After reading this novel, I have to admit that I’m good on Chandler for a bit. He’s stylish and enjoyable, but my current woke self can only handle so many offensive passages from seven decades ago. Plus, I’ve had enough plot twists and turns to keep me satisfied for a while. The gratuitousness of the plot twists are feel especially over the top because Phillip Marlowe is a Mary Sue; he’s a little too perfect underneath his gruff exterior.
Even so, this book holds up for what it is. The Big Sleep is a blast of energy, the Long Goodbye is a bit of an forelorn meditation, and Farewell my Lovely is beautiful ode to a long lost Los Angeles.
Chandler painted a complete portrait of a city. You feel the heat of the sidewalk, the cold of the beach, the muggy air of Downtown before air conditioning. It’s not just Chandler of course, his words are mixed in the mind’s eye with all the iconic Hollywood images from that era. But still, its his book and he’s placed you in a unified total environment.
I suspect I’ll be revisiting this book at some point, if only for nostalgia’s sake. A nostalgia for world that came and went thirty years before my birth.
After rereading these books and writing this post months ago, I’ve kept my threat in the first paragraph. I’ve avoided mysteries by slipping into an esoteric spiritual bent. Then again, philosophy encapsulates just as many counterintuitive twists and turns as a detective novel. Its just at a logical-cosmic level. I wonder when the wheel will turn and I’m back to reading some Agatha Christie.