The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words edited by Barry Day

The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words is a must read for pulp mystery fans in general and Raymond Chandler fans specifically. Anyone who reads this blog knows I love pulp mystery fiction and one of its icons is Raymond Chandler. Barry Day does an excellent job of synthesizing Chandler’s life and thoughts through his writing, both published output as well as letters. I’ll try to use Chandler’s own words in this review.

Dashiell Hammett certainly was the father of the hard-boiled mystery. “Hammett took the murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley…He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.”  But Chandler “…concentrated on the detective story because it was a popular form and I thought the right and lucky man might finally make it into literature.” And he did!!!!!

For instance, “There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edges of the carving knife and study their husband’s necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.” Literature!

Or, of Miss Morny in The High Window: “The mascara was so thick on her eyelashes that they looked like miniature iron railings.”

Or, more sparingly: “…a shaft of sunlight tickled one of my ankles.”

Chandler was a big fan of Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, John Houseman and Shakespeare, not so much of Hemingway, mystery writer James M. Cain and playwright Eugene O’Neill. Included are many excerpts of letters to Gardner, Chandler’s publishers and friends.

Using both photos and words, Day tackles many of the things that Chandler (and his alter ego Philip Marlowe) liked and disliked:

L.A.: “Los Angeles…a city where pretty faces are as common as runs in dollar stockings.”

Veronica Lake (or Miss Moronica Lake, as he liked to call her) in The Blue Dahlia: “The only times she’s good is when she keeps her mouth shut and looks mysterious.”

Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep: “Her eyes were pools of darkness, much emptier than darkness.”

By the way, he always pictured Cary Grant as Philip Marlowe but agreed that Humphrey Bogart was a natural for the part.

Day follows Chandler’s descriptions of Marlowe’s various offices and apartments in earlier and later works and how they changed…or in some cases how he described the same scene in different words. He follows Chandler’s and Marlowe’s thoughts on women, big business, homosexuality and Hollywood. He enumerates Chandler’s preoccupation with hairlines, eyes, people’s figures, and faces, such as: “He was a tall man with glasses and a high-domed head that made his ears look as if they had slipped down his head” or his face was “…like a gnawed bone…”, “…as intelligent as the bottom of a shoe box…” or my favorite “…a great deal of domed brown forehead that might at a careless glance have seemed a dwelling place for brains.”

Marlowe was always wisecracking, such as “Take your ears out of the way and I’ll leave.”

Chandler’s thoughts on mystery writing include: “I really don’t seem to take the mystery element in the detective story as seriously as I should…the mind which can produce a cooly-thought-out puzzle can’t, as a rule, develop the fire and dash necessary for vivid writing.” He certainly didn’t want to be lumped in with the Agatha Christies and Rex Stouts of the mystery genre. “Very likely they write better mysteries than I do, but their words don’t get up and walk. Mine do.” (Very modest, wasn’t he?)

Throughout most of Chandler’s troubled life, there was one constant, Cissy, his wife of over 30 years (who was 18 years his senior): “She was the beat of my heart for thirty years. She was the music heard faintly at the edge of sound.”

While The World of Raymond Chandler is somewhat of a biography, it is really a tribute to Chandler’s words. So, in conclusion, to quote the London Times in its obituary to Chandler, “In working the common vein of crime fiction he mined the gold of literature.”