Most of you know the life story of Raymond Chandler: Educated in Dulwich England, becomes a big muckety muck in the oil business in Southern California, gets broke when the depression hits and turns to writing pulp fiction.
Funny thing though, when he wrote those first stories he laid them out on a typewriter, justified margins, the whole bit. Even counted the words on the page to make sure it matched the count on the little magazines.
Soon he was a success and worked, not happily, in movies. The great legend is about Alan Ladd. Ladd was due to go into the Army so they got Chandler to throw together a script in 2 weeks.
Chandler got a cabin at the Chateau Maremont and a case of whiskey. He got roaring drunk and turned out "The Blue Dahlia". You should see it if you haven't already. It won't waste your time.
This piece is about "The Long Goodbye". It's what should have been and was intended to be his last book. He had it published first in England, a year sooner than the US release. No reason for it except he wanted to be English, like Terry Lennox in the book.
Most people have tried to bury "The Long Goodbye" as genre. It's a mystery novel, hard boiled pulp and not worth serious consideration sort of thing. They take skill and they're enjoyable entertainment but who takes something enjoyable and can see that's it's not craft, it's art.
My argument is that this is the greatest American novel yet written.
In fact, I call it The Great American Novel.
It's set in Hollywood and Los Angeles. Back then LA was considered the city of the future. Then sometime in the 70's Tokyo was the city of the future. You can't help noticing that no place is the future now.
Then and now Hollywood and LA is the place where America and half the world's dreams are concocted, assimilated and spit out.
The Long Goodbye is aware of the fact that it's set in the place where the world stores it's dreams, broken dreams and whole ones.
The characters are different then any before or since. Some of them wear the same clothes, some of them wear the same names, but here they're not just archetypes. They fill those roles nice and cozy but the fillip is that they insist on becoming human and real.
The plot is just something to hang clothes on. A wire sculpture that holds it's own intricate beauty. There's enough guns and stuff to keep the pages turning, but what Robert Altman (in his dreadful film version) and many others missed is that this isn't a murder story.
(Altman is considered a genius by a lot of people. So you can make the argument that his movie version was such a dud because "The Long Goodbye" is a masterpiece and like all masterworks it's idiom and media are part of it's genius. But Jim Bouton, a baseball player who wrote a funny book, "Ball Four", as Terry Lennox, on of the most enigmatic characters in literature? And Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe?)
There are killings but it's a story about people under pressure.
What has them under pressure are two of the most important things in life - Love and Friendship.
That's what the books about, that's what it examines. Love and Friendship in a city of dreams and fantasy. Friendship and love in a place where it's hard to tell reality because of the bright sunlight and shimmering waves of heat.
If you know enough about those two subjects, Love and Friendship, you must be one of those guys who can promise enlightenment and then get some followers who'll give you all their hard earned or all their undeserved dough. If you really got the answer I guess you deserve the cash.
If you need to know about loving people you need to read this book.
It's in the library and always in every bookstore. You don't have to buy it. No one's getting rich off of this except the publishers.
Read it or don't read it. It's the kind of book that's going to keep right on existing no matter what we do.

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