Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler with Owen Hill, part 2!

Farewell, My Lovely (1940) by Raymond Chandler is a cornerstone of the noir genre and the Philip Marlowe books, showcasing Marlowe in one of his most memorable cases. The novel’s richly atmospheric prose vividly captures the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, immersing readers in its gritty, dangerous world. Chandler’s exploration of moral ambiguity and flawed characters adds depth to the mystery, elevating it beyond a simple whodunit.

With its sharp dialogue, intricate plotting, and evocative style, the book solidified Chandler’s reputation as a master of noir and influenced generations of crime writers.

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Owen Hill joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler.

Owen is a novelist and a poet, and The Giveaway: The Clay Blackburn Story, an omnibus of his crime fiction, was recently published by PM Press. It includes three novels and a short story. Owen coedited The Annotated Big Sleep (Vintage, 2018) with Pamela Jackson and Anthony Dean Rizzuto.

Owen Hill joined us as our guest to discuss Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler. Owen is the author of three crime novels, two books of short fiction, and many collections of poetry. He has reviewed crime novels for the Los Angeles Times and the East Bay Express.

In 2005, Owen Hill was awarded the Howard Moss residency at Yaddo. He is co-editor (with Jerry Thompson) of Berkeley Noir for Akashic Press. A memoir, Hands on a Mirror, is also available from Bootstrap Press.

Owen was a buyer at a second-hand bookstore for many years in Berkeley. He is currently an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He lives in Oakland.

Owen Hill is also the author of The Giveaway: The Clay Blackburn Story (PM Press), an omnibus of his crime fiction. It includes three novels and a short story.

Clay Blackburn—poet, book scout, and sometimes detective—cruises the mean, and sometimes not so mean, streets of Berkeley. With his accomplices, a soldier of fortune, a “defrocked” FBI agent, and a smooth and sexy con man, he lives a life of bisexual sensation with a little crime solving on the side. As such, Blackburn is a sly, witty, and more or less reliable raconteur of the last thirty something years of the Bay Area’s radical bohemia and bookselling.

And in the tradition of Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh, and Jean-Claude Izzo’s Marseilles, bears uncomfortable witness to Berkeley’s descent from countercultural paradise to neoliberal inferno.

This omnibus collection collects the novels The Chandler Apartments (2002), The Incredible Double (2010), and the previously unpublished Mayakovsky’s Bugatti (2025), and includes the Blackburn short story “Righteous Kill” (2021).

Transcript

Sarah Harrison: 0:23

Hi, Welcome to Tea, Tonic and Toxin, a book club and podcast for anyone who wants to explore the best mysteries and thrillers ever written. I'm your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters: 0:35

And I'm your host, Carolyn Daughters. Pour yourself a cup of tea, a gin and tonic, but not a toxin, and join us on a journey through 19th and 20th century mysteries and thrillers, every one of them a game changer.

Sarah Harrison: 0:57

Today's sponsor is Carolyn Daughters. Carolyn runs game-changing corporate brand therapy workshops, teaches Online Marketing Boot Camp courses, and leads persuasive writing workshops. Carolyn empowers startups, small businesses, enterprise organizations and government agencies to win hearts, minds, deals, and dollars. You can learn more at carolyndaughters.com.

Carolyn Daughters: 1:36

Sarah, we're back to talk about Farewell, My Lovely. We're doing two Raymond Chandler books in a row. We have our guest, Owen Hill, with us again.

Sarah Harrison: 1:43

Yes, Owen is so knowledgeable and talented, and I hope we get to ask him more about himself this time. I know I got all caught up in Philip Marlowe.

Carolyn Daughters: 1:52

Owen has a new book out, so we have a lot of questions for him. But before we get too deep, we have a listener of the episode. It is ZJ Czupor - Zoltan James is his pen name, and he was a guest on our Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers episode.

Sarah Harrison: 2:10

He's our top ranking guest from last year. He got the most listen. That's awesome! Congrats.

Carolyn Daughters: 2:19

We adore him, and he is a favorite here at the Tea, Tonic and Toxin book club and podcast. We encourage everyone to read his work on his Substack at zjames.substack.com.

Sarah Harrison: 2:38

Thanks so much for continuing your relationship with ZJ.

Carolyn Daughters: 2:44

You, too, can get a shout out and a wonderful sticker. He already has a sticker, but we might send him a few more stickers, a little more swag. All you have to do is comment on our website, comment on social media, or subscribe to our podcast. Let us know about it. Any of those things are going to get you a shout out.

Sarah Harrison: 3:06

Do tell us if you subscribe and you want a sticker. I can't know that unless you tell us.

Carolyn Daughters: 3:12

Yes, exactly.

Sarah Harrison: 3:15

So let us and everyone know. All right, if you haven't listened to our first episode, or if it's been a week or two, I'm going to give you a summary of the Raymond Chandler books we've been discussing. Today, we're talking about Farewell, My Lovely, published in 1940 by Raymond Chandler. Philip Marlowe is about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune teller, a couple more murders and more corruption than your average graveyard. The New Yorker says Chandler wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered. Literary Review says Chandler was "one of the finest prose writers of the 20th century. Age does not wither Chandler's prose, he wrote like an angel."(Or like a tarantula on an angel food cake.) Raymond Chandler was a British-American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932 at age 44 he decided to write detective fiction after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first story, Blackmailers Don't Shoot, was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, he published seven novels during his lifetime. The year before he died, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. Raymond Chandler died on March 26, 1959, in La Jolla, California.

Carolyn Daughters: 4:51

We're excited to once again welcome Owen Hill as our guest. He's the co-annotator and editor of the Annotated edition of Raymond Chandler's classic novel The Big Sleep, published in 2018 by Vintage Crime The Washington Post called the Annotated Big Sleep fascinating and essential. Owen is also a novelist and poet. The Giveaway: The Clay Blackburn story, was recently released from PM Press. It's an omnibus of his crime fiction, and it includes three novels and a short story. Owen has reviewed crime novels for the Los Angeles Times and the East Bay Express. In 2005, he was awarded the Howard Moss residency at Yaddo. That is not an easy get, as he and I were discussing offline. He is co-editor with Jerry Thompson of Berkeley Noir for Akashic press, and a memoir, Hands on a Mirror, is also available from Bootstrap Press. Owen worked for many years in a secondhand bookstore in Berkeley, which sounds amazing.

Sarah Harrison: 5:55

Sounds like a dream job over there.

Carolyn Daughters: 5:57

And he's currently an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World. Welcome back!

Owen Hill: 6:05

Thanks for having me back.

Sarah Harrison: 6:08

Tell us about your book. I want to hear about your latest book.

Owen Hill: 6:12

It's from PM Press, which used to be an Oakland press. Now they're back east. I don't publish a lot. I have three novels and a short story. This is the collection of all of them written over 25 years. My detective is named Clay Blackburn.

Sarah Harrison: 6:41

Nice. Tell us, is your detective similar or dissimilar to Philip Marlowe in the Raymond Chandler books?

Owen Hill: 6:47

He's a little Marlowe like, definitely. A little too curious, gets himself into trouble, doesn't make enough money.

Carolyn Daughters: 6:57

Is the timeframe contemporary? And also tell us about the title, The Giveaway.

Owen Hill: 7:04

It's contemporary, and it takes place mostly in Berkeley. It's definitely a Berkeley novel. I lived in Berkeley for many years. I'm in Oakland now, and Berkeley's is full of comic characters and intrigue, if you know where to look. I think Berkeley was a good place to put it.

Carolyn Daughters: 7:24

Oakland and Berkeley are so interesting because they're just slightly separated, and yet to me they feel like two very different worlds. What's your take on Oakland versus Berkeley?

Owen Hill: 7:37

It's true. I mean, Berkeley is a college town with pretensions. I like the pretensions, politically and all, and Oakland's a tough, big city, and both really interesting places. I'm in Oakland, but I can walk to Berkeley. You're right. I mean, they're very close. It's like three miles to the line.

Carolyn Daughters: 8:05

Then you have a memoir as well, Hands on a Mirror. We've had one memoir so far. As a guest, we had Erika Krouse, who talked about her memoir, which is also part true literary crime, and it's an Edgar Award winner. Tell Me Everything. But we haven't done a lot of memoir here. What prompted you to write a memoir?

Owen Hill: 8:33

Years ago, I started a blog, a first person what I'm doing, and I rearranged those and rewrote them a little. It's maybe 10% fiction too. I mean, so it's hard to stay straight with memoir when there's something good that you can do to make it more dramatic. Much of it is about working at LA Airport when I was young and being a union organizer there. So there's a lot of union stuff in it, and a lot about books, including Raymond Chandler books. Because I was a bookseller for so many years. I don't know. Memoirs. They're fun. You can be a little bit gentler, and you get to talk about yourself. So, why go to a therapist? You can just write a memoir.

Carolyn Daughters: 9:22

It's simultaneously cheaper and crazy, more expensive, because it could take years to write this thing.

Owen Hill: 9:28

That's true. That's true.

Carolyn Daughters: 9:31

And then our eyes lit up when we learned you worked at a secondhand bookstore, I think, in Berkeley. To me, on some level, that's my backup job, my dream job.

Sarah Harrison: 9:48

Definitely you and I even talk we want to start a Tea, Tonic and Toxin bookstore.

Owen Hill: 9:57

My dream was to start my own, but I worked at Moe's Books in Berkeley. It was such a fantastic bookstore. It was like the golden handcuffs. It's like, I can't leave the store. It's too good, and the owners are a little more generous than many small business people, partly thanks to a union. And so I was able to pay the rent and be a book buyer, which is just a great job. Yeah, it's a really nice job.

Carolyn Daughters: 10:29

We were wondering if you would be willing to read you read a bit from Farewell, My Lovely. In our last episode, you read from chapter eight. We're wondering if we can jump to chapter 34 and just have you read the first five paragraphs or so.

Owen Hill: 10:44

I'm always happy to read from the Raymond Chandler books. I lay on my back on a bed in a Waterfront Hotel and waited for it to get dark. It was a small front room with a hard bed and a mattress slightly thicker than the cotton blanket that covered it a spring underneath me was broken and stuck into the left side of my den of my back. I lay there and let it prod me, the reflection on a red of a red neon light glared on the ceiling. When it made the whole room red, it would be dark enough to go out outside, cars honked along the alley they called the speedway feet slithered on the sidewalks below my window, there was a murmur and a mutter of coming and going in the air. The air that seeped in through the rusted screens smelled of stale, frying fat. Far off, a voice of the kind that could be heard far off was shouting, get hungry. Folks get hungry. Nice, hot doggies here, get hungry. It got darker, I thought. And thought in my mind, and my mind moved with a sluggish stealthlessness, stealthiness, as if it was being watched by bitter and sadistic eyes. I thought of dead eyes looking at a moon like Scott moonless sky with black blood at the corners of the mouths beneath them. I thought of nasty old women beaten to death against the posts of their dirty beds. I thought of a man with bright blonde hair, who was afraid and didn't quite know what he was afraid of, who was sensitive enough to know that something was wrong and too vain or too dull to guess what it was that was wrong. I thought of beautiful, rich women who could be had. I thought of nice, slim, curious girls who lived alone and could be had, too in a different way. I thought of cops, tough cops that could be greased and yet were not by any means all bad, like Hemingway, fat, prosperous cops with chambers Chamber of Commerce, voices like chief wax, slim, smart and deadly cops like Randall, who, for all their smartness and deadliness were not free to do a clean job in a clean way. I thought of sour old goats like Nulty, who had given up trying. I thought of Indians and psychics and dope doctors. I thought of lots of things. It got darker, the glare of the red neon sign spread farther and farther across the ceiling. I sat up on the bed and put my feet on the floor and rubbed the back of my neck. I got up on my feet and went over to the bow to the bowl in the corner, and threw cold water on my face. After a little while, I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink. I needed a lot of life insurance. I needed a vacation. I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat and a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room,

Sarah Harrison: 14:03

I'm reading along with you, and I see I had underlined a lot of the parts.

Carolyn Daughters: 14:07

There was an underliner.

Sarah Harrison: 14:09

Don't give me a book without a pen because I search around. I can't start.

Carolyn Daughters: 14:15

On a related note, don't give her your book because she will ...

Sarah Harrison: 14:19

I'll take a bath and they get all wrinkly.

Owen Hill: 14:24

So that last line is amazing where he is only as his coat and hat. It's just, it's just beautiful poetry.

Carolyn Daughters: 14:38

It is beautiful poetry. And we're in his thoughts, in my mind, a little more than The Big Sleep, a book that I love. So I'm not trying to say this is better than the book Big Sleep. It's more, for me, that was an amazing foundation for Philip Marlowe. And then you get to this. Book, and it expands the universe of his thought in my mind, like I'm more aware of how he's I don't know. At times he seems in a dark space. He seems almost depressed at times in the Raymond Chandler books, whereas in The Big Sleep, everything, for the most part, seemed like a farce, except there were a couple scenes where he says,"women make me sick," or something like that, where you can feel like his frustration. But here it's like he linked that. It's like Raymond Chandler lingers a little bit more, and we get to see Philip Marlowe really just sinking into it. And then, what's the cure? You get up, you put on your hat, you pick up your gun and your coat, and do what you have to do. You do the thing you have to do.

Sarah Harrison: 15:57

I think you put your finger on one of the things that I wasn't articulating in the last episode, and we are more in his thoughts. We do get more of his thoughts. And then that made me think of a Dashiell Hammett where we get none of the detective stout. It's action and movement only. And so that is an interesting aspect. And I really liked, we like this paragraph, this section where everyone's a little bit good and bad, a little bit something and something else. What we were talking about earlier, that he would be so generous to Hemingway, who beat the crap out of him at the same time, helps him A little bit later, and he's not all bad. He's part good cop and part bad cop.

Carolyn Daughters: 16:48

Can you talk about this a little bit? Because in this section, but also referenced throughout the Raymond Chandler books is that a lot of the characters are not pure hero or pure evil. They are super complicated and some of the cops he's working with, we see, they turn a blind eye when they shouldn't, or they might take a kickback, or they whatever the thing is. But yet, in many cases, they're not all bad. Like, can you talk about this a little bit?

Owen Hill: 17:21

The characters do have real depth, and they live in a society that doesn't, I one of the cops says it, you're, if you have to be dishonest or you can't get by. And that's the theme, really, that it's a tough, terrible world, and people aren't necessarily all bad. They just have to survive. That's why Velma is such a great character to me, as compared to like Carr man, who's great in a comic way, and maybe sexier, I don't know, but Velma is just like circumstances made her into what she is. And that's a, I don't know. It's a very modern way of looking at things. It isn't she's not a bad person. She was made bad.

Carolyn Daughters: 18:19

Super complicated.

Sarah Harrison: 18:20

I people talk to me more about Velma. We haven't got to talk to her about her all that much. And she is really interesting. And we find out at the end as he's putting things together, going off of a photo that isn't even a photo of her, figuring all out like, this is the Velma that I've been after. This is her, and she's all slicked up, she's in a different position. And then, you find out who she is, and her choices at the end tell me more about how you feel about her. She sounds like a character you're really interested in.

Owen Hill: 18:58

She's, first of all, as a plot device, it's a great chess game to get the reader and Marlowe to not know who he's speaking to until later. And she's a changeling, she actually pulls it off. She's an actress, and I think that's fascinating. And just as an aside, my cat's name is Velma Valento. I picked her up at the pound, and she's had a tough life, but now she said she's rich. That's what I like about her. She wasn't a rich bad girl. She scuffled and got to the top. And then then you have the tragic end.

Carolyn Daughters: 19:57

Female characters are very interesting in the Raymond Chandler books. That scene where they're at the neighbors of Jessie Florian, and that the neighbor woman is able to, like watch out her window, and she sees the mailman come, or she sees the mailman not come, or at one point. Philip Marlowe is tapping her as a witness, but she lies to them, and he catches her in a lie, and her reaction was, like, so interesting and human. I think she, like, runs from the room, burst into tears, and I just thought it's so interesting. He includes these little snippets that just show that, like, either he's witnessed something like this, or he understands how the character he is creating would react, but like, I like the way with Velma, with this particular neighbor, even with Jessie Florian, and how we see how complicated they are, and how they got where, where they are right Now, like this woman's entire cache the neighbor is the neighborhood busybody who knows everything.

Sarah Harrison: 21:08

He calls her Miss Nosy.

Carolyn Daughters: 21:15

Ostensibly, her life's dream wasn't to just sit around in her living room chair, drinking from the minute she wakes up until the minute she goes to bed.

Sarah Harrison: 21:27

I don't know she was, she was a terrible one. She was a terrible one. But, like, her foil was, I felt like, even though she was terrible, nobody meant to murder her. And it was still ugly, and Philip Marlowe still like, he didn't like it. Didn't like going in there and getting her drunk. He didn't like seeing her beat up, even though she was an irredeemable character. It's still like a nasty business.

Carolyn Daughters: 21:52

And there's this wildcat in in Jessie Florian, but also in Velma. And then we see something similar in The Big Sleep and so one question I have -- I'm just starting with the Raymond Chandler books in right now, so I've not read the whole body of works -- is the bad guy always the femme fatale or the woman in the book?

Owen Hill: 22:17

No, but there are a lot there femme fatales in there, especially the little sister. But no in long goodbye, it's what do you call a male femme fatale? I've used that term in my writing, and I can't remember, but it's a guy and with a very coded gay slant to it, if you're looking for it. But there is always someone like that, someone who is the bad person, but usually with some depth.

Carolyn Daughters: 23:05

Although I'm not sure how much depth Carr min had in The Big Sleep.

Owen Hill: 23:12

She's the exception to me. She's a cartoon character. But like we said, The Big Sleep is more toward cartoon characters.

Carolyn Daughters: 23:23

In particular, her role in the book was even much larger than it was the film version of The Big Sleep, where she really came across as cartoonish. Anytime she appeared on screen, it was just to be silly and simpering, whereas in the book, you could see the claws come out if she was made angry, that sort of thing.

Sarah Harrison: 23:51

You mentioned, in essence, we're talking about the female characters. You had a little bit of a section in your notes on, do women have power in the Raymond Chandler books? I thought that was, that was an interesting way to frame the question, I don't know, and what are your thoughts, categorically. How are women portrayed in this book? Power? No power?

Owen Hill: 24:17

It goes character by character. I mean, I feel that women are trying to grab as much power as they can, even though society makes them powerless. I mean, like, like Jessie Florian, who's not a very good character, but is trying to use it to survive. So it's sort of an oppressed force. And then there's the Anne Riordan character, who is definitely has power, not enough power over Marlowe, but is going to go somewhere and is a very different kind of woman.

Sarah Harrison: 24:58

She's gonna drive around in the dark with. A gun. Like, look at dead body. That was a strange introduction that was gonna go a different direction.

Carolyn Daughters: 25:08

I did too at first. I thought she must be involved.

Sarah Harrison: 25:13

She really was just a genuinely curious soul with a gun. But your question made me wonder, like, does anyone have power in the Raymond Chandler books? Like, I didn't feel like the men were exceptionally powerful either. All the cops who were bogged down with corruption didn't really embrace it. They feel like, this is how I survive. This is how I keep my job. It's this all right. Even the who was it the chief of Bay City, he was the shiny rich chief. But once he found out who was employing Marlowe, he was like, oh, what can I get you, sir? That's my biggest donor. So it seemed like everybody had somebody behind them.

Carolyn Daughters: 25:59

John Wax. Wax, like, moldable, or something like that. Moldable. You have these outlier, scrappy heroes, Red Norgaard, who's the guy who helps Philip Marlowe. You have Philip Marlowe, and at turns, I think it's Blaine, the police officer who half the time sketchy and problematic, and then half the time informative and human.

Sarah Harrison: 26:35

I think Blaine was the bad one. It was Hemingway. Oh, Hemingway. Blaine was bad. And then he had Hemingway.

Carolyn Daughters: 26:43

Yeah, you're right.

Sarah Harrison: 26:45

I had them, which was a great name. I love that he was Cain and like, Hemingway just driving him crazy. Like, I'm gonna have a joke with myself, even if you beat the crap out of me.

Carolyn Daughters: 26:56

Raymond Chandler loved Hemingway, as I understand it. But at one point, Marlowe says, who is this Hemingway person? He's a guy who keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin to believe it must be good.

Owen Hill: 27:11

Chandler had a pretty problematic love of Hemingway in the Raymond Chandler books, particularly in Farewell, My Lovely. I mean, he wrote a parody called the beer in the sergeant major's hat, or the Son also sneezes. He thought he loved Hemingway, but he thought he became kind of a joke. And Dashiell Hammett was like that too. I think Hammett at least half believe that Hemingway stole from him, that it went the other way around. So I mean, Hemingway taught a whole generation of men and some women too. You see it in Richard Stein how to write dialog, but then they felt it's like, kill the father. So he that, and that makes the Hemingway character in Farewell, My Lovely, even funnier. That's a because it's Chandler talking through Marlowe about Hemingway, who probably read this stuff. Oh, I'm sure. Well, I know that Gertrude Stein read it. And the Stein circle loved detective novels. Gertrude Stein wrote one. You can't read it. It's impossible, but she wrote one. I can't remember the name of it. I love Gertrude Stein, but they don't make sense.

Carolyn Daughters: 28:34

I love the book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

Owen Hill: 28:37

Oh, me too. I just think it's so so wonderful.

Carolyn Daughters: 28:43

And it's, of course, not Alice B. Toklas's autobiography. It's more of a memoir than an autobiography. But, I'm trying to think, even if there was dialogue in that, like a lot of it is, there must be dialogue. It's been a while.

Owen Hill: 29:01

There are snippets in some of the I made myself read the making of Americans last year, which is like, 1000 pages long, and it's incomprehensible, but you get into it. And I think that's because there's, there are these clipped sentences that sound like dialogue.

Carolyn Daughters: 29:22

Why did you make yourself?

Owen Hill: 29:25

I thought, as a poet, and the rhythms that she used are the American language. It's like the rhythm more So back when she wrote it. But even now we speak in a certain way that she had in her head and was able to articulate. Unfortunately, she couldn't do anything with subject matter, so you don't know where what she means, but the rhythms are very beautiful. That's at least 1,000 I don't know. It's this big, thick book. I mean, you could it would kill you if it fell on you.

Sarah Harrison: 30:07

I wanted to ask you on the subject of people's real lives outside of their books, including the Raymond Chandler books. And given these detectives, romantic relationships or lack thereof, what was Raymond Chandler's personal life like? Was it anything like his detectives? Or did he have a normal family life?

Owen Hill: 30:29

Well, he didn't have a family. He had a but he did have a wife, and they were married for many years, and he was sissy. She was older than him, and they were very close. I mean, one reason that he fell apart was his wife died first, and advanced alcoholism got him because he just couldn't deal with it. He had what sounded like a very good love life. Wrote about this for ...

Carolyn Daughters: 31:03

Poor guy. Part of me really wanted him to connect with Anne Riordan in a different way, just like, in a deeper way. And the realization, of course, is that he can't. There's something in him that won't permit it. He's set up to be. And then, in my mind, is the catalyst. He's the guy who reinforces his tragic nature and the fact that he is a tragic figure.

Sarah Harrison: 31:39

Talk about the catalyst.

Owen Hill: 31:42

He can't, yes, it's sad. He can't quite do it. You want it to be like a Tracy-Hepburn relationship that goes into our The Thin Man, you know? But he can't get there.

Carolyn Daughters: 31:56

Like when he's looking at these photos that at Jessie Florian's house, and he's describing these women. And some of them are pretty and they have big eyes, but some, some of them are like, cow like, dull eyes, but they have this viciousness in them, which, I mean, that's a lot to capture from a photograph with a bunch of women in it, or something. And so Anne Riordan is, like, she's the full package, like she is a beautiful woman who is also extremely intelligent, and her father was a cop, so she has that background, and she's, she's savvy and smart and all of the things.

Sarah Harrison: 32:38

And wealthy? Is she wealthy? Oh, yes. She's got a family money. They have a whole conversation about, he's like, Where'd you get all this? Because you don't make anything writing.

Carolyn Daughters: 32:50

I forgot that. So she truly is a full package.

Sarah Harrison: 32:55

He's almost too wealthy. I think Philip Marlowe in the Raymond Chandler books would need someone that didn't have such a comfortable life.

Carolyn Daughters: 33:01

He wants the mattress that is about as thick as the blanket on top of it, right? That's what he's used to. So, when he says things like, I want a vacation. I want all these things he wants, does he or is it the sort of thing? Like, I want to win the lottery, but I don't buy tickets. I never buy a lottery ticket. Is he really more comfortable on the mattress with the weird spring digging into his back that is inch thick? I don't know.

Owen Hill: 33:34

It's more romantic for him somehow. I mean, he, he would, you presume, when he was an investigator for the DA where, before he got fired, that he probably had, that was probably an okay job, and he probably could have been somewhat comfortable doing that, but he would have had to do things he didn't want to do. And so he partly, I think, because he romanticizes this tough life, he goes there.

Sarah Harrison: 34:01

It was cute for me about that relationship too. Is actually Randall obviously crushing on Anne Riordan while Anne is over there clearly crushing on Marlowe. Like, you're so fabulous, and then just getting really frustrated at him for not reciprocating, and then Randall is like, I hate you because this girl Billy is into you? That was a funny little unspoken love triangle.

Carolyn Daughters: 34:35

I think I picked up on that just briefly, and then moved right off it. But I like that you brought that up. I think that's right.

Sarah Harrison: 34:43

Randall wanted to punch Marlowe a couple of times, and I think it was primarily because and like, and he also refrained because Anne Riordan likes him.

Carolyn Daughters: 34:52

Also, Philip Marlowe probably deserves to be punched periodically and is in several fisticuffs throughout this book, as in many of the Raymond Chandler books.

Sarah Harrison: 34:58

He gets punched quite a lot. Probably sufficiently.

Owen Hill: 35:03

If somebody got hit that much and drank that much, they'd be dead by the end of the novel. He's always getting beaten up.

Carolyn Daughters: 35:14

And then there's this character, red, nor guard. Am I saying that correctly? Red, nor gar with red. He could have gone either way on the first introduction, but then pretty quickly, I think I as a reader, picked up on the fact that this guy is the sort of partner in crime kind of guy. He's the guy the aider and a better but for good, and he's the guy who pushes the boundaries that probably shouldn't be pushed, but it's so noble to push them nonetheless. And that's Red, who's out in the boat still keeping an eye on all of the activity and who had been let go from the police force.

Owen Hill: 36:07

Red of the beautiful, almost violet eyes and the soft skin. People who write essays queering Raymond Chandler in the Raymond Chandler books use that a lot. It's a beautiful description. I don't think Marlowe is queer, but I think he fell for Red because they were similar

Sarah Harrison: 36:29

Well, I was going to a different topic that you brought to my mind, Owen, when you were talking about yourself in Berkeley and Oakland. Little city in the big city, which mirrors what we have in this book, Bay City and LA, the soft bedroom community in the big, tough city. At the same time, Bay City seems like it could, it could be bought entirely, whereas Los Angeles, you can only buy a piece of this thing.

Carolyn Daughters: 37:11

And I think I read that it's based on Bay City's based on Santa Monica, which is a place I've been a lot and vacation that a lot. And so the idea of Santa Monica being this Bay City that can be bought because of the size of the town.

Sarah Harrison: 37:29

And what are your thoughts on the two cities?

Owen Hill: 37:32

It's true. I mean, knowing LA, it's, I grew up in an LA area. It's, it's very spread out. It's a series of small towns that turned into a massive city. And there's I grew up partly I've lived in Redondo Beach for a while. There's a Redondo Beach. Oh, it's a great little town. And at Bugsy sigma, and I, I was trying to find this because I read it when we when I was doing big sleep in a deposition. Bugs Lee, Bugsy Siegel said, I, oh yes, I own Redondo Beach, and it reminded me so much of the crooks that own Santa Monica, apparently, and own those ships that went just out past the line. That part of the novel is fascinating that they this is and they did exist.

Carolyn Daughters: 38:30

For sure. I thought that was, like, really interesting, just and then when we first see Philip Marlowe laying on that mattress that is barely thicker than his blanket, and he's having all of these deep, dark thoughts. I think the chapter starts there, and the preceding chapter doesn't really set us up for it. So for a heartbeat, I was like, why are we here? I didn't realize at first, okay, he's just staking out. He's just waiting it out until his time to emerge, and then he's gonna set the next set of actions in motion. It was a curious setup. And then all of the scenes on the water, and then on the ship, to me, I felt like I was very much in a foreign land, even though we're not very far from the coast, trying to keep up with what's happening and why it's happening and where the power lies, or what the dividing line is between law and order on one side and just complete potential disarray on the other kind of thing, or anything goes.

Owen Hill: 39:52

I mean, it was a great setting to have you suddenly you've gone from a pretty corrupt. To anything goes.

Sarah Harrison: 40:05

I'm wondering slightly off topic, but still on topic. Owen, so you invested five years of your life, said on The Annotated Big Sleep talk to me a little bit like, how did you get involved in that project, like, I don't know anything about modern scholarship on Raymond Chandler books. Can you give us a rundown? How did it go? How'd you get there?

Owen Hill: 40:32

Oh, that Anthony Rizzuto. He gets into all kinds of things. He came to be we worked together at the bookstore, and we went out for coffee or something, and he said, I have this idea for a book and he came up with this. He is an academic. He was, he teaches out at Sonoma State. So he had some inside information about about it. And I knew I've been pals with Josephine Leeson forever, who has had some knowledge of the Chandler estate. And we were fans of the Raymond Chandler books. So from there, we drafted Pam Jackson, because California lit is her, her thing, and I don't know I we an agent thought it was a good idea. And the Chandler is Chandler estate, right? He knew a lawyer that worked for the Chandler estate. So it all somehow came together. And I think, had I known it was going to be five years, I would have said, Anthony Rizzuto, but it turned out I like the book. I'm quite proud of it. I think we did a good job.

Carolyn Daughters: 41:47

Extremely well reviewed. You said Pamela Jackson, also California literature, but also California history.

Owen Hill: 41:56

Sure, she's a Philip K. Dick scholar. She edited and annotated the Philip K. Dick exegesis, all his papers and philosophy.

Carolyn Daughters: 42:11

That's amazing.

Sarah Harrison: 42:13

If you were going to annotate Farewell, My Lovely, what would you for sure want to point out or expand upon that maybe it's not obvious to the reader?

Owen Hill: 42:30

Well, we have to say a lot about the change in style, the California history part would have to do a lot with those ships with Santa Monica. That Santa Monica has a has a rich history. No, there's a lot to go on. And the femme fatal characters as it evolved, I'd want to write about that now. There's stuff there. Definitely. We did some things on cops for The Big Sleep, but there's a lot more cop stuff here. LA is a wild city. I didn't I didn't know it growing up as a kid, but boy, it was pretty lawless. I mean, probably still is.

Carolyn Daughters: 43:22

It's so interesting. And I like the way that Philip Marlowe, in his interactions, is able to with Hemingway, the police officer. He nicknames Hemingway, evolve his opinion of him, from. He's just a nasty guy who is on a payroll to a guy who's actually just trying to make his way and get paid and has a decent side to him. And you see more, I think, in Farewell, My Lovely than in The Big Sleep about how complex it probably was to be a police officer in in the fastest growing city in the United States at the time. I think you and your fellow annotators authors point out in in your annotated version of The Big Sleep. Super, super interesting. I think I would recommend to readers to read Farewell, My Lovely, but I would say, I would say, and Sarah, I'll be interested have your take on it, but I would say, read it, knowing that there are some pages and passages that may be hard to get.

Sarah Harrison: 44:39

I mean, my take is always read everything. Read everything you can. Read and if, if it's like on a list of greats, I always want to figure out, why is it here? What is What am I supposed to get from this? What? Why do certain things have staying power?

Carolyn Daughters: 45:01

Yeah, and we are. We're talking generically here, but just to be more clear about there is some significant racism in the Raymond Chandler books, and I think it probably helps to be prepared for that going in.

Sarah Harrison: 45:18

Maybe, maybe not. I like to be unprepared for things. Like, I'll never read a movie review before I go see a movie ever. I hate it.

Carolyn Daughters: 45:31

I do because I watch so few movies that I don't want to watch one that is just completely tanks the story. I just won't sit through it.

Sarah Harrison: 45:42

I'll watch the trailer, and then I'll decide I will never read a review, because I've done it in the past, and it like, makes me the whole time I'm watching the movie, I'm like, also critiquing the review, and I have these lenses and I like, like, it just all, I like to be hit cold, I guess.

Unknown: 46:01

Okay,

Sarah Harrison: 46:03

how about you on

Owen Hill: 46:05

I actually like book reviews. I like movie reviews, just as movie reviews, so I'll read them just to see what, what the people think.

Carolyn Daughters: 46:20

I watch so few movies. I read as much as I can, but like everybody else, I'm time limited. Usually, though, I'm not reading book reviews, per se, I'm really just understanding the body of analysis of various books, including the Raymond Chandler books. I just know, generally speaking, where a book falls in, and so I don't have to know the plot. Many a great book I've read without really knowing the plot, which I've enjoyed, but I strongly suspected on the front end, it was a great book. Not always, not always. Well, Owen, we are so excited that you joined us for two episodes. We strongly encourage everybody to check out his new book. It's coming out this spring. It is called the giveaway the clay black the clay black burn story. And it's an omnibus of three novels and one of your short stories.

Owen Hill: 47:22

Thanks for plugging it. And I really enjoy doing this. This is great fun.

Sarah Harrison: 47:27

Before we wrap, did we overlook anything? You're the expert here. What is there anything we should take away?

Owen Hill: 47:36

I think we've done it. I thought we might talk a little more about the movies, but the film, but that's fine. We talked about the book a lot, and I think we hopefully we interested people.

Sarah Harrison: 47:47

And are there multiple, and I haven't seen any, are there multiple versions of this film? And if so, which one do you recommend highest?

Owen Hill: 47:56

Kind of, sort of neither. But the first one was directed by a great director, Edward Dimitrios, and fell a little bit flat. And the second was Robert Mitchum in the 70s. And Mitchum was amazing, but he was way too old. So they're both flawed, but worth thinking about.

Carolyn Daughters: 48:24

Well, for our listeners, we're moving on from the Raymond Chandler books. Our next book for 2025 is going to be Traitor's Purse by Margery Allingham, published in 1940. Suffering from amnesia, amateur sleuth Albert Campion races to stop a wartime national security threat. Known for its psychological depth, the book showcases Allingham's skill at blending espionage with a classic whodunit.

Sarah Harrison: 48:47

Don't miss it. Thank you so much, Owen. It has been delightful discussing the Raymond Chandler books with you.

Owen Hill: 48:53

Thank you. Likewise.

Sarah Harrison: 48:57

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Carolyn Daughters: 49:20

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Sarah Harrison: 49:44

We want to thank you for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. We absolutely adore you. Until next time, stay mysterious.