If you’re a fan of I’m Not Complaining, there are three simple ways to support this publication:

Growing up, I saw a lot of noir-ish television and movies (my parents both liked them). I loved Peter Gunn, and I loved the short-lived Johnny Staccato (with John Cassavetes in the title role) even more. I was only five, but Dad let me stay up. I’d heard hard-boiled dialogue. But I didn’t know what hard-boiled was until I was sixteen and bought a copy of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. One of Chandler’s last books, but my first. I was a voracious reader, but I’d never read sentences like those.

The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.

I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.

“You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you.”

I was hooked on Chandler, his detective Philip Marlowe, and his brilliant sentences. That was over fifty years ago. I’ve read all of Raymond Chandler’s novels and short stories, Frank MacShane’s Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, and the essay that launched a hundred hard-boiled detective writers, The Simple Art of Murder. Philip Marlowe (always Marlowe, never Philip) is the protagonist in all the novels. My favorite Chandler novel is Farewell, My Lovely, largely because of the secondary character, Moose Malloy (think Mike Mazurki, who played Moose in the screen adaptation Murder, My Sweet). Marlowe describes Malloy as “no wider than a beer truck.”

Several excellent writers of detective fiction have taken a turn with Marlowe. Robert B. Parker and Joe Ide come to mind, but as good as they are, they never quite capture the sadness that goes with the sardonic.

I tried (and failed) to parody Chandler’s style in college, and I’m pretty good at writing parody. I’ve written short parodies of Shakespeare, Allen Ginsburg, Hemingway, and Gogol, but I never could get Chandler. S.J. Perelman could, in his 1945 story, Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a copy in decades.

It was said of Ernest Hemingway (probably by Norman Mailer) that every writer since Hemingway must contend with him: you can write like him, or you can write not like him, but his influence cannot be ignored. Something similar holds true with Chandler and writers of detective fiction: you can accept Chandler’s definitions or reject them, but a writer tries to ignore The Simple Art of Murder at his/her peril.

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid...He is the hero, he is everything. He 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.
– The Simple Art of Murder

Chandler hated detective stories that cheat; that is, that conceal key information until the end, making it impossible for the reader to reach a correct conclusion.

At the same time Chandler’s writing was, to be generous, weak on plotting. He once wrote, “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.” He did that a lot. And Marlowe got the stuffing beat out of him a lot, by cheap gunsels and by crooked cops. Characters walk in and out of the novels, each one with the sole purpose of introducing the next one; sometimes, they disappear, often after beating Marlowe up. Raymond Chandler’s love of alcohol may have played a part in his losing the thread from time to time, but the plot is almost beside the point. It’s the characters and the dialogue that make Chandler so great. The first book, The Big Sleep, introduces us to the Sternwood family (lots of money, bad habits) and bad guys Eddie Mars and Lash Canino. I love that name even more than The Long Goodbye’s Mendy Menendez.

Hard-boiled dialogue belongs to detective fiction and film noir. You can make a film noir without it (D.O.A. with Edmond O’Brien is one example). You can write detective stories without it (especially British detective stories – I think the Brits are too polite to be hard-boiled except Ian Rankin, who’s a Scot). You can have hard-boiled dialogue without a mystery (see Billy Wilder’s classic film, Ace In The Hole). But Raymond Chandler was the master.

There’s an old-time radio series with some of the best non-Chandler hard-boiled dialogue I’ve ever heard. It’s so hard-boiled and loaded with non sequiturs that it borders on parody. The program is Pat Novak for Hire with Jack Webb and Raymond Burr. Listening to those two go at it is like listening to two master musicians trading fours.

There have been many film adaptations of Raymond Chandler’s books. Most people my age and older know The Big Sleep, from Chandler’s first Marlowe novel. Humphrey Bogart is excellent as Marlowe. In Murder, My Sweet, Dick Powell is surprisingly good. I’m not fond of Robert Montgomery’s performance (or the POV camera trick) in The Lady In The Lake.

I should have liked James Garner’s Marlowe in Marlowe (based on Chandler’s The Little Sister), considering how much the character Garner played on The Rockford Files owes to Philip Marlowe, but I didn’t. There are a few great scenes with Bruce Lee, however.

There was a remake of Farewell, My Lovely with Robert Mitchum as Marlowe. He’s a little old for the part, but Mitchum brings all his film noir cred, and he delivers Marlowe’s lines with perfect world-weariness. It’s one of my favorites.

This brings us to the one with the weirdest casting: Elliot Gould in The Long Goodbye. Robert Altman directed this strange adaptation, and I liked it a lot, even though Gould is nothing like I’ve ever imagined Marlowe to be. The reviews at the time were mixed.

I met Elliot Gould once – I sold him a hot dog at Nathan’s in Coney Island. I told him I really liked his work in The Long Goodbye, to which he replied, “Oh, you’re the one.”

I’ve been told that James Caan and Liam Neeson have each taken a turn as Marlowe, but I haven’t seen those. Neither is based on a Raymond Chandler novel.

Chandler always wanted Cary Grant to play the part. I can’t see it.

The movies are worth watching, but it’s the books; that’s where Marlowe lives and where Chandler established himself as the GOAT of detective fiction writers.

You know what? I talk too damn much, and too damn much of it is about me. Stop reading this and go read some Raymond Chandler.

The Raymond Chandler Novels:
The Big Sleep (1939)

Farewell, My Lovely (1940).

The High Window (1942)

The Lady in the Lake (1943)

The Little Sister (1949)

The Long Goodbye (1953)

Playback (1958)

Did you enjoy this post? Then Buy Me A Coffee!