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Farewell, My Lovely
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Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: Raymond Chandler
Publisher: Vintage
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $11.16
You Save: $ 2.79 ( 20% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: Raymond Chandler
Publisher: Vintage
Average Customer Rating:
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Farewell, My Lovely Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780394758275
ISBN: 0394758277
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 304
Publication Date: 1988-07-12
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 1988-07-12
Studio: Vintage
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780394758275
ISBN: 0394758277
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 304
Publication Date: 1988-07-12
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 1988-07-12
Studio: Vintage
Editorial Review of Farewell, My Lovely
Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard.
Customer Reviews of Farewell, My Lovely
Customer Rating: 
Review Summary: Do not be misled
Review: The vague product description on Amazon may lead you to think this product is an audiobook of Raymond Chandler's classic novel, _Farewell, My Lovely_, but it is not. It more closely resembles that of the radio programs of the 1940's-1950's, an art mastered by Orson Welles.
The dialogue on this CD shows good character, though often a bit exaggerated; this is common in radio performances as you have no other means of conveying emotion but inflection of voice. The plot of the CD mostly follows the book, but much has been omitted. The background soundtrack contains sound effects and music, though the level is well-balanced in effort to reduce the amount of distraction from the dialogue.
It is not substitute for the novel.
Raymond Chandler's novel, _Farewell, My Lovely_, may be one of his most stylistically clever works. Brimming with sarcasm, repressed anger and sexuality, and criticism of both upper and lower classes, Chandler's prose makes any audio adaptation challenging. For those who love old radio programs, this will do for a few hours enjoyment.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Lyrical Must-Read
Review: According to Wikipedia, FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1940) was Raymond Chandler's second novel and created from three short stories--"The Man Who Liked Dogs" (1936), "Try the Girl" (1937), and "Mandarin's Jade" (1937). This makes a lot of sense to me, since Chandler's great creation, Philip Marlowe, seems more like a character from a short story than the deep and complex creation that a great novelist can achieve.
Yes, Marlowe is certainly a well-defined in FML. He's a guy with high integrity, down-beat and droll, lyrical in his descriptions, relentless and lonely, and he drinks too much. But why is he this way? And what greater issues do his struggles touch upon? Here, Chandler offers next to nothing, unless you have a film-Noir vision of life and view all winners as corrupt and brutal. Instead, he stays small with Marlowe, a highly focused creation developed in short stories, who offers a perfect streamlined literary voice to tell a novel-length story of crime.
This is not to say that Philip Marlowe is ever an uninteresting character in FML. But does he really have a very interesting mind? Take away his lyricism and the grouchy humor of his metaphors and his limits show--he's everybody's sour uncle, boyishly uncompromising, for whom things didn't work out.
Of course, you can't really separate character and voice in fiction. And, Marlowe's voice, its absolutely uncanny metaphors and amazing lyricism, explains why Raymond Chandler, among hundreds of crime-fiction writers, is the guy I choose to read. (I'm usually bored by mysteries and crime fiction.) Here are just two examples from FML.
"He wore a brown suit of which the coat was too small for his shoulders and his trousers were probably a little tight at the waist. His hat was at least two sizes too small and had been perspired in freely by somebody it fitted better than it fitted him. He wore it about where a house wears a weather vane...A tie dangled outside his buttoned jacket, a black tie which had been tied with a pair of pliers in a knot the size of a pea. ...He had a big flat face and a highbridged fleshy nose that looked as hard as the prow of a cruiser."
"Then there were no more houses, just the still dark foothills with an early star or two above them, and the concrete ribbon of road and a sheer drop on one side into a tangle of scrub oak and Manzanita where sometimes you can hear the call of the quails if you stop and keep still and wait. On the other side of the road was a raw clay bank at the edge of which a few unbeatable wild flowers hung on like naughty children that won't go to bed."
In FML, I also enjoyed the brief Hemingway parody and was surprised to encounter--SPOILER COMING--a multi-bullet suicide. This was something Martin Amis used to make a point about crime fiction in Night Train where the narrator is, like Philip Marlowe, burned out but amazingly lyrical.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: My curiosity was pretty well satisifed
Review: Being a fan of "modern" mysteries, I always enjoy picking up a "classic" such as "Maltese Falcon" and "I,the Jury." THis was my first Chandler novel. I won't say I liked this book as much as the others mentioned yet reading it made me think of a dialog line from the first "National Treasure" film where Nicholas Cage reads the Declaration of Independence and says "they just don't talk like that anymore." The same holds true here; the characters, the way they talk, and the way a bottle of booze can take care of everything captures the time and makes you understand what made Chandler so revered up to this day.
As so many great novels do, the story line is secondary to you getting engrossed in the time period, the city of Los Angeles, the hero(??), private eye Philip Marlow, and those he meets up with. As some have mentioned, the plot seems somewhat disjointed early on. It almost borders on Quentin Tarantino movie territory in that you have to wait awhile for a couple of separate incidents to come together in order to grasp the entire story. Marlowe literally stumbles into the middle of a couple of murders and the women, bad guys, and good guys that Marlow comes across makes for a sometimes confusing yet very interesting novel.
A good novel but, for me, not as much fun as Spillane or engrossing as Hammett's classic work. Still, this is the kind of book you read, enjoy, and say as you are closing that book cover, "they don't make 'em like they used to."
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Seeing The World As It Really Is
Review: This is the second Raymond Chandler novel I have read after "The Long Goodbye". I rarely ever read fiction but I can not overemphasize how much I enjoy reading Chandler's novels. These stories are most definitely NOT "page turners" and I mean that as a compliment. A "page turner" leaves the reader in suspense about what is going to happen or what is going to be revealed, often leading me, at least, to superficially scanning much of the prose in order to move ahead more quickly. There is some of this suspense in "Farewell My Lovely" (actually more than in "Goodbye" which spends more time philosophizing) but it is in taking every sentence as it comes, rolling it around in your mouth and savoring the flavor that gives the real pleasure in these novels.
What particularly stands out in this story is the shades of gray of everything. Whereas many detective stories try to fit all the pieces together at the end and show us good guys and bad guys, Chandler's protoganist PI Philip Marlowe sees the world in shades of gray. He doesn't attempt to get to the bottom of people's motivations, and that includes himself. At the beginning of the story, he sees a big white man enter a black nightclub and then sees a black man come flying out the door. For no apparent reason, and admitting that it was none of his business, Marlowe goes in to see what is happening and gets drawn into the mystery. We see people commit murders and yet Marlowe feels that they are not "all bad". Marlowe encounters some policemen who are good, some who are bad and some who are in the middle. In the end, Marlowe figures out more or less what happened, but admits there are holes in his theory, and he can't completely explain why the characters he encountered acted the way they did. This is the way the real world operates and Chandler/Marlowe is telling us to be honest with ourselves and to admit that we often don't know why we do the things we do and whether we are being really consistent.
I find it interesting to note that although this story was written almost 70 years ago, it shows a world that is pretty indistinguishable to our own. The story does not seem "dated". We see the materialist Los Angeles society that I grew up in during the 1960's and 1970's, and the type of people who live on its fringes. The only jarring note I encountered showing the changes in technology since 1940 was when Marlowe mentions he saw an "ice truck" parked on the street. Well, I guess time does move on.
In closing, this novel has one of the most famous Chandler-quotations of them all: "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."
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Not Free SF Reader
Review: Dodgy dames, crooked cops, one charlatan, one Moose and plenty of booze.
Philip Marlowe is a pretty bright tough guy private eye in Los Angeles, when he is hired to be a bodyguard on a very strange assignment involving supposedly a jewellery ransom buyback.
He is soon crossing paths with various police departments, the rich and powerful, and crimelords, not to mention saps and drugs, as this book improves throughout with some entertaining phraseology.
Review Summary: Do not be misled
Review: The vague product description on Amazon may lead you to think this product is an audiobook of Raymond Chandler's classic novel, _Farewell, My Lovely_, but it is not. It more closely resembles that of the radio programs of the 1940's-1950's, an art mastered by Orson Welles.
The dialogue on this CD shows good character, though often a bit exaggerated; this is common in radio performances as you have no other means of conveying emotion but inflection of voice. The plot of the CD mostly follows the book, but much has been omitted. The background soundtrack contains sound effects and music, though the level is well-balanced in effort to reduce the amount of distraction from the dialogue.
It is not substitute for the novel.
Raymond Chandler's novel, _Farewell, My Lovely_, may be one of his most stylistically clever works. Brimming with sarcasm, repressed anger and sexuality, and criticism of both upper and lower classes, Chandler's prose makes any audio adaptation challenging. For those who love old radio programs, this will do for a few hours enjoyment.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Lyrical Must-Read
Review: According to Wikipedia, FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1940) was Raymond Chandler's second novel and created from three short stories--"The Man Who Liked Dogs" (1936), "Try the Girl" (1937), and "Mandarin's Jade" (1937). This makes a lot of sense to me, since Chandler's great creation, Philip Marlowe, seems more like a character from a short story than the deep and complex creation that a great novelist can achieve.
Yes, Marlowe is certainly a well-defined in FML. He's a guy with high integrity, down-beat and droll, lyrical in his descriptions, relentless and lonely, and he drinks too much. But why is he this way? And what greater issues do his struggles touch upon? Here, Chandler offers next to nothing, unless you have a film-Noir vision of life and view all winners as corrupt and brutal. Instead, he stays small with Marlowe, a highly focused creation developed in short stories, who offers a perfect streamlined literary voice to tell a novel-length story of crime.
This is not to say that Philip Marlowe is ever an uninteresting character in FML. But does he really have a very interesting mind? Take away his lyricism and the grouchy humor of his metaphors and his limits show--he's everybody's sour uncle, boyishly uncompromising, for whom things didn't work out.
Of course, you can't really separate character and voice in fiction. And, Marlowe's voice, its absolutely uncanny metaphors and amazing lyricism, explains why Raymond Chandler, among hundreds of crime-fiction writers, is the guy I choose to read. (I'm usually bored by mysteries and crime fiction.) Here are just two examples from FML.
"He wore a brown suit of which the coat was too small for his shoulders and his trousers were probably a little tight at the waist. His hat was at least two sizes too small and had been perspired in freely by somebody it fitted better than it fitted him. He wore it about where a house wears a weather vane...A tie dangled outside his buttoned jacket, a black tie which had been tied with a pair of pliers in a knot the size of a pea. ...He had a big flat face and a highbridged fleshy nose that looked as hard as the prow of a cruiser."
"Then there were no more houses, just the still dark foothills with an early star or two above them, and the concrete ribbon of road and a sheer drop on one side into a tangle of scrub oak and Manzanita where sometimes you can hear the call of the quails if you stop and keep still and wait. On the other side of the road was a raw clay bank at the edge of which a few unbeatable wild flowers hung on like naughty children that won't go to bed."
In FML, I also enjoyed the brief Hemingway parody and was surprised to encounter--SPOILER COMING--a multi-bullet suicide. This was something Martin Amis used to make a point about crime fiction in Night Train where the narrator is, like Philip Marlowe, burned out but amazingly lyrical.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: My curiosity was pretty well satisifed
Review: Being a fan of "modern" mysteries, I always enjoy picking up a "classic" such as "Maltese Falcon" and "I,the Jury." THis was my first Chandler novel. I won't say I liked this book as much as the others mentioned yet reading it made me think of a dialog line from the first "National Treasure" film where Nicholas Cage reads the Declaration of Independence and says "they just don't talk like that anymore." The same holds true here; the characters, the way they talk, and the way a bottle of booze can take care of everything captures the time and makes you understand what made Chandler so revered up to this day.
As so many great novels do, the story line is secondary to you getting engrossed in the time period, the city of Los Angeles, the hero(??), private eye Philip Marlow, and those he meets up with. As some have mentioned, the plot seems somewhat disjointed early on. It almost borders on Quentin Tarantino movie territory in that you have to wait awhile for a couple of separate incidents to come together in order to grasp the entire story. Marlowe literally stumbles into the middle of a couple of murders and the women, bad guys, and good guys that Marlow comes across makes for a sometimes confusing yet very interesting novel.
A good novel but, for me, not as much fun as Spillane or engrossing as Hammett's classic work. Still, this is the kind of book you read, enjoy, and say as you are closing that book cover, "they don't make 'em like they used to."
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Seeing The World As It Really Is
Review: This is the second Raymond Chandler novel I have read after "The Long Goodbye". I rarely ever read fiction but I can not overemphasize how much I enjoy reading Chandler's novels. These stories are most definitely NOT "page turners" and I mean that as a compliment. A "page turner" leaves the reader in suspense about what is going to happen or what is going to be revealed, often leading me, at least, to superficially scanning much of the prose in order to move ahead more quickly. There is some of this suspense in "Farewell My Lovely" (actually more than in "Goodbye" which spends more time philosophizing) but it is in taking every sentence as it comes, rolling it around in your mouth and savoring the flavor that gives the real pleasure in these novels.
What particularly stands out in this story is the shades of gray of everything. Whereas many detective stories try to fit all the pieces together at the end and show us good guys and bad guys, Chandler's protoganist PI Philip Marlowe sees the world in shades of gray. He doesn't attempt to get to the bottom of people's motivations, and that includes himself. At the beginning of the story, he sees a big white man enter a black nightclub and then sees a black man come flying out the door. For no apparent reason, and admitting that it was none of his business, Marlowe goes in to see what is happening and gets drawn into the mystery. We see people commit murders and yet Marlowe feels that they are not "all bad". Marlowe encounters some policemen who are good, some who are bad and some who are in the middle. In the end, Marlowe figures out more or less what happened, but admits there are holes in his theory, and he can't completely explain why the characters he encountered acted the way they did. This is the way the real world operates and Chandler/Marlowe is telling us to be honest with ourselves and to admit that we often don't know why we do the things we do and whether we are being really consistent.
I find it interesting to note that although this story was written almost 70 years ago, it shows a world that is pretty indistinguishable to our own. The story does not seem "dated". We see the materialist Los Angeles society that I grew up in during the 1960's and 1970's, and the type of people who live on its fringes. The only jarring note I encountered showing the changes in technology since 1940 was when Marlowe mentions he saw an "ice truck" parked on the street. Well, I guess time does move on.
In closing, this novel has one of the most famous Chandler-quotations of them all: "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."
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Not Free SF Reader
Review: Dodgy dames, crooked cops, one charlatan, one Moose and plenty of booze.
Philip Marlowe is a pretty bright tough guy private eye in Los Angeles, when he is hired to be a bodyguard on a very strange assignment involving supposedly a jewellery ransom buyback.
He is soon crossing paths with various police departments, the rich and powerful, and crimelords, not to mention saps and drugs, as this book improves throughout with some entertaining phraseology.