SOURCE: "The Longest Goodbye: Raymond Chandler and the Poetry of Alcohol," in Armchair Detective, 18, 4, Fall, 1985, pp. 392-406.

In the following essay. Tate studies the symbolic and autobiographical role of alcohol in Raymond Chandler's novel The Long Goodbye.

A host of legends and biographies maneuver us into difficulties about the intentions of writers who were more than familiar with Demon Rum. The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, and Sanctuary are harder to "read" than we would like to admit. Who is not aware of Fitzgerald's love for Keats, and the source of his most evocative title, Tender Is the Night? Remembering Fitzgerald's life may lend a certain chill to such warm lines as those of the second stanza of Keat's Ode to a Nightingale. The "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" of an imaginary glass of wine are a defining quality of an object of unique poetic totality...