The sixth in the Philip Marlowe series, The Long Goodbye is significant not only as the last book Raymond Chandler wrote but as a personal consummation of craft that brought his detective novels into the realm of distinguished fiction. "The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers" [p. 3], Marlowe explains in an extraordinary opening line that establishes wealth, trouble, and the central figure of conflict in the story. Taking pity on Lennox, Marlowe brings him home to sober up. They begin a casual friendship, meeting for gimlets at Victor’s; Marlowe learns that the scars on his face are mortar wounds and that he is married to the promiscuous daughter of multimillionaire Harlan Potter. Something in Lennox’s character interests Marlowe, enough that he doesn’t question why Lennox is asking for help getting to Mexico right after his wife has been brutally murdered. Marlowe does help, and is arrested and jailed. When Lennox turns up a suicide with a signed confession in Otatoclán, it gets Marlowe out of jail, but it does not get Lennox out of his life.

CHANG: I mean, it's great. It's movingly bleak. It's so funny because a lot of people, when they hear, oh, you live in LA? - that's so nice. This is a completely different version of LA. Why does that version capture you so deeply? I can’t explain quite how much her memoir meant to me. It was like reading my own grief. She put words to so many of my feelings and I completely agree with both her and Iris Murdoch, who once said, “The bereaved cannot communicate with the unbereaved.” To me, this book was one bereaved woman speaking to another. However, this section is also where a big portion of the literary elements of the novel comes into play. Despite his contemporary success, Chandler was often hurt by critics’ reluctance to include him in literary discussions. In his introduction to Trouble Is My Business (1950), a collection of four of his short stories, Chandler touched on the dichotomy of critique in the genre: CHANG: Is there a passage that you've thought about more than others, like one that distills that rot in LA, that moves you so deeply, Steph?

by Raymond Chandler

CHANG: So awesome to have you here. So, you know, like, the idea for this whole series we're doing is to take a closer look at all the books that authors always find themselves returning to. I have never read "The Long Goodbye," but I can't wait to hear you talk about it. What is it about?

And that's the case for most of the characters in the novel, as well. Terry doesn't know if he really killed Sylvia. Roger Wade doesn't know why he can't write anymore. The reader doesn't know if Eileen was really in love with a sailor who disappeared in Norway during the war (and doesn't know if Eileen really knows), and Marlowe doesn't know why he's so fond of Terry. But even these are just the most obvious questions, the plot points that a reader expects resolution to. What contributes to the unique atmosphere of this book, I think, is that Chandler is always hinting at something deeper. Chandler’s prose has some more delights in capturing the casual attitudes of the rich on power of money: What is astounding about this memoir – what elevates it above many other so-called “grief books” – is that Meghan O’Rourke is able to take the personal and lifts it into the universal. The pain that any grieving or soon-to-be-grieving person feels – “Am I really she who has woken up again without a mother?” – or a father, or a husband or wife can understand Meghan’s emotions, her monumental agony. It’s a sorority or fraternity that only those who have experienced it are given entry.Plot's a bit convoluted but moves along nicely. Don’t get caught up trying to keep it all straight. Instead enjoy the ambiance and the deliciously broken people. Majority of them clinging to sanity by a thread. Roger Wade is interesting, a bestselling pulp fiction author who hits the bottle hard. Rumour has it this is semi-autobiographical. O'Brien, Daniel. Robert Altman: Hollywood Survivor. London: B.T. Batsford, 1995. p. 53. ISBN 9780713474817. See also: He wanted to talk and he couldn't have stopped even if he hadn't really wanted to talk...you knew that he got up on the bottle and only let go of it when he fell asleep at night. He would be like that for the rest of his life and that was what his life was. You would never know how he got that way because even if he told you it would not be the truth. A distorted memory of the truth as he knew it. There is a sad man like that in every quiet bar in the world. That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it."

I caught the rest of it in one of those snob columns in the society section of the paper. I don't read those often, only when I run out of things to dislike. This is very much a postwar novel, as well. We always hear that the 50s were a time of optimism and affluence in America, but Marlowe is preoccupied with the portents of a new world that's coming into being, a world of mass advertising and consumerism in which organized crime is "just the dirty side of the sharp dollar", and where the wealthy enjoy "one long suntanned hangover." Terry proposes the existence of this world to Marlowe, early on: Poi, vent’anni dopo l’uscita del romanzo, nel 1973, arrivò Robert Altman. Erano i suoi anni più fecondi: in soli cinque anni realizzò film storici, come questo, “M*A*S*H*”, “McCabe & Mrs Miller-I compari”, “Thieves Like Us-Gang,” “Nashville”, concedendosi anche opere ‘minori’, ma sempre più che pregevoli, come “Brewster McCloud-Anche gli uccelli uccidono”, “Images” e “California Split-California Poker”. Il suo obiettivo sembrava essere fare buoni film intervenendo sui generei cinematografici, smitizzandoli (pietra miliare rimane la rivisitazione del West nel film con Warren Beatty e Julie Christie), giocando sugli stereotipi. The Long Goodbye is full of gangsters, crooked cops, tough guys, and hot blondes, but what made the book was Marlowe's stoic, principled, noble-in-spite-of-himself attitude, and Chandler's writing. Murphy, Mary. Los Angeles Times (1923-1995); Los Angeles, Calif. [Los Angeles, Calif]08 June 1972: h17.CHA: I write crime novels that are critical of LA, but I also have a deep affection for it and a desire for it to be better.

This is the sixth and last of the full-length novels that Raymond Chandler wrote featuring his iconic detective, Philip Marlowe. It's also the most personal in that Chandler seems to have based two of the characters, Terry Lennox and Roger Wade, at least in part on himself. Altman carrella, panoramica, zoomma, muove in continuazione la sua macchina da presa col dolly, e riprende attraverso finestre, su vetri specchi quadri finestre acqua, superfici che riflettono e schermano, cornici che raddoppiano l’inquadratura. The novel opens outside a club called the Dancers. It is late October or early November. No specific year is given for when the events take place, but internal evidence and the publication date of the novel place them some time between 1950 and 1952.

When The Long Goodbye was rereleased, reviewer Vincent Canby wrote, "it's an original work, complex without being obscure, visually breathtaking without seeming to be inappropriately fancy". [45] Altman did not read all of Chandler's book and instead used Raymond Chandler Speaking, a collection of letters and essays, copies of which he gave the cast and crew, advising them to study the essays. [24] The opening scene with Marlowe and his cat came from a story a friend of Altman's told him about his cat only eating one type of cat food. Altman saw it as a comment on friendship. [22] He decided that the camera should never stop moving and put it on a dolly. [32] The camera movements counter the characters' actions so that the viewer feels like a voyeur. To compensate for Southern California's harsh light, Altman gave the film a soft pastel look reminiscent of postcards from the 1940s. [32]