Tue 14 Apr 2009
TMF Review: JAMES CRUMLEY – The Last Good Kiss.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[7] Comments
JAMES CRUMLEY – The Last Good Kiss. Random House, hardcover, 1978. Reprint paperback: Pocket, 1981. Vintage Books, trade ppbk, 1988.
Most private eyes work out of huge metropolitan cities like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Through the years a handful of others have based their somewhat seedier operations in midwestern population centers such as Chicago, Cleveland and Indianapolis.
On television this season there is an example of how a Las Vegas detective goes about his business, but you’d have to admit that the glamor and glitter of that particular show is far from typical of mainstream America, and so it remains far more reminiscent of that old stand-by of the pulp magazines, the Hollywood private eye story.
C. W. Sughrue’s home is Montana, however, and his outlook on life and happiness, or the pursuit thereof, is correspondingly closer to a segment of American demographics long ignored by other authors, obsessed with the bizarre vagaries of life in southern California, for example.
Rocky Mountain jade. Sughrue is often dirty and unshaven, and a good deal of the time he’s drunk, or close to it, but never obnoxiously so. He’s as much a combination of hippie and redneck as either variety of humanity could ever recognize as possible. He mixes affably with both, and yet he has the same moral obligation to himself that all the great private detectives of literature have had to have hidden inside.
The story, as it strips his character carefully away in layers, is so intensely revealing that for him to become yet another series creation would be close to pointless.
As muddled — or even more so — as any in real life, the story begins with a hunt for a famous bar-hopping poet and novelist who takes him on a binge through several states before he’s found, but before he can return home Sughrue is sidetracked into chasing down a runaway girl, lost and not found in the pornographic environs of San Francisco ten years earlier.
Lives are muddled as well, and revelations are painfully hard to come by. The tale that Crumley has to tell builds slowly and easily into a climax that explodes with all the emotional thrill of a gut-satisfying revenge about to be released.
Crumley is not the new Hammett. He’s closer to Chandler, if names must be dropped, but in several ways he’s the equal of both, their peer. In fact, he’s that rarity, an authentic rough-hewn original, and they don’t happen along very often.
[UPDATE] 04-14-09. Some comments from me, thirty years later. I have not re-read the book at any time between then and now.
(1) Here’s the first line of the book, still one of the more memorable ones of hard-boiled crime fiction, in my opinion:
“When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.”
(2) I do not know what TV show I was referring to in the second paragraph. I could look it up, but if you know without resorting to a reference book, leave a comment. I have no prizes to offer to the first one to come up with the correct answer, I’m sorry to say.
(3) It is difficult, sometimes, for a reviewer to say exactly why he or she likes a book. It is far more easy to say why you don’t. Reading this review for the first time in the same 30 years, I’m disappointed (but not surprised) that I wasn’t more clear as to what I read that produced this rave review. (In the MYSTERY FANcier version, but not the one in the Courant, you might like to know that I included a rating: A Plus.)
(4) Somewhere in the middle I suggested that it would be difficult for Crumley to continue using C. W. Sughrue as a series character. As we know now, there were other books, but as I recall none of them knocked my socks off as much as this one. I’ll add a complete list below. (It did take 15 years for Crumley to write about Sughrue again.)
(5) At the end of the review, I compared Crumley to both Hammett and Chandler, saying he was their equal. In the long run, while the author and his books are both cult favorites, I don’t think his career was anywhere near as successful (or known today) as I thought it might. Am I wrong about this?
C. W. SUGHRUE. [James Crumley]
* The Last Good Kiss. Random House, 1978.
* The Mexican Tree Duck. Mysterious Press, 1993.
* Border Snakes. Mysterious Press, 1996. Note: Crumley’s other PI character, Milo Milodragovitch, also appears in this book.
* The Right Madness. Viking, 2005.
April 14th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Maybe “Vegas” with Robert Urich-pre Spencer days?
April 14th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Has to be. That was fast! The title of the series was actually spelled Vega$, and it was on between 1978 to 1981. Urich played PI Dan Tanna, and (according to IMDB) Phyllis Davis, Bart Braverman, Tony Curtis, Naomi Stevens, Greg Morris and Judy Landers had long recurring roles.
The series hasn’t been released commercially on DVD, but it appears to be easily obtainable on the underground market.
— Steve
April 15th, 2009 at 7:27 am
In point #5 of your update you comment on Crumley as compared to Hammett and Chandler. I have to agree with you that Crumley’s work is excellent but not on the same level as Hammett and Chandler.
There is only one other private eye mystery writer that I would put on the very top level, and that is Ross Macdonald, especially the later Lew Archer novels. I’m presently in the process of rereading Macdonald, an author I first read in the 1960’s and 1970’s. I’ve just reread 12 of the Lew Archer novels within a couple months and all have held up well to a second and third reading. I’m also rereading Chandler and according to my notes this is the fifth time I’ve read the novels over the last 45 years. They’ve held up as well. I’ve also been watching the film versions of Chandler’s and Macdonald’s novels.
The Falcon movie starring George Sanders is a disappointment as is The Big Sleep starring Robert Mitchum(updated and transferred to England!).
But The Big Sleep with Bogart, Murder My Sweet, and Farewell My Lovely with Mitchum were all well done. I’ll soon be watching James Garner as Marlowe(I remember this movie as being well done also) and The Long Goodbye with Gould(I’ve had problems with this version to put it mildly, though I have great respect for the work of director Altman).
The two Paul Newman movies based on the Lew Archer character were also of interest(Harper and The Drowning Pool).
April 15th, 2009 at 9:22 am
A lot of Chandler fans have trouble with the Elliott Gould movie, but if you let it stand on its own, I think it’s much better than it’s given credit for. Robert Ebert, for example, whose opinion I always admire, even when I don’t agree with him, which is seldom, calls it one of his “Great Movies.”
It’s obvious, though, why PI fans, and Chandler fans in particular, despise the movie, as Altman certainly dissects if not ridicules the premise of private eye heroes about as far as you can go.
I’d say that the Paul Newman movies are more than “of interest.” I’d like to say that they’re among the best PI movies ever done, and I would, except that I’ve not seen either one since they first came out.
And so maybe I’d change my mind if I were to watch them again now, which I really ought to do, and soon.
— Steve
April 15th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I still remember the night in the mid 1970’s when I left the movie theater after seeing The Long Goodbye. That’s 35 years ago but I was really disgusted at the changes in the plot and in the Philip Marlowe character. However I’ve come to have great respect for Altman’s work and I’m sure if I was not such as admirer of Chandler, then I probably would have praise for the film. But the novel is such a great book that I am very critical of any changes, etc.
I also saw the two Paul Newman movies when they came out in 1966 and 1975 and remember liking them alot. I watched them again recently right after rereading the Ross Macdonald novels and again found them to very well done, which I should have said instead “of interest”. However, I usually always like the novel over the film version, and thus the movie suffers in comparison.
The main problem between the two versions is that the novels just about always have to be trimmed down for the movie version, with the result that scenes and characters have to be left out or simplified, not to mention the habit of directors and actors to make their own version sometimes with extensive changes or a different ending.
By the way, both the Newman films are available in a Paul Newman box set with four other films.
April 17th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
While The Drowning Pool is a very good film I would put Harper very high on the list of the best films in the private eye sub genre, though ironically some of its success stems from the fact it is atypical of Macdonald’s Lew Archer novels and the book (The Moving Target)close to a pastische of Chandler. It didn’t hurt that the screenplay is by William Goldman whose front page review of The Goodbye Look in the New York Times Book Review finally pushed Macdonald onto the best seller list. Of the pilot film The Underground Man with Peter Graves and the series Archer with Brian Keith the less said the better, and hopefully we can all forget Judd Nelson in the film of Macdonald’s Blue City.
Of The Falcon Takes Over based on Farewell My Lovely I found it an entertaining B film with Ward Bond doing a good job as Moose Malloy and the scene with Sanders feeding booze to flowsy witness Anne Revere surprisingly close to the book. Good support from Lynn Bari, James Gleason, Hans Conried, and Turhan Bey. The Michael Shayne entry Time to Kill based on The High Window is actually better than the later Brasher Doubloon (directed by John Brahm) with George Montgomery as Marlowe, and fairly close to the plot though Lloyd Nolan’s Shayne isn’t played as Marlowe.
Of the second The Big Sleep, it’s a huge disappointment, though Richard Boone is well cast as the hitman Canino (Bob Steele in the Hawks version). Murder My Sweet, the Hawks Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely, and Marlowe are all well done films ( I would rank Garner and Marlowe higher than many critics), and though Lady in the Lake’s gimmicky subjective camera is distracting there are good performances in the film by Montgomery as Marlowe, Lloyd Nolan as a crooked cop, Jayne Meadows bad girl, Audrey Trotter’s good girl, and Tom Tully a humane policeman. I’ve seen the surviving episode of the Phil Carey tv series which isn’t bad, though a bit slick, and the HBO Powers Boothe series was well done. Danny Glover played a black Marlowe in a well done adaptation of “Red Wind” for Showtime’s Fallen Angels (another non Marlowe story was done with Bruno Kirby), and there is a ‘lost’ Marlowe episode of CBS Climax! featuring Dick Powell recreating the role of Marlowe in an adaptation of The Long Goodbye. James Caan was quite good as Marlowe in the made for cable version on The Poodle Springs Murders based on the fragment completed by Robert B. Parker.
While I enjoy many of Altman’s films I find him an uneven and often overpraised director who could be tiresomely self indulgent, which is the problem with The Long Goodbye (though Eliott Gould later did some fine readings of Chandler on audio books). Altman made many excellent films, but Long Goodbye isn’t one of them despite many critics who embraced it because of Altman less than any actual achievement. My problem is less with the take on Marlowe or Chandler than on the flaws of the film as entertainment. Chandler isn’t sacred text, but the film should at least be entertaining. The Long Goodbye isn’t. Several of the performances are embarassingly bad including key roles by Nina Van Pallant, Henry Gibson, Sterling Hayden, and baseball star Jim Bouton in a key role that really needed an actor not a sports figure of questionable charisma off the field. I would agree with Leonard Maltin who said Altman’s attitude to the genre bordered on contempt — seldom a good way to approach any genre. I would love to read Leigh Brackett’s script though. I have to believe Altman did a hatchet job on it.
As for the books themselves I think they have created a world so distinct that they don’t really age for the same reason Sherlock Holmes or Lord of the Rings don’t age. They are a separate world in time, a never-never-land that exists parallel to the real world. Much the same is true of James Bond or Tarzan, the Lone Ranger or Dorothy and Oz. In a way they have risen above mere criticism and become part of folk myth. Chandler’s voice and Marlowe’s Los Angeles are like Conan Doyle’s London ‘where it is always 1895’ or Batman’s Gotham City. We have left the realm of mere fiction and entered the realm of myth. Worlds beyond worlds and such. Chandler intended to reflect reality, but like Jane Austen before him created a world more interesting than mere reality.
January 9th, 2015 at 12:52 am
Wow. Lot to cover here. I’ll ‘drop back and punt’. Can’t address every single thing said. Have to take an angled approach.
First: ‘Long Goodbye’.
Detective-fans hate ‘Long Goodbye’? How unfortunate. Me, I despise Miguel Cervantes for his savaging of chivalric myths, and find his ‘Don Quixote’ unreadable for that reason. He trods on my corns. But ‘Long Goodbye’, I’m fine with. There’s no sacred-cows gored there, which disturb me. If anything, the main flaw is the pacing.
I have mixed feelings in general about Altman: admiring him for his experimental dialog but leery of him for the sheer incoherent execution of his films. Sometimes it seems like he’d do anything than engage in an orderly progression of suspense.
That being said, I don’t slam him for ‘Long Goodbye’ and hero-debunking as I do Cervantes for knight-debunking. I don’t care how sharply the ‘hard-boiled purists’ reacted; I never trust purists in any audience. They can be just as skewed as group. I felt ‘Long Goodbye’ *was* entertaining, perhaps because I never expected any director in ’74(?) to be attempting an exact recreation of a faithful detective story, exactly the way the studios did it 30 years before. Is that what audiences expected? Then they were naive. I wouldn’t ask that feat of any 1970s director, and certainly not Altman, the 70s were not the 40s. It is a quirky and resonant update, rather than a stale rehash of outdated tropes.
Therefore I don’t blame him one whit for the way he actually chose to go with this film. ‘Long Goodbye’ is entertaining because it leans toward realism, rather than myth–interesting because of the talented and thoughtful people involved in the production. Really, I’d watch Sterling Hayden or Elliott Gould in almost anything; and Hayden in particular here steals this movie and runs away with it. And it doesn’t hurt.
Next: ‘Harper’.
I agree with whoever above says (in effect) let’s shower more hallelujiahs on Paul Newman in ‘Harper’. Yes indeed. Its a superior product. Tight, solid, sharp, snappy. You ‘can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs’, (as Lenin said) but that film is just about all anyone could have asked it to be…so why quibble over minutiae? It revived the whole dormant genre; made it sexy and hip for a new audience.
Tom Tully: love that actor.
Robert Urich! much love for Urich, too.
‘The Drowning Pool’–sure, it is no ‘Harper’ but it is one darn fine, entertaining, fun and memorable flick by a bunch of old pros. The soundtrack helps to an extraordinary degree–Jerry Fielding nails it again–a young Melanie Griffith in a bikini, reminiscent of her role in ‘Night Moves’–wonderful performances by Andy Robinson and Richard Jaeckel–gauzy New Orleans setting–Joy Harmon–witty quips and one-liners–and the bizarro sanitorium itself. Boy if they could make just ten movies like this every year, these days–? Much less asking them for something really superlative like ‘Harper’ (fuggedabout it). Anyway: I’m a fan of TDP for sure.
Finally: ‘The Last Good Kiss’.
I too, feel that this novel was so personal and so self-contained..it really reads like a mainstream lit-fic novel. Redolent; textured, deeply satisfying. It is disappointing to learn that Crumley went on to serialize the character, but at the same time, I trust Crumley whole-heartedly and am excited to read more.
No, ‘Last Good Kiss’ is NOT ‘Murder My Sweet’ or ‘Farewell My Lovely’ and Crumley is not Chandler. But again: we ought not expect it to be. This is not the studio era. But for my money Crumley IS the Chandler of modern times. He’s that good. I can’t name a single other more Chandler-esque author in contemporary times. I have a few other crime writers I revere (George V Higgins, for one and Andrew Vachss for another–I consider Vachss the modern Hammett) but I’d nominate ‘Last Good Kiss’ as the finest novel… of its entire genre..for our timeperiod. Compare apples to apples! Its penetrating and haunting writing. In a class you cant even find being practiced much anymore.
Whew. Maybe this wasn’t a punt after all, I came upfield a little ways in spite of myself…does anyone read comments posted on a very old, archived thread like this? Am I just talking to myself?