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lkweaver26's review against another edition
4.0
naturally there were some...questionable aspects of this given it was written in the 50s but chandler's writing was so engrossing and the noir thriller was so fun. to say goodbye is to die a little!!
jmronbeck's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
michilangbauer's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
circularcubes's review against another edition
4.0
the most coherent of the philip marlowe books i've read so far, and by far the best and most hard-hitting (with the lady in the lake being a close second)
this is excellent - i think if you only had one philip marlowe book to read, this would be my pick (i have one more book to go in the series, but i have a feeling the long goodbye will still be my pick once it's all said and done)
this is excellent - i think if you only had one philip marlowe book to read, this would be my pick (i have one more book to go in the series, but i have a feeling the long goodbye will still be my pick once it's all said and done)
mateaaah's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
ethorwitz's review against another edition
3.0
A very fast read at the beginning, but it begins to bog down in the middle.
I came into this with certain expectations of hard-boiled crime and the noir films they inspired: that they were a consciously created genre following rigid narrative rules. An anti-hero in an unjust world navigating a set of common plot devices and stock characters as archetypical to the American psyche as anything out of Plato or Jung. Perhaps this is true of neo-noir aping the past, but original noir was entirely spontaneous. Nobody intended to go out and make a new genre. The crime novelists and experimental filmmakers who created these works were already cynical people, fascinated by the cracks on the surface of postwar American prosperity and by the kinds of people who fell into them. These movies and books were produced independently of each other and only later someone happened to notice that they shared similar themes and styles. This is evident reading The Long Goodbye, which seems designed as an outlet for Raymond Chandler to complain about everything wrong with society. I found the actual murder mystery was much less interesting then the bizarre and contemptible characters who the PI protagonist, a clear author stand-in, would interact with on his way to solving the case. These characters seemed to be oversized and overstated caricatures of practices the author didn't approve of, people the author didn't like, and professions the author was deeply cynical about. Cops are all violent and corrupt, newspaper journalists are opportunists and liars, nobody ever became wealthy honestly, etc etc. Such a tell-it-like-it-is narrative always runs the risk of spouting some awful misogyny or racism, but beyond a handful of stereotypes this was barely present at all.
This book also taught me how to make a gimlet, and now it's my favorite drink.
I came into this with certain expectations of hard-boiled crime and the noir films they inspired: that they were a consciously created genre following rigid narrative rules. An anti-hero in an unjust world navigating a set of common plot devices and stock characters as archetypical to the American psyche as anything out of Plato or Jung. Perhaps this is true of neo-noir aping the past, but original noir was entirely spontaneous. Nobody intended to go out and make a new genre. The crime novelists and experimental filmmakers who created these works were already cynical people, fascinated by the cracks on the surface of postwar American prosperity and by the kinds of people who fell into them. These movies and books were produced independently of each other and only later someone happened to notice that they shared similar themes and styles. This is evident reading The Long Goodbye, which seems designed as an outlet for Raymond Chandler to complain about everything wrong with society. I found the actual murder mystery was much less interesting then the bizarre and contemptible characters who the PI protagonist, a clear author stand-in, would interact with on his way to solving the case. These characters seemed to be oversized and overstated caricatures of practices the author didn't approve of, people the author didn't like, and professions the author was deeply cynical about. Cops are all violent and corrupt, newspaper journalists are opportunists and liars, nobody ever became wealthy honestly, etc etc. Such a tell-it-like-it-is narrative always runs the risk of spouting some awful misogyny or racism, but beyond a handful of stereotypes this was barely present at all.
This book also taught me how to make a gimlet, and now it's my favorite drink.
mferrante83's review against another edition
5.0
The Long Goodbye opens with PI Phillip Marlowe helping a drunk stranger, the pale scar-faced Terry Lennox, out of a drunk jam. The beginning chapters of the novel focus on building an on again/off again friendship between the drunken Lennox and the oddly altruistic Marlowe who consistently helps Lennox out of trouble without ever asking for anything. Of course, things take a turn for the worse and after Lennox is accused of murdering his socialite wife, daughter of a notoriously reclusive millionaire newspaper owner, and himself winds up dead Marlowe finds himself suddenly embroiled in the lives and vices of several area socialites.
Chandler is a master of character, voice and description. I would go so far to say that he is one of American’s most underrated novelists. His ability to describe scenes from a simple room to a one-on-one fight is unparalleled. The latter, evidenced in the confrontation between Marlowe and the unbalanced associate of a shady psychiatrist, is pulled off in an elegantly choreographed scene that is at once both sparse and utterly evocative:
The balance between description of the fight itself and characterization of the opponent is night on perfect as far as I’m concerned. The shift from Marlowe’s own all-business tactical blow-by-blow into the almost poetic cadence of the repeated “he” sentences that form the scene’s crescendo is a wonderful touch. As mentioned Chandler is also equally adept at simply setting a scene:
The details are bare yet the scene is surprisingly complete. Without details Chandler manages to set the scene with tone rather then fact letting the imagination of the reader fill in the rest. It is an impressive effect and, as I’m sure Chandler was well aware from, far from the intricate set-up of the British style scenery he was set against.
Indeed the tone of the novel is one of consistent gloom. Marlowe is driven by a moral compunction to do what is right but at the same time is actions, demeanor and thoughts take on an aimless air. The narrative are peppered with some rather depressing, yet poetic thoughts from Terry Lennox’s “just killing time….it dies hard” to Marlowe’s “To say goodbye is to die a little.” Indeed the New York Times review (April 25, 1954, Criminals at Large) says “On the whole, despite occasional outbursts of violence, it’s a moody brooding book, in which Marlowe is less a detective than a disturbed man of 42 on quest for some evidence of truth and humanity.” Needless to say, this isn’t a happy book. It is bleaker then one might expect and given the socialite setting and characters it is a rather scathing look at high society and, in a broader sense, humanity at large.
This isn’t a by-the-numbers detective novel by any means. It works within the confines of its genre to explore a rather bleak outlook on humanity; an espousal of Chandler’s own words from the Simple Art of Murder: “It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.” It is that last which is explored the most thoroughly. Mark Coggin’s does a much better job in his lengthy essay Writing the Long Goodbye in illuminating some of the more biographical history behind Chandler’s creation of the novel, aspects that echo The Long Goodbye’s own fictional novelist Roger Wade’s plight. It isn’t hard to see Wade’s writing as an echo of Chandler’s thoughts on his own craft. As Roger Wade writes: “The moons’ four days off the full and there’s a square patch of moonlight on the wall and it’s looking at me like a big blind milky eye, a wall eye. Joke. Goddam silly simile. Writers. Everything has to be like something else.” The Long Goodbye at least isn’t really like anything else and is all the better as a result.
Chandler is a master of character, voice and description. I would go so far to say that he is one of American’s most underrated novelists. His ability to describe scenes from a simple room to a one-on-one fight is unparalleled. The latter, evidenced in the confrontation between Marlowe and the unbalanced associate of a shady psychiatrist, is pulled off in an elegantly choreographed scene that is at once both sparse and utterly evocative:
…In passing I blocked his left foot from behind, grabbed his shirt and heard it tear. Something hit me on the back of the neck, but it wasn’t the metal. I spun to the left and he went over sideways and landed catlike and was on his feet again before I had any kind of balance. He was grinning now. He was delighted with everything. He loved his work. He came for me fast.
The balance between description of the fight itself and characterization of the opponent is night on perfect as far as I’m concerned. The shift from Marlowe’s own all-business tactical blow-by-blow into the almost poetic cadence of the repeated “he” sentences that form the scene’s crescendo is a wonderful touch. As mentioned Chandler is also equally adept at simply setting a scene:
The shutting of the french windows had made the room stuffy and the turning of the venetian blinds had made it dim. There was an acrid smell in the air and there was too heavy a silence. It was not more than fifteen feet from the door to the couch and I didn’t need more than half of that to know a dead man lay on that couch.
The details are bare yet the scene is surprisingly complete. Without details Chandler manages to set the scene with tone rather then fact letting the imagination of the reader fill in the rest. It is an impressive effect and, as I’m sure Chandler was well aware from, far from the intricate set-up of the British style scenery he was set against.
Indeed the tone of the novel is one of consistent gloom. Marlowe is driven by a moral compunction to do what is right but at the same time is actions, demeanor and thoughts take on an aimless air. The narrative are peppered with some rather depressing, yet poetic thoughts from Terry Lennox’s “just killing time….it dies hard” to Marlowe’s “To say goodbye is to die a little.” Indeed the New York Times review (April 25, 1954, Criminals at Large) says “On the whole, despite occasional outbursts of violence, it’s a moody brooding book, in which Marlowe is less a detective than a disturbed man of 42 on quest for some evidence of truth and humanity.” Needless to say, this isn’t a happy book. It is bleaker then one might expect and given the socialite setting and characters it is a rather scathing look at high society and, in a broader sense, humanity at large.
This isn’t a by-the-numbers detective novel by any means. It works within the confines of its genre to explore a rather bleak outlook on humanity; an espousal of Chandler’s own words from the Simple Art of Murder: “It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.” It is that last which is explored the most thoroughly. Mark Coggin’s does a much better job in his lengthy essay Writing the Long Goodbye in illuminating some of the more biographical history behind Chandler’s creation of the novel, aspects that echo The Long Goodbye’s own fictional novelist Roger Wade’s plight. It isn’t hard to see Wade’s writing as an echo of Chandler’s thoughts on his own craft. As Roger Wade writes: “The moons’ four days off the full and there’s a square patch of moonlight on the wall and it’s looking at me like a big blind milky eye, a wall eye. Joke. Goddam silly simile. Writers. Everything has to be like something else.” The Long Goodbye at least isn’t really like anything else and is all the better as a result.
roshk99's review against another edition
3.0
Marlowe got a bit too cynical at the end of this one, I'm pretty sure he dislikes every single person he meets and he drowns out his hate of the human race with gallons of alcohol. It has some good lines though
mark_lm's review against another edition
3.0
I guess the vernacular ages faster than more formal speech. The dialogue here sometimes seems like it is making fun of itself, but probably not. Especially interesting are:
Names are dropped about whom the modern reader is likely to be ignorant, e.g. Frank Merriwell and Walter Bagehot.
Long gone expressions that we now mostly know from books like this one, or the movies include: People may be a chum or a heel. You might be all wet or sore as hell [i.e. angry]. Fifty cents is called four bits. The wealthy are either the upper crust or the carriage trade. The author says of a character that She hadn't worn a hat. Would you comment that a woman wasn't wearing a hat today? The backtalk of the gangsters can be very amusing, And the next time you crack wise, be missing. Bad language like the hell with you has been almost completely replaced in modern times by a greater obscenity. The author and his genre are noted for the short odd simile. This can be successful, but it can get out of hand as in It would have depressed a laughing jackass and made it coo like a mourning dove.
There are some expressions whose meaning is clear, but that I don't recall ever hearing like He must have made plenty of the folding. so that one wonders if the author made this up. And inevitably there are some expressions that I really can't understand, e.g. some people you're a wrong gee.
=====================
By the way, the 1973 movie The Long Goodbye that revived Elliot Gould's career has made considerable plot changes. That, along with using Gould as Philip Marlowe, means that you can read the book even if you've seen the movie for a much different experience.
Names are dropped about whom the modern reader is likely to be ignorant, e.g. Frank Merriwell and Walter Bagehot.
Long gone expressions that we now mostly know from books like this one, or the movies include: People may be a chum or a heel. You might be all wet or sore as hell [i.e. angry]. Fifty cents is called four bits. The wealthy are either the upper crust or the carriage trade. The author says of a character that She hadn't worn a hat. Would you comment that a woman wasn't wearing a hat today? The backtalk of the gangsters can be very amusing, And the next time you crack wise, be missing. Bad language like the hell with you has been almost completely replaced in modern times by a greater obscenity. The author and his genre are noted for the short odd simile. This can be successful, but it can get out of hand as in It would have depressed a laughing jackass and made it coo like a mourning dove.
There are some expressions whose meaning is clear, but that I don't recall ever hearing like He must have made plenty of the folding. so that one wonders if the author made this up. And inevitably there are some expressions that I really can't understand, e.g. some people you're a wrong gee.
=====================
By the way, the 1973 movie The Long Goodbye that revived Elliot Gould's career has made considerable plot changes. That, along with using Gould as Philip Marlowe, means that you can read the book even if you've seen the movie for a much different experience.