"To Say Goodbye Is To Die a Little"

Just reached the end of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye. Many of the visuals for me, I found, were hijacked by Robert Altman, who filmed the novel in the seventies, and despite my best efforts I could not shake the image of Sterling Hayden as Roger Wade or the swanky beach house as Wade's residence. Oddly my mental picture of Philip Marlowe was neither Elliott Gould nor Humphrey Bogart, who had played the detective several decades earlier in The Big Sleep. Maybe a little closer to Dick Powell, who donned the P.I.'s trademark smirk for Murder My Sweet.

While Chandler is indisputably the swami of simile, I honestly prefer his forebearer, the highly esteemed Dashiell Hammett, who kicked off the whole noir movement in the first place. The Continental Op, Hammett's usual protagonist, is just a thankless schmo doing his job, without the benefit of Marlowe's macho posturing, which over time would devolve into the insufferable quippage of Bruce Willis and his ilk. The Op bumbles, misjudges, underestimates, overplays, and wins out in the end only due to his dogged persistence, while Marlowe devotes most his time to one-upping everyone he encounters and fending off an endless supply of sultry dames.

Chandler certainly knew how to spin a yarn though, and it's no wonder Hollywood so often came calling. The Big Sleep and Murder My Sweet are unqualifiably two of the best examples of the genre ever put up on the screen.