DVDVRBC THE LONG GOODBYE by Raymond Chandler Chapters 1-24

[Swift]

For the most part, he's not. There's an element that even if he wants out of this, he can't get out, whether it be due to the $5000 or the reputation he gained for not talking to the cops, even if he had his own reasons for doing that, or just due to fate. There's an almost hitchcockian element of a man getting drawn into a situation he doesn't want to be in here. The flip side is that Marlowe can't help but be who he is and that's one part curiosity and two parts talking back to people and not being able to not call it like he sees it for the most part. His mouth and ethos gets him in plenty of trouble and then he has to sort of yank at the strings around the edges of that trouble. 

 

Just wanted to check in to the thread and say that I'm this far in the book. Also quoted Matt above, because what he said matches my line of thinking so far.

 

It's weird to be discussing the half point of a book that most of you have all finished because at this point I'm just guessing as to what is going on. Of course I have no idea how the Lennox plot and the Wade plot tie together, or even if they do tie together in the end. And they don't necessarily have to for me. I'm just enjoying the whole thing.

 

I'm surprised to find so many of you saying that Marlowe just seems like a nice guy who wants to help out. He's fairly unlikeable to me, or at least one aspect of his character is. He always seems to be running his mouth looking for a fight. There's a brief moment where some random drunk guy bumps into him in a bar, and Marlowe is snarling unnecessarily. I don't know... maybe it's just a by-product of being in his profession and being in that world. You have to be tough. You can't show weakness to anybody. Or maybe he just always has his hackles raised?

[Jingus]

It's partly the style of the genre, partly the times and the setting, and partly just how Chandler writes: everyone is always wittily snarling at each other in his hyper-testosterone-soaked world.

But with Marlowe himself, it's kinda implied that all the rough shit he's been through has left him so depressed and pessimistic that he just doesn't care if his mouth gets him into trouble. "Go ahead and try something cute, pal. You should see what happened to the LAST five hundred tough guys that did." He's almost reached that Doc Holliday point where he's shocked to wake up alive every day, and probably expected to be dead a long time ago. So that puts him into almost an "angry Zen" mental state where he feels nearly invincible. Nothing can touch him; and if it does finally touch him, well, there's probably nothing he coulda done to stop it from coming anyway.

Life has beaten a mile-wide streak of fatalism into him (hey, did Chandler ever mention anything about Marlowe's childhood or pre-detective life?), and his altruistic side is him fighting back against that. Despite all he's seen, he's not a soulless killer like Sam Spade or Mike Hammer: he has a conscience, and it bothers him when he sees what a rotten world he lives in (and how little he can usually do to change any of it). The vast majority of people he meets are total pieces of shit, to one extent or another; usually the only difference is how long it takes him to smell them out. And he's just barely naive enough that he keeps wishing that maybe this next new acquaintance will finally be the one he's waiting for, one of the ten righteous residents of Sodom, a truly good person worth knowing and worth saving. But 99% of the time, everyone he trusts eventually plays Lucy-with-the-football to his Charlie Brown.

Marlowe's not a stupid guy, and he knows these things about himself, so his wiseacre insult-comic routine is a defense mechanism to keep the schmucks at bay. It won't hold off a truly motivated and talented sociopath, he gets played by those types all the time; but the run-of-the-mill punks and hoods are easily screened out when they take offense to his hot air. Marlowe isn't usually spitting really MEAN digs, he's usually not just walking up to strangers and beginning with "Yo mama's SO fat...". It's usually harmless little grumps, but the violent assholes of the world will take issue with even the harmless little grumps. And anyone dumb enough to fall for it is a cheap goon whom Marlowe can probably handle with minimal difficulty. Hit a good person with an insult, and they either walk away offended or just roll their eyes and ignore it. Marlowe's mouth (which admittedly gets worse when he's in a foul mood) is his tool to keep other people on edge, see how they react, and gauge what kind of personalities he's dealing with.