The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler

 

I loved the movie. I also saw it so long ago that I had completely forgotten about its plot, other than the final scene with Elliot Gould shooting his former friend (and quite clearly the major point of divergence between the novel and the movie). 

As often happens with (good) noir books, I really enjoyed it. And this time I didn't feel guilty about it in the slightest - it had been years since I had read anything by Chandler (or Hammett, or anyone of those writers) and it was long overdue. 

Obviously Marlowe is still a bit too smug, and the first-person narrative gets a bit on my nerves as I don't think I'd be able to recall every single verbal exchange I had in the past like he does. But then again, I'm not a private investigator (or an author for that matter!). Still, despite any potential qualm about the genre in general, for me Chandler remains one of the great storytellers of the 20th century.

The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler

In all honesty I was biased against this novel before even starting it: after reading quite a lot of Chandler, I had had enough of him and with how cool Marlowe finds himself, but I did like the movie (though many didn't!) and needed something reasonably long and reasonably light to carry with me to the hospital as my wife delivered baby numero dos. Yes, because that happened too...

Unsurprisingly, I didn't particularly like the book, but the setting remains one that I enjoy (though I'd pick an LA novel by Ellroy any day over this one!). The biggest surprises were in the differences with the movie, but I never really got into the plot, and that's partly due to the little time that I have for Marlowe and to the fact that I was quite on the sleep-deprived side of things those days!
 

All in all, though, it was oddly enough the perfect read for uncomfortable nights on uncomfortable hospital chairs!

A Single Man - Christopher Isherwood

Isherwood is probably, well surely, one of those authors I should have approached way earlier but didn't. Hey, at least I did watch the movie version of A Single Man when it came out and, despite the fact that some critics had their doubts, I found it absolutely masterful (even when some scenes looked like modelling ads).

That said, there were elements in the novel that pleasantly surprised me (first and foremost the fact that the protagonist doesn't have suicidal ideas) and easily made this one of the best books I've read this year. I don't quite know whether that's because of the location, because of the depth of the characters, because of Jim's constant subtle presence, or simply because it's beautifully written.

Perfidia – James Ellroy

It’s been a month and two days since my last post, so let’s get back to my commentaries (I would love to be able to call them reviews, but I’m aware they’re just three paragraphs on my impressions of books!). Perfidia was a novel I quite literally dove into after reading a falling madly in love with L.A. Confidential. Probably owing to its size and bright red cover, my daughter tried to snatch it every time I opened it. She loved it a lot. Me, less so.

Being Ellroy, it’s obviously superbly written, fast-paced, witty, intriguing, intricate and all that. In addition, the exploration of the fictionalized shady dealings in the organization of internment camps for people of Japanese origins set-up in the US at the start of WWII is absolutely fascinating.

But there is a but: while I absolutely loved how Bernstein, Lana Turner, and plenty of other celebrities of the time (or their look-alikes!) appeared in L.A. Confidential and The Black Dhalia, I think that Ellroy goes too far with Bette Davis in Perfidia. An epic one-night stand with Dud Smith, sure, but making her such a focal point of the plot was just a bit excessive. And even in this case, I’m not quite sure how I feel about Ellroy re-using yet again so many of his characters: they remain awesome, but I found myself no longer as interested in their lives as I was in other books in which they appeared. 

L.A. Confidential – James Ellroy

OK. Let’s get back to work (well, odd turn of phrase considering that I have been neglecting the blog for the last month and a half because of, well, work…)

L.A. Confidential has been sitting on my bookshelf (probably the last of my books from Books for Free in Stratford) for ages. Thing is, having watched the movie I felt like there was no need to rush to read the book. But, as often happens, I was wrong – the two are wildly different, something that is quite evident as soon as one starts to realize how intricate the novel’s plot actually is (and even then, it keeps on getting more and more intricate as the book progresses).

Ellroy is as self-assured as writers can get (reading his interviews at times I have the feeling that his ego might have trumped even Gore Vidal’s) but he might have a point, as I think he’s a better crime writer than Chandler, Hammett, or pretty much anyone else in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. His characters are cocky, witty, degenerate, ruthless, and yet not implausible. On top of that, real-life characters add a decadently classy touch to this Ellroy book (or any other work of his, really). And in the novel, Jack Vicennes comes into his own so much more than in the movie.

I loved the movie, but the book was of an even higher calibre – surely one of the best I’ve read so far in 2017 (one day I should do a yearly top-10…). Because of this I am now reading Perfidia, which might have been a bad decision, but more on that later…