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The Chandler Collection: Volume 2
The Long Good-bye: The High Window; Playback
The Chandler-Marlowe prose is a highly charged blend of laconic wit and imagistic poetry set to breakneck rhythms... Its strong colloquial vein was a revolution in language as well as subject matter.... Marlowe liberated his author's imagination into an overheard democratic prose which is one of the most effective narrative instruments in our recent literature... Chandler's novels focus his hero's sensibility, and could almost be described as novels of sensibility. Their constant theme is big city lonliness and the wry pain of a sensitive man coping with the roughest elements of a corrupt society. It is Marlowe's doubleness that makes him interesting: the hard-boiled mask half-concealing Chandler's poetic and satiric mind Ross MacDonald
The Chandler-Marlowe prose is a highly charged blend of laconic wit and imagistic poetry set to breakneck rhythms... Its strong colloquial vein was a revolution in language as well as subject matter.... Marlowe liberated his author's imagination into an overheard democratic prose which is one of the most effective narrative instruments in our recent literature... Chandler's novels focus his hero's sensibility, and could almost be described as novels of sensibility. Their constant theme is big city lonliness and the wry pain of a sensitive man coping with the roughest elements of a corrupt society. It is Marlowe's doubleness that makes him interesting: the hard-boiled mask half-concealing Chandler's poetic and satiric mind Ross MacDonald
636 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
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39 people want to read
About the author
Raymond Chandler
449 books5,616 followersRaymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America.
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.
The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.
The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 12, 2022
In these 3 stories Chandler gets more experimental in terms of stories and structure. Yet the essence remains. More of the twisted plots, noir gentlemen in coats and hats, pretty females. Reflection of the era (TV is a thing here and it already sucks!), clear, where from stereotypes of a lone wolf and inspiration for Harry Hole came. What was getting on my nerves, though, was constant "he was just being tough", "don't get tough on me", "he was a tough guy", "he just wanted to look tough". Also, despite being a master of twisted plots, Chandler totally sucks at writing romance. Slow build-up, females just randomnly throwing themselves at Marlowe and little to no follow-up of that for the story. I almost wished there was no romance whatsoever here, it did not add any benefits to the story. Might be reflection of trends those days - reminded me of James Bond.
But plot twists are good enough to forgive that.
Favourites so far - "The lady in the lake", "Little sister" (both vol. 1) and "The high window" (vol. 2).
But plot twists are good enough to forgive that.
Favourites so far - "The lady in the lake", "Little sister" (both vol. 1) and "The high window" (vol. 2).
March 30, 2015
The High Window is a later novel from Chandler (though not as late as the other two in this volume), and there is a certain fatigue within that is beyond Marlowe's original world-weariness.
The story brings in many of what became typical of hard-boiled detectives (and repeated ad nauseum in the Columbo TV series): one of the wealthy locals contacts the detective about some small matter they want to have investigated privately and quietly; the detective has the solution to that situation fall into his lap; the solution proves to be a small part of a much larger and stranger case the dick takes on for his own gratification. This time, Marlowe is hired to recover a valuable coin. The valuable coin is returned without any help from him, but in the course of his investigation he bumps into two corpses and decides someone's not being straight with him.
By the novel's end, Marlowe is practically a paragon of virtue and straight-dealing. His character here is more defined and slightly more caricatured than in earlier books, where he was basically a good guy in a bad business. Here he comes across as something of a white knight, right down to rescuing a less-than-comely damsel in distress.
Chandler's writing is considerably weaker here compared to successes like The Lady in the Lake, and he spends far too much time on rambling exposition from Marlowe. The story at the heart of this whole thing is actually a pretty solid one, and the mystery (though much more fantastically unlikely) is intriguing with the usual twists and turns before its simplicity is laid bare.
Chandler has created a fairly unique character in the aforementioned damsel, a secretary named Merle Davis. She's not a battleaxe, a drunk or a maneater, as Chandler tends to like to cast his women, but is a smart, slightly hysterical, tightly-laced and capable woman whose looks are neither striking nor dismissable; indeed, Marlowe finds himself studying her several times with a deeper interest than lust. Davis is, in my reading of Chandler thus far, a fairly unique creation and one he puts to inventive use.
Aside from this one stand-out, the cast is the usual parade of lowlifes, upper-class wasters and the occasional (unfortunate but typical of the time) racial stereotype. Between these and the plot, The High Window offers us Chandler of a lower standard than usual, but still a brisk and entertaining read.
The Long Goodbye seems to be the longest of Chandler's novels I've read yet, and he does manage to fit a great deal of story into it, but it never feels overlong. Private investigator Philip Marlowe returns once again, but this time around he feels different to the wisecracking tough egg we're familiar with. Indeed, he does something here he hasn't done before (in my experience): he makes a friend. And, of course, that's where all the trouble begins.
Chandler's notorious for his habit of using his own short stories to create his novels, and this does feel like at least three previous stories woven into one longer narrative. But the character development at play here makes it so much more than just a Frankenstein's monster of text. Not only does Marlowe find a friend, but he does not get the girl (at least, not the one we're expecting) and he pursues a case that is not at all his, only out of honour and a sense of a debt unpaid. So, we do get the old White Knight version of ethics Marlowe's known for, but taken to an extreme. There's also the typical tough-guy-against-the-upper-class going on (in duplicate, at least), but this time we're given a wider variety of people in that class as well as some strikingly political angles on the classes in general.
Of course, all of this is just the structure on which a story gets built, and even the story is a bit of a mindbender. There are multiple identities, secret pasts (naturally), intercontinental intrigue and a little wartime adventure as well. This is not a mystery of the mould Chandler tends toward, and it is absolutely to his credit. His use of Marlowe here is canny and perhaps tellingly honest, giving us insights into Chandler's own view of the real world and his opinions of it and the people that make it go round.
It was perhaps inevitable that Playback would be something of a letdown following the powerhouse of The Long Goodbye, but that doesn't mean it's a bad novel. It is considerably shorter than the two previous books in this collection, but Chandler has packed more lies, deception and intrigue into this one story than in those two combined.
The tale starts innocently enough, when Marlowe is hired by a lawyer (who's working for an unnamed party) to follow a woman after she gets off a train, and report back when she's finally stopped somewhere. But being Marlowe, he immediately suspects something's amiss between the lawyer's double-talk and the subject's transforming personality during what seems like an unsuspicious wait in the train station.
Things rapidly spiral out of control in a new small-town locale, and it seems every character is either lying or not telling the whole truth. Marlowe denies payment from various parties, indulging both his investigative mind and his careless libido by pursuing leads and ladies, though rarely in the same direction.
By the time everything comes together, it's in a way a reader's unlikely to have suspected at any point. The penny drops, Marlowe goes home unpaid, and we find him haunted by a character from a previous novel in a way we could not have expected.
This one's a tidy little story, full of mystery and the characterisation of both people and locations that make Chandler an exceptional writer.
The story brings in many of what became typical of hard-boiled detectives (and repeated ad nauseum in the Columbo TV series): one of the wealthy locals contacts the detective about some small matter they want to have investigated privately and quietly; the detective has the solution to that situation fall into his lap; the solution proves to be a small part of a much larger and stranger case the dick takes on for his own gratification. This time, Marlowe is hired to recover a valuable coin. The valuable coin is returned without any help from him, but in the course of his investigation he bumps into two corpses and decides someone's not being straight with him.
By the novel's end, Marlowe is practically a paragon of virtue and straight-dealing. His character here is more defined and slightly more caricatured than in earlier books, where he was basically a good guy in a bad business. Here he comes across as something of a white knight, right down to rescuing a less-than-comely damsel in distress.
Chandler's writing is considerably weaker here compared to successes like The Lady in the Lake, and he spends far too much time on rambling exposition from Marlowe. The story at the heart of this whole thing is actually a pretty solid one, and the mystery (though much more fantastically unlikely) is intriguing with the usual twists and turns before its simplicity is laid bare.
Chandler has created a fairly unique character in the aforementioned damsel, a secretary named Merle Davis. She's not a battleaxe, a drunk or a maneater, as Chandler tends to like to cast his women, but is a smart, slightly hysterical, tightly-laced and capable woman whose looks are neither striking nor dismissable; indeed, Marlowe finds himself studying her several times with a deeper interest than lust. Davis is, in my reading of Chandler thus far, a fairly unique creation and one he puts to inventive use.
Aside from this one stand-out, the cast is the usual parade of lowlifes, upper-class wasters and the occasional (unfortunate but typical of the time) racial stereotype. Between these and the plot, The High Window offers us Chandler of a lower standard than usual, but still a brisk and entertaining read.
The Long Goodbye seems to be the longest of Chandler's novels I've read yet, and he does manage to fit a great deal of story into it, but it never feels overlong. Private investigator Philip Marlowe returns once again, but this time around he feels different to the wisecracking tough egg we're familiar with. Indeed, he does something here he hasn't done before (in my experience): he makes a friend. And, of course, that's where all the trouble begins.
Chandler's notorious for his habit of using his own short stories to create his novels, and this does feel like at least three previous stories woven into one longer narrative. But the character development at play here makes it so much more than just a Frankenstein's monster of text. Not only does Marlowe find a friend, but he does not get the girl (at least, not the one we're expecting) and he pursues a case that is not at all his, only out of honour and a sense of a debt unpaid. So, we do get the old White Knight version of ethics Marlowe's known for, but taken to an extreme. There's also the typical tough-guy-against-the-upper-class going on (in duplicate, at least), but this time we're given a wider variety of people in that class as well as some strikingly political angles on the classes in general.
Of course, all of this is just the structure on which a story gets built, and even the story is a bit of a mindbender. There are multiple identities, secret pasts (naturally), intercontinental intrigue and a little wartime adventure as well. This is not a mystery of the mould Chandler tends toward, and it is absolutely to his credit. His use of Marlowe here is canny and perhaps tellingly honest, giving us insights into Chandler's own view of the real world and his opinions of it and the people that make it go round.
It was perhaps inevitable that Playback would be something of a letdown following the powerhouse of The Long Goodbye, but that doesn't mean it's a bad novel. It is considerably shorter than the two previous books in this collection, but Chandler has packed more lies, deception and intrigue into this one story than in those two combined.
The tale starts innocently enough, when Marlowe is hired by a lawyer (who's working for an unnamed party) to follow a woman after she gets off a train, and report back when she's finally stopped somewhere. But being Marlowe, he immediately suspects something's amiss between the lawyer's double-talk and the subject's transforming personality during what seems like an unsuspicious wait in the train station.
Things rapidly spiral out of control in a new small-town locale, and it seems every character is either lying or not telling the whole truth. Marlowe denies payment from various parties, indulging both his investigative mind and his careless libido by pursuing leads and ladies, though rarely in the same direction.
By the time everything comes together, it's in a way a reader's unlikely to have suspected at any point. The penny drops, Marlowe goes home unpaid, and we find him haunted by a character from a previous novel in a way we could not have expected.
This one's a tidy little story, full of mystery and the characterisation of both people and locations that make Chandler an exceptional writer.
October 2, 2017
The Long Good-Bye
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews