Farewell is based on three previous short stories, which Chandler combined, expanded and rewrote. "Rewrote" is the key word here. Chandler's skills as a stylist are at their height in this novel, especially its opening sections. The work is full of descriptive passages about LA and Santa Monica (Bay City in the novel). Many of these are so beautifully written they seem like prose poems. Chandler's dialogue and general mise-en-scène in the creation of atmosphere and emotional nuances of character and interaction is also at its height here.
Farewell seems like "a week in the life" of a detective. Marlowe gets put through every possible scene, from the genteel to the adventurous, from the intellectual to the physical. Much of Farewell's claim to be a novel, considered as a unified work of art, comes from this very rounded portrait of a detective and his work.
The best parts of the book are the early sections. On the negative side, the scene in the sinister clinic is much too hair raising for comfort, and throws a negative pall over the reading experience of the book. Much of this and subsequent sections simply wallow in gloom. And like most of Chandler's fiction, the lack of strong overall plot weakens the effect, especially in the later chapters.
Mike Grost
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