“A yellow window hung here and there, all by itself, like the last orange.”
Why would you choose to read Raymond Chandler’s classic LA noir novel, Farewell My Lovely, or any Chandler novel for that matter, when crime fiction fans today can choose from a bewildering range of contemporary noir? Chandler published Farewell My Lovely in 1940 and, by today’s standards, it has some pretty outdated and at times downright offensive attitudes about women and ethnic minorities – or at least its central detective-protagonist, Philip Marlowe, does.
For some readers Marlowe’s old-fashioned attitudes might be the very thing that attracts them, just as some fans of Golden Age crime fiction (Agatha Christie, PD James) are drawn nostalgically to the pre-war social values and class divisions in those novels. Chandler readers might want to immerse themselves in a world where men were men, dames were dames, and wisecracking and drinking a quart of whiskey before bedtime was standard operating procedure for a generation recovering from the trauma of World War I and the Great Depression, just as they faced another world war.
But what if you find casual racist slurs, sexist remarks and macho bravado off-putting? Would you still bother to read Chandler then? The simple answer is, you don’t have to. You can choose any one of the countless more socially sensitive contemporary crime novels written today, featuring a range of characters of different ethnicities, sexual orientations, non-normative physical traits and so on. Part of what makes the noir genre great is its ability to be constantly reinvented and updated with endless variations and tweaks. Chandler’s old-school tough guy detective is not for everyone. But let’s say you’re still curious, what, if anything, would you gain? Why is Chandler still considered by many writers, readers and critics to be one of the great noir writers of all time?
Philip Marlowe novels have been turned into a number of classic noir films (The Big Sleep, Lady in the Lake, The Long Goodbye) and since then they have also inspired many other Hollywood movies. Chinatown, LA Confidential, The Big Lebowski and Inherent Vice all owe a debt to Chandler’s Marlowe. Bestselling crime novelists Megan Abbott and Ian Rankin are just some of the contemporary writers who sing Chandler’s praises. For both Abbott and Rankin, it is Chandler’s prose, his ability to evoke complex emotion and meaning through language, rather than his plots or hardboiled machismo that are the real draw. They admire Chandler’s wit, his clever one-liners and dazzling, often hilarious metaphors, but also his poetic phrasing, drenched in melancholy and subtly refracting meanings.
While most of us are condemned to coming up with the perfect quip at three o‘clock in the morning, long after the moment has passed, Philip Marlowe can throw shade like a boss. When a cop accuses him of lying he replies, “it’s been a pleasure”. When a married femme fatale gives him a come hither look he remarks “she gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket”. When he is approached by an oversized thug, he describes him as being “as conspicuous as a tarantula on an angel food cake”. Marlowe’s quips seem like a more eloquent forerunner to the wisecracking bravado that became a signature of James Bond. What they signify, of course, is more than just quick wit and a proficiency with the language, but an ability to laugh off danger and challenge power. Even though Marlowe is threatened, beaten up, drugged, hoodwinked and seduced throughout Farewell My Lovely, he retains a defiant spirit. He can see through pretension, lies, and bullying, and he won’t give in to them.
But there is far more to Chandler’s Marlowe than a smart comeback or a mic-dropping putdown. While Chandler emerged from, and consciously tried to emulate, an era of hardboiled pulp writing, he also drew on a deep love of English literature and poetry, from Charles Dickens to William Blake, nurtured by his own childhood education in England. Despite all of the tough, cynical posturing of his detective-hero Marlowe, Chandler’s poetic and romantic side peaks through, often in startlingly beautiful glimpses, made all the more arresting by the brutality and bleakness that surrounds them. Consider for example this passage from Farewell My Lovely, an excerpt of which appears at the beginning of this article.
“…we turned inland, by a big service station, and wound along the flank of the foothills. It got quiet. There was loneliness and the smell of kelp and the smell of wild sage from the hills. A yellow window hung here and there, all by itself, like the last orange. Cars passed, spraying the pavement with cold white light, then growled off into the darkness again. Wisps of fog chased the stars down the sky.”
I was struck by the beauty of this passage the first time I read it and have returned to it time and time again. It is lovely writing, in and of itself, but it also tells us so much about the themes of Farewell My Lovely and Chandler’s novels in general. It also reminds us why Philip Marlowe has become such an enduring hero. This passage describes Marlowe’s loneliness and sense of isolation and disenchantment, but also his longing for beauty in a hostile world. Marlowe is a lonely drinker, he falls for the wrong women, he is jaded by life and cynical about the corruption he sees in the world around him, but still he looks for the light in the darkness, grasping at it wherever he can ‘like the last orange’.
In Farewell My Lovely, Marlowe is drawn reluctantly into trying to find a missing nightclub singer called Velma, the former girlfriend of a small-time thug called Moose Malloy, who has recently been released from jail. Marlowe is literally hauled off the street by Malloy and dragged into a nightclub to help look for her. Even after Malloy kills a man at the club and goes on the run, Marlowe persists in trying to find Velma. There is something about Malloy’s obsession for Velma that captivates Marlowe. It is as if the burned-out, perpetually hung-over detective isn’t just looking for a missing woman but trying to discover what exactly could inspire such passion in a dim-witted brute like Malloy.
Philip Marlowe is presented as a man at war with his own feelings, a tormented tough guy struggling with what it means to be good in a world gone bad. He despises the corruption he sees around him, from cops who are too lazy and racist to investigate a murder because the victim is a black man, to cops on the take, who turn a blind eye to swindlers and gamblers and drug pushers. He is equally appalled by the freeloaders, social climbers, gigolos and frauds who make up the Los Angeles ecosystem, and he is disgusted by drug use and alcoholism, even as he is dimly aware of his own weakness for drink.
Marlowe recognises that he is attracted to the femme fatale Mrs Grayle, who has entered a loveless marriage for money and sleeps around, but he also hates himself for it. He seems disappointed in himself when a good, honest woman, like Anne O’Riordan turns up to help him, and all he can do is notice her physical flaws – she has a nice face, but her upper lip is too long. He seems to realise that he should love someone like Anne instead of lusting after Mrs Grayle, but he can’t seem to control his feelings. Marlowe is aware that the very business he is in, and the methods he uses, are despicable, as when plies the alcoholic Mrs Florian with drink to get her to talk.
What makes Marlowe interesting as a character then is that he is so morally ambiguous and flawed. He is not a man who is above the criminals he investigates, but one who lives in their world and is prone to the same flaws. Marlowe thinks and says cruel things, he makes sexist and dismissive comments about women, African-Americans, Italians, Native Americans, and any man who he considers unmanly, but at the same time he struggles to do what he believes is right.
What makes Chandler’s noir novels so dark is that Marlowe only realises, usually towards the end of each story, that he has been duped in some way, usually through his own weaknesses, his romantic, yet outdated desire to save damsels in distress, his lust for beautiful women, his flawed, paternalistic ideas about love. He puts his faith in the wrong characters, falls for the wrong women, tries to help a lovelorn thug but ends up doing the opposite. In this sense, he is the prototypical noir anti-hero, a character who discovers, too late, that he is as corrupted by the world he lives in as the next man or woman.
While the plot of Farewell My Lovely is clever, drawing together two seemingly unrelated cases of a missing person and a jewel heist with a neat twist, it is not the main attraction. What is most fascinating and satisfying about Farewell My Lovely, and so many of Chandler’s novels, is its exploration of the idea of how we should behave, what we should care about, and what we can believe in, in a world that is seemingly without morals, where the rich and powerful prevail, and the bad guys often get away with their crimes. Can notions of love, beauty and truth guide us in this world, or are they just flawed illusions too? Is it possible to be in this world, truly involved in it, and act morally, or are we doomed to become corrupted by its values? Today, perhaps just as much as in Chandler’s day, these ideas seem relevant and urgent.
Why read Farewell My Lovely? Perhaps to ask ourselves, to paraphrase Raymond Chandler, if we can walk down these mean streets without ourselves becoming mean. Also, you’re going to want to use those wisecracks.
Mrs Florian (Sylvia Miles) shares a drink with detective Philip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum)
in a still from the 1975 Dick Richards directed Farewell, My Lovely
This article by Annemarie Lopez originally appeared on her blog, Espresso & Notebook. Annemarie is a freelance writer born in Australia, descended from Aeolian Islanders, currently living and writing in London.
