The good ugly, the bad ugly and the ugly ugly. On Chandler’s The Long Goodbye.
Heads up. Spoilers ahead.
Los Angeles is the birthplace of the film noir. You can think of Chinatown with its grimy characters that would cut off a bit off your nose, murder engineers and moguls having incestuous relationships with their own daughters. But for all our money, we love to watch this. There is a stark contrast between the glamour of Los Angeles with its aggressive strive for beauty in its glitzy cosmetics and neon lights, contrasted against its dirty back alleys and the violence behind the scenes.
And then there is the humanity. Only a certain kind of person would be able to navigate between the two sides of the spectrum and still remain intact. Only a certain type of man would follow his values and principles to a tee and remain stubbornly incorruptible. Not many men are made like Phillip Marlowe and that is a dam shame.
Marlowe meets his match, trouble ensues
Ever met a bloke that’s just an absolute mess? He’d make reckless decisions, get you out of your own way so you can help him out, and he’s probably going to cost you more trouble than he’s worth. But help him out you do and there’s something about the bloke that you like, you just can’t put a finger on it. You don’t mind him being called your friend. And he’s probably the type of chap that’s going to be next to you saying “we fucked up” even though it was really his fault that you’re sitting confused in a drunk tank of the local police station.
Terry Lennox was like that. Marlowe met him when Terry was dead drunk, having sold his convertible and almost penniless. His wife just left him in the streets as you would a broken shoe. Marlowe, being a humanitarian took him in til Terry was sober enough to go home and it would be weeks before he’d see him again, this time in a worse condition. Terry’s wife is rich as fuck though, but they both don’t seem to be happy.
When Terry came to Marlowe asking for help, he’s in serious trouble. His wife’s murdered, face beaten to a pulp while she’s naked as the day she was born. It’s all pretty fucked up. Marlowe took the brunt of the flak, being the one contact that Terry left. But that’s really just the start of his troubles and Marlowe being Marlowe, managed to wean himself through it. Later on, when he rescued an alcoholic writer from a hack doctor from a rehab which resembles more of a prison than a recover centre. Striking the relationship with the author and his wife, he would learn a deeper secret of the Lennoxes and the upper echelons.
A man apart — Marlowe at his moral best
It’s like that scene in Dirty Harry where the politician back-handed complimented Harry as a constant in an ever-changing world, right before Harry gives him a heart attack. Marlowe is very much like that, and at times he would be prepared to pull the tricks Dirty Harry would, lying to his advantage and using people as witnesses while he sets a trap to unassuming victims. But regardless of this, the two have much in common: the stubborn dedication to their principles, perhaps to a fault.
At this, we see Marlowe at his absolute best. We don’t really know why Marlowe took a liking to Terry Lennox, but he just does. He wouldn’t leave Terry in the gutter looking like a bum while the cops are sniffing close, and after Terry’s death he would have a gimlet in his honour. He did not even spend Terry’s money which he had earned through beating by police and general anguish.
I won’t do shit like that. I’m not sure if anybody in this day and age would either.
But it makes you think, and makes you respect people who follows their principles by the letter. Was Marlowe flawed in his dedication and loyalty to keeping Terry Lennox’s memory? Marlowe hardly even knew him, and barely could call him his friend, though his actions went above and beyond the job description of being a friend. But let’s come back to this question later, because for me, it is one of the most important questions that we must ask of our lives.
It is not a Marlowe that we’ve seen before, as in the previous novels, he would work tirelessly on the one case. Maybe take a side quest on the side. But Marlowe is more at leisure here, and the size and pace of the book is slower. Marlowe is more mellow, more meditative and there are more moments where he’s exposed his empathetic nature.
The dizzying mask of the glamourous rich
As a social commentary of the upper class, The Long Goodbye is no different than Chandler’s predecessors. The Big Sleep, The Lady in the Lake, the High Window all explore the rot underneath the nicely built mansion with foundations as shaky as matchsticks. It only takes one spark for everything to burn right down.
The rich cheat, their marriage is an absolute fucking mess, they have some kind of depression in one shape or form. Terry Lennox is an obvious example, but he’s war-worn, likely to have PTSD and a raging alcoholic. By himself, he makes for an interesting character study. But what about Eileen Wade? That lady is a fucking psychopath, wow-wee.
As an unsatisfied wife of a cheating and alcoholic husband, yet still very much dependent on her husband’s income, Eileen’s had to balance her survival instinct with her vitriolic instinct. She is therefore stuck in between making sure her husband’s writing gets through to the publisher’s while satisfying her murderous intents. Her relationship with her husband turned precarious when Roger knew that Eileen had killed his mistress. And on her survival instincts, she would also off her husband.
The rich is never painted in a sympathetic light in the Marlowe novels, at least hardly ever. There is something about money that corrupts. Money is an end to itself, but it also buys appearances and for the sake of appearances the rich would pay dearly. At the death of is daughter, the mogul Harlan Potter who would silence the scandal with his influence on the media.
So what’s the point?
Let’s go back to that very same question then. What’s the point for Marlowe for being Marlowe? Why had he remained incorruptible while he probably could have made a more successful career in the police force or had taken more lucrative jobs here and there? Had his principles served him at all? In the end, who are we to judge Marlowe if his endgame is his own principles?
Marlowe is Sisyphus rolling his boulder, trying to change humanity and punished with the immovability of human failures, the human condition if you want to be philosophic about it.
And yes, it is necessary for us to imagine Marlowe being capable of happiness when the boulder rolls down and he walks down to retrieve it. This is in the gimlets he enjoys with Terry, when he’s able to resolve other’s issues pro bono and in his more human interactions with the “good” cops, the appreciation of California at dawn which Chandler writes so beautifully. Rare moments for Marlowe, but makes up the fibre of his existence.
