Raymond Chandler's "Farewell, My Lovely"

I do not think Raymond Chandler should be judged by conventional literary standards. This is not fiction in the sense that Tolstoy or Balzac or Hemingway wrote fiction. As crime fiction, it belongs to a genre whose kinship is with other kinds of pop art, including the cartoon, the old radio serial, and what is known as science fiction. Of its kind, [Chandler's] Farewell, My Lovely is a masterpiece. It belongs to a class of writing for which we have no name.

Clifton Fadiman in Fifty Years, edited by Clifton Fadiman, 1965