The film quotes from the novel when Marlowe, under police interrogation, asks, "Is this where I'm supposed to say, 'What's all this about?' and he [the cop] says, 'Shut up! I ask the questions'?" [16]

Chandler wrote tighter, tougher books, but this one was his masterpiece. I'd been pulled into loving noir by Hammett & W. R. Burnett but they didn't write like Chandler. The Long Goodbye has all the best snappy dialog and constant menace, but it had something more. It was cynical poetry, it had the brittleness and immediacy of the "existential", as we used to call it. I dialoghi delle scene con Hayden-Wade sono tutti improvvisati perché Sterling Hayden era sempre ubriaco e strafatto. La casa dove abita è la casa dove abitava Robert Altman all’epoca.

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And I also recognized, you know, even as I was reading him the first time around, that the way he talks about women, the way he talks about non-white people is not always - uh (laughter) you know? It's probably a little bit cancelable. And so I wanted to kind of work against that. I can’t explain quite how much her memoir meant to me. It was like reading my own grief. She put words to so many of my feelings and I completely agree with both her and Iris Murdoch, who once said, “The bereaved cannot communicate with the unbereaved.” To me, this book was one bereaved woman speaking to another. Raymond Chandler was one of the finest prose writers of the twentieth century. . . . Age does not wither Chandler’s prose. . . . He wrote like an angel.”— Literary Review

C’è tutto quello che deve esserci in un romanzo del genere. Come principale protagonista c’è l’alcool, motore e spinta propulsiva della storia, che scorre a fiumi nelle case eleganti dei quartieri più esclusivi e nei bar silenziosi di Los Angeles; ci sono i bulli dal grilletto facile, grandi criminali tenutari di case da gioco in Nevada, messicani dal sangue caliente e con la violenza a fior di pelle; ci sono le pupe, splendide donne eleganti e sensuali che provocano bollori al primo sguardo (anche se poi, quando vai a guardare meglio, trovi marcio sotto pelle); ci sono poliziotti corrotti che girano scortati da gangster nelle strade di Los Angeles; ci sono anche poliziotti onesti che si sentono falliti per aver pensato che il mondo è diviso in due, i buoni e i cattivi da sterminare; ed infine c’è lui, Philip Marlowe, un duro, un cinico, un saggio che ha capito come va il mondo, cui è chiaro come “il potere d’acquisto del dollaro” sia ciò che fa girare le cose, ed il caso che gli si presenta ne è la lampante dimostrazione: la morte della figlia di un milionario californiano, magnate dell’editoria. Marlowe ci si imbatte perché il marito della donna è un suo “amico”, Terry Lennox, con il quale è abituato a condividere succhielli (bibite tipiche californiane, non pensate male!) malinconicamente seduti su uno sgabello del bar Victor. Cosa significa l’amicizia? Per Marlowe molto, tanto da spingerlo a immischiarsi in faccende pericolose, mettendosi in gioco seriamente, pur di salvaguardarla.Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner. . . . An original. . . . A great artist.”— The Boston Book Review Murphy, Mary. Los Angeles Times (1923-1995); Los Angeles, Calif. [Los Angeles, Calif]08 June 1972: h17. CHA: Yes. When "The Big Sleep" was being adapted for film, he was asked, who killed the chauffeur? And he didn't know. To this end, one finds the author experimenting a little. For example, during the Wade storyline one is allowed to read something he wrote while drunk out of his mind, which turns out to be a strange, stream-of-consciousness self-pitying ramble reminiscent of Gass’ The Tunnel or Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry’s great masterpiece. In fact, all the Wade chapters reminded me of Lowry, and that is a big compliment. This is not to say, however, that there isn’t any of the dumb fun I mentioned earlier. There are still dames, and femme fatales; there are murders and mysteries; there are crooks and hoodlums; and there are plenty of great one-liners, and square-jawed, big-balled machismo. It is simply that these familiar, well-worn things run alongside broader, more satisfying existential, moral concerns, while also delivering characters that we feel as though he get to know and care about. He's just a lost dog," she added with a cool smile. "Perhaps you can find him a home. He's housebroken - more or less."