Farewell, My Lovely

“His skin was pale and he needed a shave. He would always need a shave. He had curly black hair and heavy eyebrows that almost met over his thick nose. His ears were small and neat for a man of that size and his eyes had a shine close to tears that gray eyes often seem to have.” 

This quote comes from Marlowe, who is physically describing Moose Malloy. It’s important because it demonstrates Marlowe’s attention to detail. This is the first of many examples of how Marlowe is keenly aware of the minutiae around him. 

“He had a battered face that looked as if it had been hit by everything but the bucket of a dragline. It was scarred, flattened, thickened, checkered, and welted. It was a face that had nothing to fear. Everything had been done to it that anybody could think of.”

Here, Marlowe is describing the unique features of the Florian bartender, and again, this demonstrates Chandler’s acute attention to detail. Chandler’s mode of description here is interesting in that it actually provides little in the way of truly precise details, instead offering up a broader description and letting the reader fill in as needed. It’s almost as though Marlowe himself can only broadly imagine what the man has been through.

“Slow steps shuffled and the door opened and I was looking into dimness at a blowsy woman who was blowing her nose as she opened the door. Her face was gray and puffy. She had weedy hair of that vague color which is neither brown nor blond, that hasn’t enough life in it to be ginger, and isn’t clean enough to be gray. Her body was thick in a shapeless outing flannel bathrobe many moons past color and design. It was just something around her body. Her toes were large and obvious in a pair of man’s slippers of scuffed brown leather.”

This is Marlowe’s description of Jessie Florian. While this again reveals his attention to detail, it also demonstrates Mrs. Florian’s physical state. As Marlowe later finds out, she’s an alcoholic who clearly doesn’t take care of herself. This description is far more vivid than the description of the bar owner.