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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 favor 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. However, his character Marlowe is not a stereotypical "tough guy," but rather a complex and sometimes sentimental figure who speaks Spanish, at times admires Mexicans, is something of an expert on chess, a bit of a connoisseur of classical music, and will often refuse money from clients if he is not satisfied that the job meets his ethical requirements.

Chandler wrote very evocatively of Los Angeles and its environs in the late 1940s, the setting for his novels. Many of the locations which he describes are real, some pseudonymous; "Bay City" is generally taken to represent Santa Monica, while "Idle Valley" is most likely a synthesis of various wealthy enclaves in the San Fernando Valley.

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) (Edgar Award for Best Novel, 1955)
• 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)
• "The Curtain" (1936)
• "Guns at Cyrano's" (1936)
• "Goldfish" (1936)
• "The Man Who Liked Dogs" (1936)
• "Pickup on Noon Street" (1936; originally published as "Noon Street Nemesis")
• "Mandarin's Jade" (1937)
• "Try the Girl" (1937)
• "Bay City Blues" (1938)
• "The King in Yellow" (1938)
• "Red Wind" (1938)
• "The Lady in the Lake" (1939)
• "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.

Non-fiction

• Writers in Hollywood (The Atlantic Monthly, December 1944)
• The simple art of murder (The Atlantic Monthly, November 1945)
• Oscar Night in Hollywood (The Atlantic Monthly, March 1948)
• Ten percent of your life (The Atlantic Monthly, February 1952)

Famous quotes

Cultural references

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

• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Field of Fire", Odo and Miles O'Brien admit to being fans of Chandler and his novels.

• 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.

• In Jim Carroll's song "Three Sisters", the lyrics include the phrase "But she just wants to lay in bed all night reading Raymond Chandler."

• On a rare split 12" (with Castanets), free jazz duo I Heart Lung titled each track in homage of Chandler: "Speedboats for Breakfast" referring to Chandler's guess as to what the early residents of Santa Monica ate in the morning, "Song of the Boatman of the River Roon" from an early poem by Chandler, and "If I Were A Young Man Now" from a letter written late in his life.

• The detective novelist Robert B. Parker based many of the characteristics of his detective, Spenser, on the Chandler tradion, to the degree that Spenser was described as born in Laramie, Wyoming, the same town in which Chandler was said to have been conceived. Parker holds a Ph.D. in English literature, and his doctoral thesis was about Chandler's writing.

• In the movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the "titles" of each of the days in the movie are also titles of Raymond Chandler works: the short story 'Trouble is My Business'; the novels 'The Lady in the Lake', 'The Little Sister' and 'Farewell, My Lovely'; and the essay 'The Simple Art of Murder'. However, the movie itself refers not to Chandler but to a fictional detective writer "Johnny Gossamer" as its inspiration.

Trivia

• Raymond Chandler was notorious for his intense dislike of Alfred Hitchcock, whom he often referred to as "that fat bastard" (typically within hearing distance of Hitchcock.) [1]

External links

• The Raymond Chandler website
• Biography by Tom Hiney; ISBN 0-7011-6310-0
• 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?
• Writing The Long Goodbye

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