Chandler ramblings

[espresso_addict]

I've been inhaling Raymond Chandler of late, probably for the first time. So far The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window & The Lady in the Lake plus various radio versions with Toby Stephens/Ed Bishop, also covering The Little Sister & PlaybackI've not read hard-boiled since I was a child and encountered one in which the hero was so

Comments

[shoofus]

chandler's use of language is lovely, no question. did you know he also wrote some screenplays?

[espresso_addict]

The only one I've heard of is Double Idemnity which sounds like a must-see. First must get hold of the rest of the novels...

[executrix]

Double Indemnity is a wonderful movie (as well as being extremely slashy!)

[espresso_addict]

I can believe anything Chandler wrote would turn out slashy. It's hard to believe how much homoeroticism he seems to have got away with.

[selenak]

Seconding the point that Chandler was almost an expatriate since he left the US as a small child and grew up in England, so when he came back to America as an adult he saw it from the outside, as opposed to virtually all other hard-boiled writers. (He went to the Ned Alleyn founded college, btw, which is where people think the Marlowe name hails from.)

Double Indemnity the film is great, but sadly he and Billy Wilder had a hate/hate relationship and this was their only collaboration. Otoh he wrote some witty letters relating to that when Wilder's usual writerly collaborator accused him of being petty in his (Chandler's) essay on Hollywood. Chandler's letters in general are very entertaining and there is a lot writerly theory in them. He also gets to comment on various film versions of his books, with not the obvious reaction. (For example, he thought the actress playing Carmen in The Big Sleep was a far better actress than Lauren Bacall and concluded that was why every time he was shown a new cut, her scenes were reduced even more

[espresso_addict]

...when he came back to America as an adult he saw it from the outside, as opposed to virtually all other hard-boiled writers.

Indeed, I think this might be why his writing resonates with me far more than others of the same school.

There's a radio play, Double Jeopardy, about the collaboration on Double Indemnity, with Patrick Stewart playing Chandler, which I must get around to finishing listening to. The film of The Big Sleep is so odd because of the censorship problems. I thought the best bit of it was the chemistry between Bacall & Bogart, but I can see how this might not please Chandler given the way the novel ends. Bogart is really too old to play Marlowe in TBS.

[writinghawk]

He was practically a contemporary of Wodehouse at Dulwich, though we somehow don't tend to think of their characters as contemporaries. By the way I bought some Chander on a whim once and couldn't read it. The 'hard-boiled' style manifested itself to me as a gruff refusal ever to say what was actually going on - I literally found it incomprehensible. I've read books in French with better luck on the strength of an O-level.

[espresso_addict]

He was practically a contemporary of Wodehouse at Dulwich, though we somehow don't tend to think of their characters as contemporaries.

Good point. I think I've just classed him with entirely the wrong set of writers.

I've not read Playback, just listened to the Toby Stephens radio version, but based on that it is far from his best. I wonder if what's off-putting is that the first-person narration leads to an obvious difficulty in presenting the interior monologue of the detective, which Chandler solves by staying mostly on the surface? As temeres writes below, it's the occasional slips of the mask that are enjoyable. I did find the refusal to address sexuality in the ones I've read very puzzling. I'd need to read much more widely in his contemporaries to get what's being hinted at. (Which I think has to be queer?)

[communicator]

Yes, I love Chandler.I strongly recommend The Long Goodbye.

the hero was so sexually violent that it put me off the entire genre Mickey Spillane right? Can not read.

[espresso_addict]

Yes, I must get hold of that next. I don't actually recall the author of the offending novel; it could easily have been Spillane. It was definitely a detective hero one. The scene that put me off was one where the hero rapes a woman (who continuously says 'no') with a fair amount of violence, and this is glossed by the narration as normal 'macho' behaviour. I was quite young at the time (12 or 13) so I might have missed some cues as to the 'no means yes' nature of the event, but I didn't feel tempted to read any further.

[temeres]

I was immediately captivated by Chandler when I took "The Lady in the Lake" out of the library on spec. "The minutes went by on tiptoe with their fingers to their lips" - how could I not like that? And then shortly afterwards Marlowe is out of town, in the country, listing all the birds he can hear...

I think Chandler's own definition of his books sums up why they work so well. "Down these mean streets must walk a man who is not himself mean." (I think it was Chandler who said that.) Marlowe is a misfit, playing a part to earn a crust. He has to hide behind a mask, and Chandler - despite his use of the first person narrative - writes primarily for the mask, with the man behind it slyly slipping out at unexpected moments, often in bursts of caustic anger or wry self-deprecation. ("I put a cigarette in my mouth and tilted it up to touch the tip of my nose, which is harder than you might think.") Wonderful stuff.

(All quotes from memory. I haven't read them for years.)

[espresso_addict]

Indeed. For some reason I was expecting the prose to be rather workaday, and it's anything but.

He has to hide behind a mask, and Chandler - despite his use of the first person narrative - writes primarily for the mask, with the man behind it slyly slipping out at unexpected moments, often in bursts of caustic anger or wry self-deprecation.

That's exactly it. There are these adorable bursts of self-revelation which make you double-take and want to re-read the rest again.