandler books were highly recommended via many sources, but I have read several and never liked any; I don't like the characters and the stories are not that intriguing. ( )

THE Great American Novel, hands down. Poetry as fiction. Wow! ( )

Someone tucked a copy of this in the school library. It was a paperback, which was odd, because the library had nothing but hardbacks. I checked it out and was told it was not a school book and that someone must have placed it on the shelf mistakenly. You should not read this sort of book, said the teacher on library watch. Which was, of course, the most incentivising tag you can give a teenager. I read it and then consumed every book Chandler wrote. ( )

Sheer narrative genius (wrapped around a misogynist plot that doesn't always make a whole lot of sense as usual) from the daddy of crime fiction. ( )

http://steelbrassnwood.livejournal.co... ( )

Ray Vukcevich recommened Chandler as the definitive hardboiled voice to a few writers. He's right. This is the voice!
Marlowe is simple enough of a character to understand, and noble enough to love. The two plots of the story intertwine in ways that makes my head spin. ( )

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/3... ( )