The Long Goodbye (novel)
| The Long Good-bye | |
|---|---|
 First edition cover |
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| Author(s) | Raymond Chandler |
| Language | English |
| Series | Philip Marlowe |
| Genre(s) | Detective, Crime, Novel |
| Publisher | Hamish Hamilton |
| Publication date | 1953 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 320 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
| Preceded by | The Little Sister |
| Followed by | Playback |
The Long Goodbye is a 1953 novel by Raymond Chandler, centered on his famous detective Philip Marlowe. While some critics consider it inferior to The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely, others rank it as the best of his work.[1] Chandler himself, in a letter to a friend, called the novel "my best book" and recalled the agony of writing it while his wife was terminally ill.[2]
The novel is notable for using hard-boiled detective fiction as a vehicle for social criticism, as well as for including autobiographical elements from Chandler's life. In 1955, the novel received the Edgar Award for Best Novel.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The novel opens outside a club called The Dancers. It is late October or early November 1949. Philip Marlowe meets a drunk named Terry Lennox, a man with scars on one side of his face. They forge an uneasy friendship over the next few months. Everything changes when Lennox shows up late one night (in June 1950) at Marlowe's place, asking for a ride to the Tijuana airport. Marlowe agrees as long as Lennox doesn't tell him any details of why he's running.
On his return to LA, it is revealed that Lennox's wife was found dead in her pool house, and that she had died before Lennox fled. Marlowe is arrested on suspicion of murder after refusing to co-operate with investigators, who want him to confess that he helped Lennox flee.
After three days of antagonizing his interrogators, Marlowe is released when Lennox is (allegedly) found dead of a suicide in Otatoclán with a full written confession by his side. Marlowe gets home to find a cryptic note from Lennox containing a "portrait of Madison" (a $5000 bill).
Marlowe gets a call from a New York publisher named Howard Spencer, asking him to investigate a case. One of his best writers, Roger Wade, has a drinking problem and has been missing for three days. Initially Marlowe refuses, but after Wade's wife, Eileen, also asks for Marlowe's help, he consents. Marlowe ends up finding Wade in a makeshift detox facility in a soon-to-be-abandoned ranch out in the desert. He takes his fee, but the Wades' stories don't match.
The Wades each try to convince Marlowe to stay at their house to keep Roger writing instead of drinking, and though he refuses, he ends up making further trips to the Wades' house at their behest. On one such trip, he finds Wade passed out in the grass with a cut on his head. Mrs. Wade ends up in a sort of trance and attempts to seduce Marlowe, thinking he's a former lover of hers who died ten years earlier in World War II.
As all of this occurs, Marlowe is repeatedly threatened to lay off the Lennox case, first by a friend of Lennox's named Mendy Menendez, then by Lennox's father-in-law, the police, the Wades' servant (a Chileno named Candy), and Wade's wife. Marlowe also learns that Terry Lennox had previously lived as Paul Marston who was married previously and was probably from England.
Wade calls Marlowe again, asking him to come by to have lunch with him. Wade ends up drinking himself into a stupor, and this time succeeds in killing himself. Mrs. Wade arrives at the house shortly thereafter and accuses Marlowe of killing her husband. Candy initially tries to frame Marlowe, but his claims are undermined in an interrogation.
Marlowe gets a call from Spencer regarding Wade's death and he bullies Spencer into taking him to see Mrs. Wade. Once there, Marlowe grills her on the death of Terry Lennox's wife. Eileen first tries to blame it all on Roger, but Marlowe doesn't buy her story and argues that she killed both Mrs. Lennox and Roger Wade and that Paul Marston (Lennox) was actually her first husband, presumed killed in action with the Special Air Service off the coast of Norway or by the Gestapo. The next morning, Marlowe gets a call that Eileen Wade killed herself, leaving a confession in a note.
Marlowe still refuses to let the story lie. He's assaulted by Menendez, who ends up arrested in a setup arranged by a fellow hood (and erstwhile cop) named Randy Starr, who served with Menendez and Lennox/Marston during the war. Finally, Marlowe gets a visit from a Mexican man who claims to have been there when Lennox was killed in his hotel room. Marlowe listens to his story, and then says that he didn't buy it, because the Mexican man is none other than a post-cosmetic-surgery Terry Lennox.
[edit] Film, television & radio adaptations
This novel was dramatized for television in 1954 on the anthology series Climax!, with Dick Powell playing Marlowe as he had a decade earlier in the film Murder, My Sweet. This live telecast is notorious for an incident in which actor Tris Coffin, whose character had just died, thought he was out of camera range, and stood up and walked away, while in view of the entire home audience.
In 1973, Robert Altman filmed an adaptation set in contemporary Los Angeles, with Elliott Gould as Marlowe.
The novel was produced for radio by BBC Radio 4 on 16 January 1978, with Ed Bishop as Marlowe and again on 1 October 2011 with Toby Stephens as Marlowe as part of their 'Classic Chandler' series.
[edit] Other appearances
The Long Goodbye is occasionally referred to in other works of fiction. Greg Iles refers to Raymond Chandler and the novel's title in his own novel The Quiet Game, and names one of his characters Marston.[3] It has been featured in the Japanese tokusatsu drama Kamen Rider W, in which the main character constantly reads from a Japanese version of the book. His partner's name is also Philip.[citation needed]
[edit] References
- ^ April 25, 1954 review of The Long Goodbye in The New York Times
- ^ Chandler, Raymond (2000). The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959 (Paperback ed.). Grove Press Books. p. 228. ISBN 0-8021-3946-9.
- ^ The Quiet Game, paperback edition, pps. 34 and 102
[edit] External links
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Beat Not the Bones by Charlotte Jay |
Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel 1955 |
Succeeded by Beast in View by Margaret Millar |
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