Study Guide: Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler

Plot Summary

http://www.case.edu/artsci/engl/marling/hardboiled/Farewell.HTM

Background on Farewell, My Lovely

Farewell, My Lovely was Chandler's second novel and formed from combining short stories written earlier; it followed his popular The Big Sleep.  Chandler finished writing Farewell, My Lovely in April, 1940 and struggled a little with the title:

"He told Alfred Knoff that he disliked 'titles like The Strange Case of or The Puzzle of or The Mystery of for the reason that I think they put too much emphasis on the mystery itself, and I have not the ingenuity to devise the sort of intricate and recondite puzzle the purest aficionados go for.  The title might lead them to expect a type of story they are not getting.'  He also pointed out that Erle Stanley Gardner had virtually made a trademark of this sort of title.  For Farewell, My Lovely, Chandler originally wanted to use another title, The Second Murderer, which is derived from a scene in Shakespeare's King Richard III in which Richard sends two comic murderers to kill his brother Clarence and thus clear the way to the throne.  The second murderer begins to have doubts and to show signs of compunction.  But when the first murderer reminds him of the money they are to get for the deed, the second murderer abruptly forgets his scruples and say, "Zounds, he dies.  I had forgot the reward.'  Chandler obviously found this Elizabethan payoff highly appropriate to a novel so full of police corruption and bribery.  Blanche Knopf thought otherwise.  She searched through Shakespeare for something else, and suggested Sweet Bells Jangle, which she took from Ophelia's speech about the apparently mad Hamlet.  Chandler countered with Zounds, He Dies and told Mrs. Knopf her title sounded like something out of Ethel M. Dell.

Chandler's stubbornness about titles stemmed from his belief that a title should be easy to remember and should be one that 'makes itself remembered.  It should convey an idea with some emotional tinge.  It should be provocative but not strained.  It should, if possible, have a haunting quality.'  Chandler admired Hemingway's titles, but thought Maugham's were pathetic: 'A good title has magic, and magic is to me the most valuable ingredient in writing, and the rarest.

In the end Chandler's second choice, Farewell, My Lovely, was agreed upon, and the book was published in August [1940].  Advance sales of only 2,900 copies (as compared with 4,500 for The Big Sleep) were disappointing, and Blanche Knopf couldn't resist sending Chandler word that 'the trade reaction is entirely on title.'  Chandler didn't take this lying down and pointed out that since Knopf had agreed to the title he was not to blame if there had been an error in business judgement.  Discouraged as he was, for his loss was far greater than Knopf's, he was cheered by a complimentary review in the Hollywood Citizen-News, which encouraged local sales.  That 'a critic who confessedly does not like mystery stories and thinks they are mostly tripe should take this book seriously as a piece of writing is worth an awful lot to me,' he wrote.  'Because I am not innately a hack writer.'  It is a measure of the relationship between Chandler and the Knopfs that he felt obligated to include the last sentence.

The reviews of Farewell, My Lovely were highly favorable, but one can understand why Chandler was pleased by what Morton Thompson had written in the Hollywood Citizen-News: 'I am perfectly willing to stake whatever critical reputation I possess today or may possess tomorrow on the literature future of this author.  Chandler writes throughout with amazing absorption in the tasks of craftsmanship.  He tries never to miss a trick.  His sentences, all of them, show intense effort, constant editing, polishing, never-ending creative activity.  His construction is a paradox of smoothness and abruptness of technic.  He has a fine taste in story, in drama, and comedy.  He employs this sense constanty and he tells his story as well as he possibly can.  His book and himself are ornaments to his profession.  Lord, but it is good to see honesty and pains and fine impulses again.  It's been months.'" (The Life of Raymond Chandler, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1976, pgs. 88-89).

"Farewell, My Lovely is an improvement [over The Big Sleep] because the focus of the story is more clear.  In The Big Sleep, Chandler's indignation is generalized in a dislike for the rich, but here he concentrates on Bay City, an independent part of Los Angeles, in which the extent of corruption in California life is more vividly demonstrated.  'Sure, it's a nice town,' says Marlowe.  'It's probably no crookeder than Los Angeles. But you can only buy a piece of a big city.  You can buy a town this size all complete, with the original box and tissue paper.' Bay City is based on Santa Monica, where Chandler lived for a time while writing the stories from which the novel is derived.  It is less elegant than Beverly Hills or San Marino, a middle-class town with Spanish-style houses in stucco with wrought-iron grilles and tiled roofs built along clean, wide streets that are lined with palm trees.  The commercial district is limited to a few streets, and the place has an air of universal propriety.  For Chandler, Bay City was a symbol of hypocrisy: he hated the pretense of uprightness in a place virtually owned by a few people with money.  "This Grayle packs a lot of dough in his pants," says Marlowe of the millionaire in the novel.  "And law is where you buy it in this town.'" (The Life of Raymond Chandler, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1976, pg. 90)

"The novel is laid out like a play and the plot proceeds through a series of dramatic scenes between characters.  The story is based on the old chestnut of disguised identity, but Chandler gets away with it by using another traditional dramatic device, the love triangle, in which Marlowe is played off against the glamorous Velma Valento (alias Mrs. Grayle) and the plainer but more honest Anne Riodan.  Like much of Chandler's fiction, Farwell, My Lovely resembles a Restoration comedy in which the plot is not so important as the picture produced by the jokes and situations.  Marlowe also plays a role that is more customary in dramatic comedy than in fiction...The conventions of the detective story, as used by Chandler, are very similar to those of comic drama...." ((The Life of Raymond Chandler, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1976, pg. 91)

Short Biography

"Raymond Chandler," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 226: American Hard-Boiled Crime Writers.  A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book.  Edited by George Parker, University of South Carolina and Julie B. Anderson, Midlands Technical College.  The Gale Group, 2000.  pp. 70-91.

Longer Biography:

Raymond Chandler by Tom Hiney.  (1999.  Grove Press.  ISBN: 0802136370)

Secondary Bibliography

http://home.comcast.net/~mossrobert/html/second.htm

Worth Looking at:

http://home.aol.com/MG4273/chandler.htm (and interesting link to a discussion on Chandler's influence on modern detective writing)

(Found on JSTOR):  "The End of the Trail: The American West of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler."  By Joseph C. Porter.  The Western Historical Quarterly.  Vol. 6, No. 4 (Oct. 1975), pp. 411-424).

Raymond Chandler's Paperback Covers

http://www.vintagepbks.com/chandlercovers.html

Essays on Chandler on the Raymond Chandler Web Site

http://home.comcast.net/~mossrobert/html/criticism.htm

Last updated: 26 June 2007