The Long Goodbye

Loralei Hurlock

Lit & Media Studies
09.13.10
The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler is a mystery novel, with a hint of romance, which is most likely what help me choose this one. Philip Marlowe is a detective, along with being the narrator of this novel. Marlowe is a friendly and straight forward person, who gets caught up in a sticky situation while helping a stranger. He drove his friend Terry Lennox to get away, but little did he know, Lennox was leaving a lot of drama behind for Detective Philip to deal with. This novel was placed in the 1950's and reveals the pros and cons of social stature. At the beginning of this story Marlowe is his own person, a regular Joe, until he is introduced to the social scene, which brought social criticism.

The Long Goodbye begins with Marlow and Lennox not ever known eachother before, until Lennox, a writer with writers block and a drinking habit, stumbles out of the club The Dancers and into Marlowes life. They begin to slowly form a friendship and occasionally go out for drinks, until Lennox randomly shows up at Philip's house to ask him to drive him to the Tijuana Airport. After agreeing, yet stating he does not want to know of anything going on, he gets interogated for being a possible murder suspect of Lennox's wifes death, which was found dead before he fled to Mexico. Finally, they release him, as they allegedly found Lennox's death a successful suicide attempt. After Philip gets released from jail, he is asked to cover a case in which Roger Wade, a very bright writer, has formed a drinking habit and has been missing for three days. Wade's boss and wife have asked Philip to investigate, therefore he did just that and found him at a run down detox facility in the middle of the desert. While investigating, Wade weakly attempted suicide and his wife attempted to seduce Marlowe. A reoccuring theme of Corruption lingers in this book, which is pretty much the underlying theme. As well as, social observation, which occurs throughout the entire novel within little situations. Mrs Wade, an unfaithful and devious woman, gets questioned by Marlowe, until he convinces her to admit she killed Terry Lennox's wife. Even though she tried to blame it on her husband Wade, who manages to succeed in his second attempt of suicide.

I wouldn't have usually chosen a mystery novel, but it was quite fast paced and I agreed with the theme of Corruption, as Chandler knew how to create a clear thought of the cycle of positive people being nice to help others and then usually getting in trouble, put in sticky situations, and/or killed. This novel was definitely dramatized for the film with the purpose that viewers will be able to really get hooked into each troubled scenario, because movies don't explain in detail, as well as the book will. I believe this book also reminds people that even though this book was situated in the 1950's, doesn't mean don't still have the same issues. It's an ongoing theme and I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.