markm reviewed The long goodbye by Raymond Chandler
Review of 'The long goodbye' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I guess the vernacular ages faster than more formal speech. The dialogue here sometimes seems like it is making fun of itself, but probably not. Especially interesting are:
Names are dropped about whom the modern reader is likely to be ignorant, e.g. Frank Merriwell and Walter Bagehot.
Long gone expressions that we now mostly know from books like this one, or the movies include: People may be a chum or a heel. You might be all wet or sore as hell [i.e. angry]. Fifty cents is called four bits. The wealthy are either the upper crust or the carriage trade. The author says of a character that She hadn't worn a hat. Would you comment that a woman wasn't wearing a hat today? The backtalk of the gangsters can be very amusing, And the next time you crack wise, be missing. Bad language like the hell with …
I guess the vernacular ages faster than more formal speech. The dialogue here sometimes seems like it is making fun of itself, but probably not. Especially interesting are:
Names are dropped about whom the modern reader is likely to be ignorant, e.g. Frank Merriwell and Walter Bagehot.
Long gone expressions that we now mostly know from books like this one, or the movies include: People may be a chum or a heel. You might be all wet or sore as hell [i.e. angry]. Fifty cents is called four bits. The wealthy are either the upper crust or the carriage trade. The author says of a character that She hadn't worn a hat. Would you comment that a woman wasn't wearing a hat today? The backtalk of the gangsters can be very amusing, And the next time you crack wise, be missing. Bad language like the hell with you has been almost completely replaced in modern times by a greater obscenity. The author and his genre are noted for the short odd simile. This can be successful, but it can get out of hand as in It would have depressed a laughing jackass and made it coo like a mourning dove.
There are some expressions whose meaning is clear, but that I don't recall ever hearing like He must have made plenty of the folding. so that one wonders if the author made this up. And inevitably there are some expressions that I really can't understand, e.g. some people you're a wrong gee.
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By the way, the 1973 movie The Long Goodbye that revived Elliot Gould's career has made considerable plot changes. That, along with using Gould as Philip Marlowe, means that you can read the book even if you've seen the movie for a much different experience.
