Obviously Brian Wallace wants me to pay more attention to Chandler, because he’s been bombarding me recently with links — heavy on The Long Goodbye.
Of possible interest to some people would be a “graphic novel” (or fine arts) treatment of Chandler’s last great novel. The artist Klaus Kremmerz agrees with my own long-standing opinion, that you can find some Marlowe in Bogie and the Bob Mitchum versions but that the Elliot Gould take on it off Altman and screenwriter Leigh Brackett, well, sucks. He
was also inspired — or uninspired — by watching Robert Altman’s film adaptation of The Long Goodbye right after reading the novel, “which disappointed me immensely,” he says. “It’s completely different from the novel, especially the ending.
“I imagine Chandler himself would have been very disappointed. On the other hand, I didn’t want to rewatch the movie with Bogart or Mitchum so as not to be too affected.”
And today Brian pops in a link to local crime writer Mark Coggins diving into the manuscript pages of the novel held in the Bodleian Library, looking for cut scenes and polished lines as Chandler created the final “pure text” — extremely well done, you don’t have to be a deep textualist to appreciate the way he covers it all.
Plus Coggins begins with an evocation of Bruce Taylor and the San Francisco Mystery Bookstore of yesteryear (legendary, in the right circles).
