The Long Goodbye at 70

plus some S and J book reviews

The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.

At the end of The Long Goodbye, Philip Marlowe has solved the case, and in doing so destroyed his friendship with alcoholic veteran and accused wife murderer Terry Lennox. He’s lost his illusions about friendship, about ever really knowing someone.

Published in 1953, The Long Goodbye is a bloated, meandering and sentimental book containing the world’s worst gimlet recipe. It’s also arguably the finest crime novel by an American.

Unsurprisingly, The Long Goodbye is also the last great Marlowe novel. Chandler broke something with that one.

I don’t really think Marlowe cares all that much about the Sternwood family, Bogart and Bacall’s chemistry aside. He’s not personally involved in Moose Malloy’s search for Velma, or the Quest family, or the Brasher Doubloon. But poor pitiful Terry Lennox gets to him, and that betrayal signals the end.

The novel’s other plot strand, involving an alcoholic writer named Roger Wade, his long-suffering wife Eileen, and a clinic in the hills run by a doctor named Verringer, probably has some basis in Chandler’s life. Unable to write, Wade misbehaves and makes things hell on Eileen. Maybe with Roger Wade, Chandler was lifting the hood off the engine and allowing us a peek.

And maybe with Terry Lennox he was providing a glimpse into his heart.

The reason, I think, the film version of The Long Goodbye is so divisive is that it never entertains the same illusions Marlowe does about friendship and honor. He’s a fool for sticking by his buddy. His reaction to being duped—shooting the sonofabitch—is a repudiation of the ‘good man in a bad world going down mean streets’ ethos of Chandler’s work.

In the novel, there’s a nobility to failure, an admiration (even if it’s self-admiration) for holding to one’s principle. In the film, he’s a goof. The opening minutes show Marlowe making a trip to the supermarket for cat food, the result of which, he loses the cat. The quest is never worth the result.

I don’t know if the Japanese television version of TLG sticks to the novel’s ending, since I could never find the second part legally or otherwise. But its beginning captures the novel’s two-lonely-guys-in-a-bar sentiment about friendship. (Please, Kino or whoever, put this out.)

Chandler married Marlowe off in Playback, and left an unfinished manuscript which was completed by Robert B Parker and published as Poodle Springs.

From there, Marlowe became exploitable IP, brought back from the dead by a series of writers. We’ve had Old Man Marlowe, Big Sleep Redux Marlowe, Modern Day Marlowe, etc.

“Chandler is far too glazed and existential for efficient genre storytelling,” Martin Amis wrote in a review of Perchance to Dream. “Raymond Chandler created a figure who hovered somewhere between cult and myth: he is both hot and cool, both virile and sterile. He pays a price for his freedom from venality; he is untouchable in all senses; he cannot be corrupted, not by women, not by money, not by America.”

A tough line to walk, even for Chandler.

All of those books, including Playback, could and should be taken as the drawn-out diminuendo of the series. Marlowe’s end was already in place, perfectly stated with The Long Goodbye.

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The first reviews are in for Sunset and Jericho and they’re pretty great:

“Sunset and Jericho is the novel where Sam Wiebe takes his deepest dive yet into his iconic character's psyche…My favorite Wakeland novel so far…”

Benoit Lelievre, Dead End Follies

“Strong writing, character development, structure and pace. Well recommended reading.”

June Roberts, Murder in Common

The book launch is tonight, and the book officially comes out on the 15th! Pick up a copy there courtesy of Pulp Fiction Books, or order it from your local.