100 Books I Keep Keeping... 45 The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler

Sep 26, 2017 22:39



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The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler, edited by Frank McShane (2007)

This is not really a book for everyone - you really have to love Chandler's writing, be fascinated by writing about writing, or just crazy about words, language and imagery in general.

Lucky me, I'm all three :)

I picked it up on the wrong shelf at an academic remainders shop for a dollar, the retro cover having caught my eye. It's really just a collection of bits and pieces from his private notebooks: lists of possible titles ( The Man with the Shredded Ear, The Corpse Came in Person, Law is Where You Buy It, They Only Murdered Him Once, The Diary of a Loud Check Suit, Stop Screaming - It's Me, Between Two Liars...) and images (what we now call Chandlerisms - "I left her with her virtue intact, but it was quite a struggle," "all the old-fashioned charm of a cop beating up a drunk,"), fashion notes and descriptions of characters, pickpocket lingo, Hollywood, railway or San Quentin jailhouse slang, story ideas and just odd notes (how to tell from his shave whether a dead man was left or righthanded, for instance), a list of the foods from a Hollywood speciality shop, 'Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story' which is online here, and 'Jack Woodford's Rules for Writing a Novel' written out from memory from (I think) a book by the latter, and is interesting in its emphasis on the mechanics...




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...and which Chandler says at the end "the above is all bunk, in a way, although it may contain germs of truth"... enough, I guess, that he was inspired to remember and copy it out :)

Oh, and as the cover says, it also includes an early story, English Summer: a Gothic Romance, which he always had a warm spot for even though it is, admittedly slightly absurd and yes, very Gothic, the language just slightly (I think deliberately) overblown but still utterly memorable in its imagery and visual impact. And it's illustrated by Edward Gorey, which is always a joy, yes?

100 things, about writing, books and reading

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