"The Long Goodbye" Literary Analysis

“The Long Goodbye”, Raymond Chandler’s sixth novel, has been acclaimed as a significant mainstream novel. It transcended the hard-boiled detective fiction genre because it was more than a mystery story. The novel was a commentary on the problems within society, in particular the evil power of money. It was written while his wife was dying from a lengthy illness during a painful time in his life which gave Chandler cause for contemplation. The novel is a reflection on and analysis of his own life as he tried to come to terms with his failings and integrate the conflicting parts of his life.

Many of the characters in the novel represent different elements or phases of Chandler’s life. Philip Marlowe is the idealist whose motives are pure. He is honest and his actions always follow an ethical and moral code. He is able to rise above the world in which he lives and works; to resist the evil influences and people in his life. He never sacrifices his self respect for the lure of money, and is driven by the need to earn everything he has. This is evident in his last contact with Lennox, disguised as Maioranos, when Marlowe returns the Madison ($5,000 bill) that Lennox mailed him from Mexico. The money was intended as payment for Marlowe’s help in his escape from the police in the aftermath of the murder of Sylvia Lennox. Lennox remarks, “I don’t get it. I really don’t. I’m trying to pay you back and you won’t let me. I couldn’t have told you any more than I did. You wouldn’t have stood for it.” (Chandler 815).

Marlowe lives for his work and finds his sense of purpose in it. He explains to attorney Sewell Endicott why he chooses to remain in jail rather than accept his services, “I’m in a business where people come to me with troubles. … How long would they come if any bruiser with a police shield could hold me upside down and drain my guts?” (Chandler 514). This is his declaration that his professional integrity is more important than his personal situation. Marlowe is courageous in the face of adversity when Chandler wants to be. Marlowe is the part of Chandler that he admires, believes in, and clings to.

Like Terry Lennox Raymond Chandler was a soldier, Lennox in World War II and Chandler in World War I. Lennox bore a physical scar on his face that he sustained protecting other soldiers in his unit by carrying a mortar shell out of a foxhole. He was subsequently captured and tortured by the Nazis. Chandler had no visible scars, but was emotionally damaged by his experiences in the service of the Canadian Corps. He led a platoon of men to their deaths at the hands of a German artillery barrage of which he was the only survivor, and was never the same again. Lennox was lured by the easy life of wealth that Sylvia Potter provided at the expense of his self respect. When Marlowe questions Lennox about his choice to remarry Sylvia, Lennox says, “Price tag? There’s always a price tag, chum. You think I’m not happy maybe? ... I’m rich. Who the hell wants to be happy?” (Chandler 479). Chandler worked for a time as an executive with the Dabney Oil Company where he was well paid and enjoyed an opulent lifestyle filled with expensive cars and illicit affairs. Chandler’s out of control lifestyle led to his dismissal while Lennox’ resulted in an identity change and life in hiding from the police.

Roger Wade represents what Chandler has become, and the part of himself that he wants to change, the part that he resents. Wade is an author who settled for writing historical romance novels because of their popularity and the financial wealth they provided. He hates himself because he sold out his dreams. His self loathing and unhappiness result in a search for fulfillment that he never finds. He tries to find companionship through an extra marital affair with Sylvia Lennox. He tries to erase his problems through binge drinking which leads to alcoholism. Marlowe tells Wade that he believes that his drunken suicide attempt was a fake, “You were swimming in a sea of self-pity. …You fired a shot not meant to hit anything. And your wife came running – that’s what you wanted. Just pity and sympathy, pal. Nothing else.” (Chandler 658). Like Wade, Chandler also had a failed suicide attempt, but first phoned the police, so both attempts were a cry for help.

Even though Chandler’s work achieved an elevated status and some of his novels, including “The Long Goodbye”, were considered to be mainstream literary masterpieces he was unable to acknowledge his achievements. He was never completely satisfied with his life or his work, but refused to accept the emptiness of his life with resolve, instead he fought against it. Like Wade, Chandler engaged in relationships with other women, and he used alcohol to mask the pain he felt. Alcoholism took control of his life in the later years and he sought treatment but never regained his sobriety or health.

It is interesting that the most critically acclaimed of Raymond Chandler’s works was also the most personal. It was an honest examination of his life, the emotions and passions that drove him expressed through the characters. It was Chandler’s attempt to face his demons and reunite the conflicting pieces of his character, which may have given it a more genuine quality that contributed to the success of “The Long Goodbye”.

Works Cited

Chandler, Raymond. “The Long Goodbye.” Raymond Chandler. Ed. Alfred A. Knopf. New

     York: Everyman’s Library, 2002. 465 – 817. Print.

Raymond Chandler - Impressions of "Skyfall"

The new James Bond movie “Skyfall” was recently released. This is the latest in the series of twenty-four movies based on the Ian Fleming books. The screen adaptations of the books have been wildly popular with fans of the adventure genre. While the term hard-boiled can be applied to these works because they fit the strict definition, they can’t be categorized in the same genre as Chandler’s work. They do follow the formula of hard-boiled detective fiction to a point; there is a hero who meets some of the criteria, there is a problem to solve and bad guys to catch, but that’s where the similarity ends.

Chandler might have been entertained, but would not have been able to take the movie too seriously. He probably would have found the story line and plot weak and not well developed, because the movie relies too heavily on frenetic action and the use of gadgetry. Since he utilized what he called the “objective method” to ensure authenticity he might have found that the story contained too many elements of fantasy with the action too extreme to be believable. His issues with converting literary works into movies were well documented during the time he spent collaborating on screenplays, and he no doubt would have found fault with “Skyfall”.

The settings are very different from that of the hard-boiled detective story. The scene changes from one exotic locale to another, unlike the familiar places frequented by the characters in the pulp magazines or Chandler’s novels. While viewers seem to enjoy the broader world perspective, and Bond is comfortable with the jet setting lifestyle, Marlowe would have found it very difficult to thrive outside his comfort zone in the city.

Bond unlike Marlowe is sophisticated, not a common man. He works and lives in a world of extreme wealth and privilege. Like Marlowe he is a man of action, with a quick wit who has a complete sense of who he is and what his job is. Both have their own sort of charm, but Marlowe is an every man who must face the challenges of life in the real world. Chandler might have connected with Bond because of his love for everything English, but would have found the character too shallow. His hero was a man of honor and principle who used his brains more than brawn to solve crimes. Marlowe’s talent was in his ability to analyze and detect, Bond has the staff at MI6 for that.

Raymond Chandler Biography

Raymond Thornton Chandler was born on July 23, 1888 in Chicago Illinois. His parents were Maurice Benjamin Chandler of Philadelphia and Florence Thornton of Waterford Ireland. His father was the descendant of Quakers who emigrated from Ireland, so Chandler was more than half Irish. His early years were spent in Plattsmouth Nebraska near his mother’s sister and her family.  His father, a civil engineer, had a problem with alcoholism and eventually abandoned Chandler and his mother. Throughout his life Chandler rarely spoke of his father except to refer to him as “an utter swine” (MacShane 4). The absence of a relationship with his father led to “an extraordinary sense of loyalty to his mother, and a sense of justice that became a central part of his character and gave him the attitudes he was to express later through his character Philip Marlowe” (MacShane 5).

In 1895 at the age of seven his mother moved him to England where they lived with his maternal aunt and grandmother. His home life was not very happy because the presence of Florence and Ray was not welcomed by the family, and his mother was often reminded of her dependence on them for support. Chandler was educated at a middle class public school in Dulwich that was academically very sound. He considered himself literate and intellectual, and attributed his ability to avoid pretentiousness in his writing, which he viewed as a problem with many fiction works, to his classical education.

After graduation instead of attending college he studied foreign languages in France and Germany. He worked a civil service job in England which he detested, and quit after six months because it conflicted with his disposition. He was clearly trying to “discover a personal and literary sense of self” (Marling 7). It was during this time that he tried his hand at writing for the first time in newspapers and journals in England. His literary work there consisted of poetry that was romantic in nature, articles, and reviews. Even though he thought of himself as an anglophile he decided to return to America in 1912 because as he stated, “America seemed to call to me in some mysterious way” (Marling 11).

Over the next four years he moved from place to place and worked different jobs until the start of World War I. Chandler enlisted in the Canadian Army and served until he suffered a concussion during a German bombardment which eventually resulted in his discharge. After he returned from the military he married Cissy Pascal, eighteen years his elder, to whom he would remain devoted until her death in 1954. When the war ended Chandler worked for an oil company where he eventually achieved the office of vice president, but was fired for his problems with alcohol, absenteeism, and womanizing. So at the age of forty-four he began his literary career out of necessity to support himself. He chose the mystery genre after reading pulp magazines and published detective mystery short stories for The Black Mask and Dime Detective.

Raymond Chandler is thought of as one of the foremost authors of the twentieth century. He had an extensive impact on the style of modern American popular literature. According to Miranda Hickman, English Professor at McGill University, “Chandler's style--that enigmatic amalgam of cynicism, lyricism, and streetwise intelligence--had profoundly shaped our culture in many ways, some immediately recognizable, others more subtle” (285). He is considered to be one of the founders of the hard-boiled genre of detective fiction, and his protagonist, Philip Marlowe, is the definitive example of a private detective. He collaborated on three screenplays and wrote seven novels, three of which are considered to be masterpieces. "The Long Goodbye" written in 1953 has been acclaimed as a serious and significant mainstream novel. When asked if he ever read his own writing after publication he admitted that he enjoyed reading it and remarked, “There must be some magic in writing after all, but I take no credit for it. It just happens, like red hair” (MacShane 268).

Chandler was a complex man whose sensitive nature contributed to his success as a writer, but made him a deeply unhappy man. He was unable to accept the fact that he would never find the fulfillment or achievement he was searching for. While he had some sense of his accomplishments he always downplayed his literary contribution. He said of himself two years before his death, “I have lived my life on the edge of nothing” (MacShane 1). Alone and suffering from clinical depression after the death of his wife he turned to alcohol for escape and attempted suicide in 1955. During the next four years he traveled between the United States and Europe and made multiple attempts at sobriety. He died on March 26, 1959 in La Jolla California after a brief illness.

Works Cited

Hickman, Miranda B. "Introduction: the complex history of a 'simple art'." Studies in the Novel

     35.3 (2003): 285+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.

MacShane, Frank. The Life of Raymond Chandler. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.,

     1976. Print.

Marling, William. Raymond Chandler. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986. Print.

Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction

Raymond Chandler’s work is part of a sub-class of the Modernist Literary Movement known as Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction. It is a literary style distinguished by “the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex” (Manoah). The term hard-boiled actually refers to any fictional work that has elements of toughness and violence, and can be applied to adventures or westerns as well as crime stories. The style of the detective story in this genre however is very distinctive.

The genre evolved from the English detective mystery such as Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books or the stories of Agatha Christie. These predecessors from the so called golden age of detective fiction were stories presented as problems in logic and deduction. Chandler was scornful of these works and once remarked that they were an "affair of the upper classes, the weekend house party and the vicar's rose garden" (qtd. in MacShane). He commented, “They do not come off intellectually as problems, and they do not come off artistically as fiction” (Chandler 8). Hard-boiled detective fiction is much more authentic with characters and stories based on events from daily life or found in the news. According to Manoah the style can be recognized by four main elements; the setting, the language, the detective, and the detection (Manoah).

The setting is usually a large city that is portrayed as a dangerous place where criminals operate freely and politicians, elected officials, and sometimes even the police are corrupt. The language is that of the streets with its own vocabulary, sarcasm, and wit. The detective is a common man with a strong sense of purpose and an ethical and moral code of behavior. “The tough-guy detective’s action oriented code of honor enables him to act in a violent world without losing his moral purity and force…his unsullied isolation and failure maintain the purity of his stance as a man of honor in a false society” (Ogdon). As the hero his job is to investigate the crime, uncover the criminal or conspiracy, and restore order.

Raymond Chandler along with Dashiell Hammett is considered to be a founder of the hard-boiled style of detective fiction. He elevated the standard of writing for the genre to an art form and his works are considered to be modern classics, not just mystery stories. The May 2004 issue of American Heritage Magazine contained an article by Allen Barra which listed the people who have, in the judgment of the writer, had the greatest influence on popular culture in America over the last fifty years; Raymond Chandler was listed third (Seals).

Works Cited

Chandler, Raymond. “The Simple Art of Murder.” New York: Vintage, 1977. Print.

MacShane, Frank. “Raymond Chandler: Overview.” Reference Guide to American Literature.

     Ed. Jim Kamp. 3rd ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. Literature Resource Center . Web. 14

     Nov. 2012

Manoah, J. John Sunil. “Crime Fiction and Crime Detection: contributions to the society with

     reference to Lee Horsley's works.” Language In India (July 2012) : 447+. Literature Resource

     Center. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.

Ogdon, Bethany. “Hard Boiled Ideology.” Critical Quarterly 34.1 (1992) : 71-87. Google

     Scholar. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.

Seals, Marc. "Notes on Raymond Chandler's 'Red Wind.'" Eureka Studies In Teaching Short

     Fiction 9.1 (2008): 166-172. Google Scholar. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.