Reviews
Relentlessly idiomatic. Hollow like a bell. Marlowe is not presented as feeling anything except incessant fatigue and occasional lust. The prose is fast and somehow innocent though surrounded by darkness: The eighty-five cent dinner tasted like a discarded mail bag and was served to me by a waiter who looked as if he would slug me for a quarter, cut my throat for six bits, and bury me at sea in a barrel of concrete for a dollar and a half, plus sales tax. A hand I could have sat in came out of the dimness and took hold of my shoulder and squashed it to a pulp. Then the hand moved me through the doors and casually lifted me up a step. The large face looked at me. A deep soft voice said to me, quietly: "Smokes in here, huh? Tie that for me, pal." It was dark in there. It was quiet. From up above came vague sounds of humanity, but we were alone on the stairs. The big man stared at me solemnly and went on wrecking my shoulder with his hand. "A dinge," he said. "I just thrown him out. You seen me throw him out?" Sure, Noir is cliche now, but we should try to stop Seinfeld effects from undermining original work. And I think he really was original. You could get to like that face a lot. Glamoured up blondes were a dime a dozen, but that was a face that would wear. I smiled at it. Give him enough time and pay him enough money and he'll cure anything from a jaded husband to a grasshopper plague. He would be an expert in frustrated love affairs, women who slept alone and didn't like it, wandering boys and girls who didn't write home, sell the property now or hold it for another year, will this part hurt me with my public or make me seem more versatile? Men would sneak in on him too, big strong guys that roared like lions around their offices and were all cold mush under their vests. But mostly it would be women, fat women that panted and thin women that burned, old women that dreamed and young women that thought they might have Electra complexes, women of all sizes, shapes and ages, but with one thing in common—money. No Thursdays at the County Hospital for Mr. Jules Amthor. "You lied to me." "It was a pleasure." He was silent a moment, as if deciding something. "We'll let that pass," he said. "I've seen her. She came in and told me her story. She's the daughter of a man I knew and respected, as it happens... Well, that's all. Remember what I told you last night. Don't try getting ideas about this case. All we want from you is silence. Otherwise—" He paused. I yawned into the mouthpiece. "I heard that," he snapped. "Perhaps you think I'm not in a position to make that stick. I am. One false move out of you and you'll be locked up as a material witness." "You mean the papers are not to get the case?" "They'll get the murder—but they won't know what's behind it." "Neither do you," I said. "I've warned you twice now," he said. "The third time is out." "You're doing a lot of talking," I said, "for a guy that holds cards." I got the phone hung in my face for that Learned a lot of words, had a lot of fun. Power in simplicity. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance. I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.
This is my first Chandler book and while I was blown away by the sheer amount of hardboilderisms on every page ("Suspicion climbed all over her face like a kitten, but not so playfully...") I quickly lost my grip on the plot right around the third or fourth tangent -- apparently Chandler cobbled this book together from several unrelated stories and I think it shows. I enjoyed the setup and the first chapters immensely, though. I followed the audiobook as read by Elliot Gould who played Marlowe in The Long Goodbye (1973), not my favourite Chandler movie adaptation by any shot, but Gould's got that nice tough guy noir sneer and gives the supporting cast delightfully distinctive voices and cadences, it wasn't hard to tell characters apart even though I couldn't always follow the plot.
It is hard to pick a favourite between this one, The Long Goodbye and The Big Sleep, so I will have to say all three. As the other two, Farewell, My Lovely features the iconic tough but sentimental detective on a winding murder mystery that will leave him worse for wear, as the work he has chosen to do always does. And yet also as always, he emerges no less wise, hardboiled, sensible, cynical but chivalrous: equipped with enough barb to deal with the hard world on its own terms, while shielding a heart that keeps him going. His brutal words hide a rather old-fashioned sensibility and it is this curious mixture that informs his charm, in my books. (Chandler also uses terms which are shockingly racist to us today; although these sentiments are not to be excused, in my view, the reader can take them as products of his time, or a characteristic of his detective.) Well-executed and gripping plot, and its witty characters make this an enjoyable read.
đơn giản là gu viết của tác giả và gu đọc của mình khác hoàn toàn nhau. nghiến răng đọc xong quyển sách mà thấy mệt mỏi quá... The simple thing is the writing style of the author and the reading style of mine sharing no similarity. I appriciate the elaborate and sophisticating description in the book, but its lengthiness exhausts me....
