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A review by lee_foust
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
3.0
So I read the first two thirds of Farewell, My Lovely yesterday and went to bed thinking that if someone told me that this novel, penned in 1939, was Nazi propaganda meant to malign every non-Aryan race there were, denigrate all uppity women who stray from making babies for the Fatherland and cooking schnitzel, and to paint all Americans as decadent, effeminate swine or alcoholic sluts, I'd have readily believed 'em. Oh, did I forget to mention that all public figures, from politicians down to beat cops, are crooked as well?
Then, lo and behold, as I began to read today suddenly there was a decent cop, and his decency seemed to rub off a bit on Marlowe, and he meets another fine chap who helps him out, and in the end the American hero still wins out--why there's even one nice thing said about a member of a non-white in the last third, and the female characters are slightly less objectified. Still, I couldn't help but think about how this novel so well sums up the Fox News demographic of the last 20 years or so, all of those "Greatest Generation" WWII vets who fought against fascism only out of patriotic loyalty, not because they opposed the core values of the fascists by any means--you know, the guys who hated Mussolini back in the day, but loved Trump tweeting his famous sayings. Sigh.
In terms of lit'rature (using my ironic upper class pseudo-British accent), this one is somewhat clumsier than its predecessor, The Big Sleep, I'm sad to say. It appears to meander more. Since both novels were cobbled together from various short stories, I guess Chandler did better covering that up in the first novel. But in this one we get more bogged down in the individual episodes and endlessly wondering how it all fits together. To Chandler's credit, it does all, in the end, fit together, and quite nicely indeed--and it is, as the title would lead you to believe, actually a kind of love story. The digressions, in the end, aren't unbelievable or unexplained, but they just go on a bit longer than is dramatically effective. (Not sure what I'm grousing about, it's not like I had other pressing plans beyond reading this book.)
Also the super-Hemingwayesque descriptions of places and things get considerably more elaborate here, as in Hemingway's later, lesser novels. Maybe it's because The Big Sleep was contained to a few key locals to which we returned (so a single, short description of them is sufficient) while here we just seemed, for a good 200+ pages, to go from one place to another, one longish description to another, until it got tiresome.
I was then kind of surprised by the Hemingway gag and slag-off of about halfway through. Although Chandler clearly owed everything to the master, obviously his model for English prose writing, I suppose he got tired of people saying that and felt obliged to distance himself a bit from the more literary author. Not sure what he was grousing about, Chandler probably out-sold him 3 or 4 to 1.
Also unlike The Big Sleep, and all to the good, there was a bit of a theme to this novel besides its obvious attitudes that all non-white people are scum, that women are meat, and that almost all people in positions of power are utterly corrupt (and often a bit kinky), but I wouldn't spoil it by telling you here as I think you'll easily find it for yourself.
Then, lo and behold, as I began to read today suddenly there was a decent cop, and his decency seemed to rub off a bit on Marlowe, and he meets another fine chap who helps him out, and in the end the American hero still wins out--why there's even one nice thing said about a member of a non-white in the last third, and the female characters are slightly less objectified. Still, I couldn't help but think about how this novel so well sums up the Fox News demographic of the last 20 years or so, all of those "Greatest Generation" WWII vets who fought against fascism only out of patriotic loyalty, not because they opposed the core values of the fascists by any means--you know, the guys who hated Mussolini back in the day, but loved Trump tweeting his famous sayings. Sigh.
In terms of lit'rature (using my ironic upper class pseudo-British accent), this one is somewhat clumsier than its predecessor, The Big Sleep, I'm sad to say. It appears to meander more. Since both novels were cobbled together from various short stories, I guess Chandler did better covering that up in the first novel. But in this one we get more bogged down in the individual episodes and endlessly wondering how it all fits together. To Chandler's credit, it does all, in the end, fit together, and quite nicely indeed--and it is, as the title would lead you to believe, actually a kind of love story. The digressions, in the end, aren't unbelievable or unexplained, but they just go on a bit longer than is dramatically effective. (Not sure what I'm grousing about, it's not like I had other pressing plans beyond reading this book.)
Also the super-Hemingwayesque descriptions of places and things get considerably more elaborate here, as in Hemingway's later, lesser novels. Maybe it's because The Big Sleep was contained to a few key locals to which we returned (so a single, short description of them is sufficient) while here we just seemed, for a good 200+ pages, to go from one place to another, one longish description to another, until it got tiresome.
I was then kind of surprised by the Hemingway gag and slag-off of about halfway through. Although Chandler clearly owed everything to the master, obviously his model for English prose writing, I suppose he got tired of people saying that and felt obliged to distance himself a bit from the more literary author. Not sure what he was grousing about, Chandler probably out-sold him 3 or 4 to 1.
Also unlike The Big Sleep, and all to the good, there was a bit of a theme to this novel besides its obvious attitudes that all non-white people are scum, that women are meat, and that almost all people in positions of power are utterly corrupt (and often a bit kinky), but I wouldn't spoil it by telling you here as I think you'll easily find it for yourself.