Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American novelist and
screenwriterScreenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
.
In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a
detective fictionDetective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in
Black Mask, a popular
pulp magazinePulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
. His first novel,
The Big SleepThe Big Sleep is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first in his acclaimed series about detective Philip Marlowe. The work has been adapted twice into film, once in 1946 and again in 1978...
, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published just seven novels during his lifetime. In the year before he died, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died on March 26, 1959, in La Jolla, California.
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American hard-boiled detective fiction, and is considered by many to be a founder, along with
Dashiell HammettSamuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade , Nick and Nora Charles , and the Continental Op .In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on...
,
James M. CainJames Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir...
and other
Black Mask writers, of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction, especially in the style of the writing and the attitudes characteristic of the genre. His
protagonistA protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
,
Philip MarlowePhilip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...
, along with Hammett's
Sam SpadeSam Spade is a fictional character who is the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon and the various films and adaptations based on it, as well as in three lesser known short stories by Hammett....
, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective," both having been played on screen by
Humphrey BogartHumphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
, whom many considered to be the quintessential Marlowe.
Some of Chandler's novels are considered to be important literary works, and three are often considered by to be masterpieces:
Farewell, My LovelyFarewell, My Lovely is a 1940 novel by Raymond Chandler, the second novel he wrote featuring Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe. It was adapted for the screen three times.-Plot summary:...
(1940),
The Little SisterThe Little Sister is a 1949 novel by Raymond Chandler, the fifth in his popular Philip Marlowe series. The story is set in late 1940s Los Angeles.-Plot summary:...
(1949), and
The Long GoodbyeThe Long Goodbye is a 1953 novel by Raymond Chandler, centered on his famous detective Philip Marlowe. While some critics consider it inferior to The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely, others rank it as the best of his work...
(1953).
The Long Goodbye is praised within an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's
The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery".
Early life
Chandler was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1888, but spent his early years in
Plattsmouth, NebraskaPlattsmouth is a city in and the county seat of Cass County, Nebraska, United States, which was founded in 1855. The population was 6,887 at the 2000 census.-History:...
, living with his mother and father near his cousins, aunt (mother's sister) and uncle. After Chandler's family were abandoned by his father, an alcoholic civil engineer who worked for the railway, and to obtain the best possible education for Ray, his mother moved them to London, England in 1900. Another uncle, a successful Quaker lawyer in
WaterfordWaterford is a city in the South-East Region of Ireland. It is the oldest city in the country and fifth largest by population. Waterford City Council is the local government authority for the city and its immediate hinterland...
, supported them,
while they lived with his maternal grandmother. Chandler was classically educated at
Dulwich CollegeDulwich College is an independent school for boys in Dulwich, southeast London, England. The college was founded in 1619 by Edward Alleyn, a successful Elizabethan actor, with the original purpose of educating 12 poor scholars as the foundation of "God's Gift". It currently has about 1,600 boys,...
, London (a
public schoolA public school, in common British usage, is a school that is neither administered nor financed by the state or from taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of endowments, tuition fees and charitable contributions, usually existing as a non profit-making charitable trust...
whose alumni also include the authors P.G. Wodehouse and
C. S. ForesterCecil Scott "C.S." Forester was the pen name of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith , an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of naval warfare. His most notable works were the 11-book Horatio Hornblower series, depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic era, and The African Queen...
). He spent some of his childhood summers in Waterford with his maternal family. He did not attend university, instead spending time in Paris and
MunichMunich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
improving his foreign language skills. In 1907, he was naturalised as a
British subjectIn British nationality law, the term British subject has at different times had different meanings. The current definition of the term British subject is contained in the British Nationality Act 1981.- Prior to 1949 :...
in order to take the civil service examination, which he passed, and then took an
AdmiraltyThe Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...
job, lasting just over a year. His first poem was published during that time. Chandler regained his US citizenship in 1956 ).
Chandler disliked the servility of the civil service and resigned, to the consternation of his family, and became a reporter for the
Daily ExpressThe Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
and the Bristol
Western GazetteThe Western Gazette is a newspaper, published in Yeovil, Somerset, England.The Western Gazette is published every Thursday with five different editorial editions, named North Dorset, Sherborne/West Dorset, Crewkerne, Yeovil and South Somerset....
newspapers. He was an unsuccessful journalist, published reviews and continued writing
romanticRomanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
poetry. Accounting for that time he said, "Of course in those days as now there were … clever young men who made a decent living as freelances for the numerous literary weeklies" but "I was distinctly not a clever young man. Nor was I at all a happy young man."
In 1912, he borrowed money from his Waterford uncle, who expected it to be repaid with interest, and returned to America, visiting his aunt and uncle before settling in San Francisco for a time, where he took a correspondence bookkeeping course, finishing ahead of schedule, and where his mother joined him in late 1912. Eventually they moved to
Los AngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
in 1913. Along the way he strung tennis rackets, picked fruit and endured a time of scrimping and saving. Once in Los Angeles he found steady employment with The Los Angeles Creamery, both in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. In 1917, when the US entered World War I, he enlisted in the
Canadian Expeditionary ForceThe Canadian Expeditionary Force was the designation of the field force created by Canada for service overseas in the First World War. Units of the C.E.F. were divided into field formation in France, where they were organized first into separate divisions and later joined together into a single...
, saw combat in the trenches in France with the Gordon Highlanders, and was undergoing flight training in the fledgling
Royal Air ForceThe Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
(RAF) when the war ended.
After the
armisticeThe armistice between the Allies and Germany was an agreement that ended the fighting in the First World War. It was signed in a railway carriage in Compiègne Forest on 11 November 1918 and marked a victory for the Allies and a complete defeat for Germany, although not technically a surrender...
, he returned to Los Angeles by way of Canada, and soon began a love affair with Cissy Pascal, a married woman 18 years his senior, and the step-mother of Gordon Pascal, with whom Chandler had enlisted. Cissy amicably divorced her husband Julian in 1920, but Chandler's mother disapproved of the relationship and refused to sanction the marriage. For four years Chandler supported both his mother and Cissy. When Florence Chandler died on September 26, 1923, Raymond was free to marry Cissy, and did so on February 6, 1924. By 1931, he had become a highly paid vice-president of the
Dabney Oil SyndicateThe Dabney Oil Syndicate refers to a number of petroleum-drilling enterprises in California involving Joseph B. Dabney and his associates.Joseph Benjamin Dabney, born 1858 in Madison County, Iowa, was in California at the turn of the 20th century when interest was being awakened in the...
, but a year later, his alcoholism, absenteeism, promiscuity with female employees and threatened suicides contributed to his being fired.
His life as a writer
Due to his meager financial circumstances during the Depression, Chandler turned to his latent writing talent to earn a living, teaching himself to write
pulp fictionPulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
by deconstructing the Perry Mason story formula of Earle Stanley Gardner. Chandler's first professional work, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in
Black Mask magazine in 1933; his first novel,
The Big Sleep, was published in 1939, featuring his famous Phillip Marlowe detective character speaking in the first person.
In 1950, Chandler described in a letter to his English publisher, Hamish Hamilton, why he began reading pulp magazines and later wrote for them:
- "Wandering up and down the Pacific Coast in an automobile I began to read pulp magazines, because they were cheap enough to throw away and because I never had at any time any taste for the kind of thing which is known as women's magazines. This was in the great days of the Black Mask (if I may call them great days) and it struck me that some of the writing was pretty forceful and honest, even though it had its crude aspect. I decided that this might be a good way to try to learn to write fiction and get paid a small amount of money at the same time. I spent five months over an 18,000 word novelette and sold it for $180. After that I never looked back, although I had a good many uneasy periods looking forward."
His second Marlowe novel,
Farewell, My Lovely (1940), became the basis for three movie versions adapted by other screenwriters, including
1944'sThe year 1944 in film involved some significant events, including the wholesome, award-winning Going My Way plus popular murder mysteries such as Double Indemnity, Gaslight and Laura.-Events:*July 20 - Since You Went Away is released....
Murder My Sweet (which marked the screen debut of the Marlowe character), starring by Dick Powell (whose depiction of Marlowe Chandler reportedly applauded). Literary success and film adaptations led to a demand for Chandler himself as a screenwriter. He and
Billy WilderBilly Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
co-wrote
Double Indemnity (1944), based on
James M. CainJames Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir...
's novel of
the same nameDouble Indemnity is a highly influential 1943 crime novel, written by American journalist-turned-novelist James M. Cain. The book was first published in serial form for Liberty magazine in 1936. Following that, Double Indemnity appeared as a one of "three long short tales" in the collection Three...
. The
noirFilm noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award.
Chandler's only original screenplay was
The Blue DahliaThe Blue Dahlia is a 1946 film noir, directed by George Marshall and written by Raymond Chandler. The film marks the third pairing of stars Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.-Plot:...
(1946). Chandler had not written a denouement for the script, and according to producer
John HousemanJohn Houseman was a Romanian-born British-American actor and film producer who became known for his highly publicized collaboration with director Orson Welles from their days in the Federal Theatre Project through to the production of Citizen Kane...
, Chandler agreed to complete the script only if drunk, which Houseman agreed to. The script gained Chandler's second Academy Award nomination for screenplay.
Chandler collaborated on the screenplay of
Alfred HitchcockSir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's
Strangers on a TrainStrangers on a Train is an American psychological thriller film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and based on the 1950 novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith. It was shot in the autumn of 1950 and released by Warner Bros. on June 30, 1951. The film stars Farley Granger, Ruth Roman,...
(1951), an ironic fantasy murder story based on
Patricia HighsmithPatricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short-story writer most widely known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951...
's novel, which he thought implausible. Chandler clashed with Hitchcock to such an extent that they stopped talking, especially after Hitchcock heard that Chandler had referred to him as "that fat bastard". Hitchcock reportedly made a show of throwing Chandler's two draft screenplays into the studio trash can while holding his nose; however, Chandler's name retains the lead screenwriting credit along with Czenzi Ormonde.
In 1946 the Chandlers moved to La Jolla, California, an affluent coastal neighborhood of San Diego, where Chandler wrote the final two Phillip Marlowe novels,
The Long Goodbye and his last completed work,
Playback, derived from an unproduced courtroom drama screenplay he had written for
Universal StudiosUniversal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
.
Four chapters of a novel, unfinished at his death, were transformed into a final "Chandler" Phillip Marlowe book,
Poodle SpringsPoodle Springs is the eighth Philip Marlowe novel. It was started in 1958 by Raymond Chandler, who left it unfinished at his death in 1959. The four chapters he had completed, which bore the working title "The Poodle Springs Story", were subsequently published in Raymond Chandler Speaking , a...
, by mystery writer and Chandler admirer Robert B. Parker, author of the "Spenser" series, in 1989. Parker shares the authorship with Chandler, and subsequently wrote his own Marlowe sequel to
The Big Sleep entitled
Perchance to DreamPerchance to Dream is a detective crime novel by Robert B. Parker, written as an authorized sequel to The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Following his post-mortem collaboration with Chandler on Poodle Springs, this 1991 release is the second and final Philip Marlowe novel written by...
, which was salted with quotes from the original novel.
Chandler's final Marlowe short story, circa 1957, was entitled "The Pencil". It later provided the basis of an episode for an HBO mini-series (1983–86) entitled
Phillip Marlowe, Private Detective starring Powers Boothe as Marlowe.
Later life and death
In 1954 Pearl Eugenie (Cissy) Chandler died after a long illness. Heartbroken and drunk, Chandler neglected to inter Cissy's cremated remains, and they sat for 57 years in a storage locker in the basement of Cypress View Mausoleum.
After Cissy's death, Chandler's loneliness worsened his natural propensity for
clinical depressionMajor depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
; he returned to drink, never quitting it for long, and the quality and quantity of his writing suffered. In 1955, he attempted suicide; literary scholars documented that suicide attempt. In
The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved, Judith Freeman says it was "a cry for help", given that he called the police beforehand, saying he planned to kill himself. Chandler's personal and professional life were both helped and complicated by the women to whom he was attracted — notably Helga Greene (his literary agent); Jean Fracasse (his secretary);
Sonia OrwellSonia Mary Brownell was the second and last wife of writer George Orwell, whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair. She was also known as Sonia Blair or Sonia Orwell.-Background:...
(
George OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's widow); and
Natasha SpenderNatasha Spender, Lady Spender was an English pianist and author. She was the wife of the writer Sir Stephen Spender....
(
Stephen SpenderSir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
's wife), the latter two of whom assumed Chandler to be a repressed homosexual.
After a respite in England, he returned to La Jolla. He died at Scripps Memorial Hospital of pneumonial peripheral vascular shock and prerenal uremia (according to the death certificate) in 1959. Helga Greene inherited Chandler's $60,000 estate, after prevailing in a 1960 lawsuit filed by Fracasse contesting Chandler's
holographA holograph is a document written entirely in the handwriting of the person whose signature it bears. Some countries or local jurisdictions within certain countries give legal standing to specific types of holographic documents, generally waiving requirements that they be witnessed...
ic
codicilA codicil is a document that amends, rather than replaces, a previously executed will. Amendments made by a codicil may add or revoke small provisions , or may completely change the majority, or all, of the gifts under the will...
to his will.
Raymond Chandler is buried at
Mount Hope CemeteryMount Hope Cemetery is a municipal cemetery located at 3751 Market Street, San Diego, California, and gives its name to the neighborhood of Mount Hope. The cemetery is adjacent to Greenwood Memorial Park....
, San Diego, California. As Frank MacShane noted in his biography,
The Life of Raymond Chandler, Chandler wished to be cremated and placed next to Cissy in Cypress View Mausoleum. Instead, he was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery because he had left no funeral or burial instructions.
In 2010, Chandler historian Loren Latker, with the assistance of attorney Aissa Wayne (daughter of
John WayneMarion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
), brought a petition to disinter Cissy's remains and reinter them with Chandler in Mount Hope. After a hearing September 2010 in
San Diego Superior CourtThe Superior Courts of California are the superior courts in the U.S. state of California with general jurisdiction to hear and decide any civil or criminal action which is not specially designated to be heard in some other court or before a government agency...
, Judge Richard S. Whitney entered an order granting Latker's request.
On
Valentine's DaySaint Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day, is an annual commemoration held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions. The day is named after one or more early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine, and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496...
(February 14) 2011, Cissy's ashes were conveyed from Cypress View to Mount Hope, and interred under a new grave marker above Chandler's, as they had wished. About one hundred people attended the ceremony, which included readings by the Rev. Randal Gardner, Powers Boothe, Judith Freeman and Aissa Wayne. The shared gravestone reads "Dead men are heavier than broken hearts", a quote from
The Big Sleep. A video of the ceremony is available at http://raymondchandler.info/reunite. Chandler's original gravestone, placed by Jean Fracasse, is still at the head of his grave, while the new one is at the foot.
Chandler's thoughts on pulp fiction
In his introduction to
Trouble Is My Business (1950), a collection of twelve of his short stories, Chandler provided insight on the formula for the detective story and how the pulp magazines differed from previous detective stories:
- "The emotional basis of the standard detective story was and had always been that murder will out and justice will be done. Its technical basis was the relative insignificance of everything except the final denouement. What led up to that was more or less passage work. The denouement would justify everything. The technical basis of the Black Mask type of story on the other hand was that the scene outranked the plot, in the sense that a good plot was one which made good scenes. The ideal mystery was one you would read if the end was missing. We who tried to write it had the same point of view as the film makers. When I first went to Hollywood a very intelligent producer told me that you couldn't make a successful motion picture from a mystery story, because the whole point was a disclosure that took a few seconds of screen time while the audience was reaching for its hat. He was wrong, but only because he was thinking of the wrong kind of mystery."
Chandler also described the struggle that the writers of pulp fiction had in following the formula demanded by the editors of the pulp magazines:
- "As I look back on my stories it would be absurd if I did not wish they had been better. But if they had been much better they would not have been published. If the formula had been a little less rigid, more of the writing of that time might have survived. Some of us tried pretty hard to break out of the formula, but we usually got caught and sent back. To exceed the limits of a formula without destroying it is the dream of every magazine writer who is not a hopeless hack."
Critical reception
Critics and writers from
W. H. AudenWystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
to
Evelyn WaughArthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
to
Ian FlemingIan Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
greatly admired Chandler's prose. In a radio discussion with Chandler, Fleming said that the former offered “some of the finest dialogue written in any prose today”. Although his swift-moving, hardboiled style was inspired mostly by Dashiell Hammett, his sharp and lyrical
simileA simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two different things, usually by employing the words "like", "as". Even though both similes and metaphors are forms of comparison, similes indirectly compare the two ideas and allow them to remain distinct in spite of their similarities, whereas...
s are original: "The muzzle of the Luger looked like the mouth of the Second Street tunnel"; "He had a heart as big as one of Mae West's hips"; "Dead men are heavier than broken hearts"; "I went back to the seasteps and moved down them as cautiously as a cat on a wet floor". Chandler's writing redefined the
private eyeA private investigator , private detective or inquiry agent, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private detectives/investigators often work for attorneys in civil cases. Many work for insurance companies to investigate suspicious claims...
fiction genre, led to the coining of the adjective "Chandleresque", and inevitably became the subject of
parodyA parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
and
pasticheA pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
. Yet the detective Philip Marlowe is not a stereotypical tough guy, but a complex, sometimes sentimental man with few friends who attended university, who speaks some Spanish and sometimes admires Mexicans, and who is a student of
chessChess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
and classical music. He will refuse a prospective client’s money if he is ethically unsatisfied with a job.
The high regard in which Chandler is generally held today is in contrast to the critical sniping that stung the author during his lifetime. In a March 1942 letter to Mrs. Blanche Knopf, published in
Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, Chandler complained, "The thing that rather gets me down is that when I write something that is tough and fast and full of mayhem and murder, I get panned for being tough and fast and full of mayhem and murder, and then when I try to tone down a bit and develop the mental and emotional side of a situation, I get panned for leaving out what I was panned for putting in the first time."
Although his work enjoys general acclaim today, Chandler has been criticized for certain aspects of his work; in an interview,
Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
reviewer Patrick Anderson described his plots as "rambling at best and incoherent at worst", and chastised his treatment of black, female, and homosexual characters, calling him a "rather nasty man at times". Anderson nevertheless praised Chandler as "probably the most lyrical of the major crime writers".
Chandler’s short stories and novels are evocatively written, conveying the time, place and ambiance of Los Angeles and environs in the 1930s and 1940s. The places are real, if pseudonymous: Bay City is
Santa MonicaSanta Mônica is a town and municipality in the state of Paraná in the Southern Region of Brazil.-References:...
, Gray Lake is
Silver LakeSilver Lake is a hilly neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, California east of Hollywood and northwest of Downtown Los Angeles. Silver Lake is inhabited by a wide variety of ethnic and socioeconomic groups, but it is best known as an eclectic gathering of hipsters and the creative class.The...
, and Idle Valley a synthesis of rich
San Fernando ValleyThe San Fernando Valley is an urbanized valley located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area of southern California, United States, defined by the dramatic mountains of the Transverse Ranges circling it...
communities.
Raymond Chandler was also a perceptive critic of pulp fiction; his essay "
The Simple Art of Murder"The Simple Art of Murder" refers to both a critical essay and a collection of short stories written by hard-boiled detective fiction author Raymond Chandler. The essay was first published in The Atlantic Monthly in December 1944...
" is the standard reference work in the field.
All but onePlayback is the final complete novel by Raymond Chandler, which features his iconic creation Philip Marlowe. It was published in 1958, the year before his death.-Plot summary:This novel puts Marlowe in the position of turning against his client...
of his novels have been cinematically adapted. Arguably the most notable is
The Big SleepThe Big Sleep is a 1946 film noir directed by Howard Hawks, the first film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. The movie stars Humphrey Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as the female lead in a film about the "process of a criminal investigation, not its...
(1946), by
Howard HawksHoward Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
, with
Humphrey BogartHumphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
as Philip Marlowe.
William FaulknerWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
was a co-writer on the screenplay. Raymond Chandler's few screen writing efforts and the cinematic adaptation of his novels proved stylistically and thematically influential upon the American
film noirFilm noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
genre.
Praise for Chandler's work
“Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.” –
Ross MacdonaldNot to be confused with John D. MacDonaldRoss Macdonald is the pseudonym of the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar...
“Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since.” –
Paul AusterPaul Benjamin Auster is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy , Moon Palace , The Music of Chance , The Book of Illusions and The Brooklyn Follies...
“The prose rises to heights of unselfconscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action-tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision … The reader is captivated by Chandler’s seductive prose.” –
Joyce Carol OatesJoyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...
,
New York Review of Books.
“Chandler is one of my favorite writers. His books bear rereading every few years. The novels are a perfect snapshot of an American past, and yet the ruined romanticism of the voice is as fresh as if they were written yesterday.” –
Jonathan LethemJonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels...
“Chandler seems to have invented our post-war dream lives–the tough but tender hero, the dangerous blonde, the rain-washed sidewalks, and the roar of the traffic (and the ocean) in the distance … Chandler is the classic lonely romantic outsider for our times, and American literature, as well as English, would be the poorer for his absence.” –
Pico IyerPico Iyer is a British-born essayist and novelist. He is the author of numerous books on travel including Video Night in Kathmandu. His shorter pieces regularly appear in Time, Harper's, NYRB and many other publications.-Life and career:...
Further reading
- Dorothy Gardiner and Katherine Sorley Walker (eds.; 1962), Raymond Chandler Speaking. Boston: Houghton Miflin.
- Bruccoli, Matthew J. (ed.; 1973). Chandler Before Marlowe: Raymond Chandler's Early Prose and Poetry, 1908-1912. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
- Corman, Catherine (2009). Daylight Noir: Raymond Chandler's Imagined City Milan: Charta.
- MacShane, Frank (1976). The Life of Raymond Chandler. N.Y.: E.P. Dutton.
- MacShane, Frank (1976). The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler & English Summer: A Gothic Romance. N.Y.: The Ecco Press.
- Chandler, Raymond (1976). The Blue Dahlia (screenplay). Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
- Gross, Mirian (1977). The World of Raymond Chandler. N.Y.: A & W Publishers.
- MacShane, Frank (ed.) (1981). Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler. N.Y.: Columbia University Press.
- Chandler, Raymond (1985). Raymond Chandler's Unknown Thriller (unfilmed screenplay for Playback). N.Y.: The Mysterious Press.
- Hiney, Tom (1999). Raymond Chandler. N.Y.: Grove Press. ISBN 0-80213-637-0
- Hiney, Tom and MacShane, Frank (eds.; 2000). The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959. N.Y.: Atlantic Monthly Press.
- Ward, Elizabeth and Alain Silver (1987). Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press. ISBN 0-87951-351-9
- Howe, Alexander N. "The Detective and the Analyst: Truth, Knowledge, and Psychoanalysis in the Hard-Boiled Fiction of Raymond Chandler." CLUES: A Journal of Detection 24.4 (Summer 2006): 15-29.
- Howe, Alexander N. (2008). "It Didn't Mean Anything: A Psychoanalytic Reading of American Detective Fiction". North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 0786434546
- Moss, Robert (2002) "Raymond Chandler A Literary Reference" New York Carrol & Graf
- Freeman, Judith (2007). The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved. N.Y.:Pantheon. ISBN 978-0-375-42351-2 (0-375-42351-6)
External links
- Shamus Town: Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles
- Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles: In A Lonely Place bus tour
- Jonathan Lethem on Raymond Chandler at The Paris Review
- "Down the Mean Streets with Philip Marlowe" BBC streaming audio programme on Chandler
- Photographs of Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles by Catherine Corman
Catherine Cormans book of photographs, Daylight Noir: Raymond Chandler's Imagined City was included in the 2009 Venice Biennale. She is also the editor of Joseph Cornell's Dreams....
at The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
- "Chandler's double identity: Adrian Wootton on a writer's secret cameo"; The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, June 5, 2009
- Raymond Chandler at Thrilling Detective
- Bibliography of UK 1st Editions
- Video of February 14, 2011 Cissy Chandler burial ceremony