Raymond Chandler considered The Long Goodbye his greatest and toughest project. Written while his wife, Cissy, was terminally ill and Chandler himself was battling alcoholism, the book is less a traditional mystery and more a "moody, brooding" meditation on truth and social decay. Writing The Long Goodbye - Mark Coggins
The Long Goodbye : A Legacy of Genre Subversion Whether encountered as Raymond Chandler’s definitive 1953 novel or Robert Altman’s radical 1973 film adaptation, The Long Goodbye stands as a monumental critique of the very genres it inhabits. It is a story about the death of old-fashioned codes in a modern, amoral world—a theme that has kept the title relevant for over 70 years. The Novel: Chandler’s Masterpiece of Melancholy The Long Goodbye