Raymond Chandler

Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an author of crime stories and novels. His influence on modern crime fiction has been immense, particularly in the writing style and attitudes that much of the field has adopted over the last 60 years. Chandler's protagonist, Philip Marlowe, has become synonymous with the tradition of the hard-boiled private detective, along with Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade.

Biography

Chandler was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1888, but moved to Britain in 1895 when his parents divorced. His mother's brother, a successful lawyer, paid for his education; he entered the elite Dulwich College in S.E. London in 1900, where he received a classical education. He was naturalised as a British citizen in 1907 in order to take the Civil Service exam. He passed the exam and took a job at the Admiralty, where he worked for just over a year. His first poem was published during this time. After leaving the Civil Service, Chandler worked as a jobbing journalist, and continued to write poetry in the late Romantic style.

Chandler returned to the U.S. in 1912 and trained as a bookkeeper and accountant. In 1917, he enlisted in the Canadian Army and fought in France. After the armistice he moved to Los Angeles and began an affair with an older woman (Cissy Pascal),a double divorcée whom he married in 1924. By virtue of his American wife Chandler now had both British and American nationalities. By 1932 Chandler had attained a vice-presidency at Dabney Oil Syndicate in Signal Hill, California but lost this well-paying job as a result of his alcoholism.

He taught himself to write pulp fiction in an effort to draw an income from his creative talents, and his first story was published in Black Mask in 1933. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939.

Chandler worked as a Hollywood screenwriter following the success of his novels, working with Billy Wilder on James M. Cain's novel Double Indemnity (1944), and writing his only original screenplay, The Blue Dahlia (1946). Chandler also collaborated on the screenplay of Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951).

As a result of his earnings in the UK Chandler fell foul of the income tax authorities there in 1946. This led him to renounce his British citizenship in 1948.

His long desire to take Cissy to England was fulfilled in 1952.

Cissy died in 1954 and Chandler, heartbroken and suffering from a painful nervous disease, turned once again to drink. His writing suffered in quality and quantity, and he attempted suicide in 1955. His life became complicated after several women attracted his attention; notably Helga Greene (his fiancée) and Jean Fracasse. After a vain attempt to re-settle in England he moved back to America and died in La Jolla of pneumonia in 1959. After a legal argument about his estate between Greene and Fracasse, the court ruled in favour of Greene, who inherited it.

Chandler's finely wrought prose was widely admired by critics and writers from the highbrow (W.H. Auden, Evelyn Waugh) to the lowbrow (Ian Fleming). Although his swift-moving, hardboiled style was inspired largely by Dashiell Hammett, his use of lyrical similes in this context was quite original. Turns of phrase such as "The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips" (The Lady in the Lake, 1943), have become characteristic of private eye fiction, and he has given his name to the critical term Chandleresque. His style is also the subject of innumerable parodies and pastiches.

Chandler was also a perceptive critic of pulp fiction, and his essay "The Simple Art of Murder" is a standard academic reference.

All of Chandler's novels have been adapted for film, most notably The Big Sleep (1946), directed by Howard Hawks and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Novelist William Faulkner also received a screenwriting credit for this film. Chandler's screenwriting, as limited as it was, and the adaptation of his novels to screen in the 1940s were important influences on American film noir.

Novels

The Big Sleep (1939), his first
Farewell, My Lovely (1940)
The High Window (1942)
The Lady in the Lake (1943)
The Little Sister (1949)
The Long Goodbye (1954)
Playback (1958)
Poodle Springs (1959) (incomplete; completed by Robert B. Parker in 1989)

All concern the cases of a Los Angeles investigator named Philip Marlowe. Farewell, My Lovely, The Big Sleep, and The Long Goodbye are arguably his masterpieces.

Short stories

Chandler's short stories typically chronicled the adventures of Philip Marlowe or other down-on-their luck private detectives (John Dalmas, Steve Grayce) or similarly inclined good samaritans (such as Mr. Carmady). Exceptions are the macabre "The Bronze Door" and "English Summer", a self-described Gothic romance set in the English countryside. Interestingly, in the 1950s radio series "The Adventures of Philip Marlowe", which included adaptations from the stories, other protagonists were exchanged for Marlowe (for example, Marlowe for Steve Grayce in the adaptation of "The King in Yellow"). This substitution of the name of the protagonist actually restored the original name used in the earliest published versions of the stories; in fact, it was only in their later republished forms that the name Philip Marlowe was used in any of the stories (with the exception of "The Pencil").

Detective short stories

"Blackmailers Don't Shoot" (1933)
"Smart-Aleck Kill" (1934)
"Finger Man" (1934)
"Killer in the Rain" (1935)
"Nevada Gas" (1935)
"Spanish Blood" (1935)
"Guns at Cyrano's" (1936)
"Goldfish" (1936)
"The Man Who Liked Dogs" (1936)
"Pickup on Noon Street" (1936; originally published as "Noon Street Nemesis")
"The Curtain" (1936)
"Try the Girl" (1937)
"Mandarin's Jade" (1937)
"The King in Yellow" (1938)
"Red Wind" (1938)
"Bay City Blues" (1938)
"Pearls Are a Nuisance" (1939)
"Trouble is My Business" (1939)
"No Crime in the Mountains" (1941)
"The Pencil" (1961; published posthumously; originally published as "Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate")

Non-detective short stories

"I'll Be Waiting" (1939)
"The Bronze Door" (1939)
"Professor Bingo's Snuff" (1951)
"English Summer" (1976; published posthumously)

Note: "I'll Be Waiting", "The Bronze Door" and "Professor Bingo's Snuff" all feature unnatural deaths and investigators (a hotel detective, Scotland Yard and California local police, respectively), but the emphasis is not on the investigation of the deaths.

Famous quotes

"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness."

— The Simple Art of Murder; the words mean streets were an inspiration for the title of Martin Scorsese's film Mean Streets.

"Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have."

- In a letter to his editor regarding a proofreader who had changed Chandler's split infinitives

Cultural references

The British rockers Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians released a song called "Raymond Chandler Evening" on their 1986 album Element of Light.

In an episode of the American sitcom "Friends," ("The One With Rachel's Dress"), the character Chandler mentions Raymond Chandler in response to Joey asking if there were any famous Chandlers. Joey, in response, believes that Chandler made the name up.

External links

The Raymond Chandler website
Biography by Tom Hiney; ISBN 0701163100
Raymond Chandler at Thrilling Detective
Bibliography of UK 1st Editions
The Opposite of Show Business A play by Jim Grover about how Raymond Chandler became a writer.
Did Raymond Chandler invent Google?

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