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Raymond Chandler Speaking
Tough-minded and typically idiosyncratic, here is Chandler on Chandler, the mystery novel, writing, Hollywood, TV, publishing, cats, and famous crimes. This skillfully edited selection of letters, articles, and notes also includes the short story "A Couple of Writers" and the first chapters of Chandler's last Philip Marlowe novel, The Poodle Springs Story , left unfinished at his death. Paul Skenazy has provided a new introduction for this edition as well as a new selected bibliography.
275 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
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About the author
Raymond Chandler
449 books5,611 followersRaymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America.
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.
The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "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—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.
The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "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—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."
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April 13, 2019I want to keep track of some quotes from the book here as I read it.
1949
I'm always seeing little pieces by writers about how they don't ever wait for inspiration; they just sit down at their little desks every morning at eight, rain or shine, hangover and broken arm and all, and bang out their little stint. However blank their minds or dull their wits , no nonsense about inspiration from them. I offer them my admiration and take care to avoid their books.
--------------------
1948 to Edward Weeks, editor of the Atlantic Monthly
...would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in 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 but attentive.
-------------------
Written in 1957 to a woman two and a half years after the death of his wife.
'I wasn't faithful to my wife - '
Stop! He should have stopped right there. Six truthful words. Instead of which what he actually wrote was:
'I wasn't faithful to my wife out of principle but because she was completely adorable, and the urge to stray which afflicts many men at a certain age, because they think they have been missing a lot of beautiful girls, never touched me. I already had perfection.'
Sigh. This would have been so much better if we didn't all know he spent his whole married life shagging whatever was about.
1949
I'm always seeing little pieces by writers about how they don't ever wait for inspiration; they just sit down at their little desks every morning at eight, rain or shine, hangover and broken arm and all, and bang out their little stint. However blank their minds or dull their wits , no nonsense about inspiration from them. I offer them my admiration and take care to avoid their books.
--------------------
1948 to Edward Weeks, editor of the Atlantic Monthly
...would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in 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 but attentive.
-------------------
Written in 1957 to a woman two and a half years after the death of his wife.
'I wasn't faithful to my wife - '
Stop! He should have stopped right there. Six truthful words. Instead of which what he actually wrote was:
'I wasn't faithful to my wife out of principle but because she was completely adorable, and the urge to stray which afflicts many men at a certain age, because they think they have been missing a lot of beautiful girls, never touched me. I already had perfection.'
Sigh. This would have been so much better if we didn't all know he spent his whole married life shagging whatever was about.
October 6, 2022
"Niewielu tylko pisarzy może pisać po wódce, lecz ja należę do nielicznych wyjątków"*
"Nie obstaję przy tym, że powieść kryminalna jest doskonałą formą ucieczki. Stwierdzam po prostu, że każde czytanie dla przyjemności jest ucieczką, bez względu na to, czy będzie to greka, matematyka, astronomia, Benedetto Croce, czy też Diary of the Forgotten Man. Kto twierdzi inaczej, jest snobem intelektualnym u nie ma pojęcia o sztuce życia."**
"Podobnie więc, jak każdy niedouczony ogół od stworzenia świata, zwraca on z westchnieniem ulgi do pisarza, który opowiada mu bajkę i nic poza tym. Mówić, że to co ten człowiek pisze, nie jest literaturą, to tak, jakby się mówiło, że książka nie może być dobra, jeżeli ma się ją ochotę czytać."***
Przytoczone powyżej cytaty nie do końca o tym świadczą, ale listy Raymonda Chandlera czyta się niemal tak dobrze, jak jego kryminały. Pisarz jest błyskotliwym rozmówcą, dowcipnym, sarkastycznym, nie raz i nie dwa, wrednym, jak sto diabłów, co tylko dodaje mu barwności. Korespondencja zebrana w "Mówi Chandler" dotyczy wielu aspektów życia pisarza, tak zawodowego (książki, wydawcy, scenopisarstwo inni pisarze), jak prywatnego (miłość do ukochanej żony, stosunek do ulubionej kotki).
Jaki obraz pisarza, czy szerzej człowieka, wyłania się z tej korespondencji? Na pewno świadomego wartości swoich książek, twardo stąpającego po ziemi i pozbawionego złudzeń, wiele z jego przemyśleń odnośnie literatury, sztuki, pracy, czy życia nie tracą na aktualności do dziś. Jednocześnie Chandler boleśnie przeżywał ignorancję krytyki względem własnych książek (według niego wartość literacka nawet najgenialniejszej powieści sensacyjnej, zawsze będzie deprecjonowana przez wszelkiej maści krytyków od literatury wysokiej, co w sumie do dziś nie uległo zmianie).
*s. 305
**s. 320- 321
***s. 62-63
"Nie obstaję przy tym, że powieść kryminalna jest doskonałą formą ucieczki. Stwierdzam po prostu, że każde czytanie dla przyjemności jest ucieczką, bez względu na to, czy będzie to greka, matematyka, astronomia, Benedetto Croce, czy też Diary of the Forgotten Man. Kto twierdzi inaczej, jest snobem intelektualnym u nie ma pojęcia o sztuce życia."**
"Podobnie więc, jak każdy niedouczony ogół od stworzenia świata, zwraca on z westchnieniem ulgi do pisarza, który opowiada mu bajkę i nic poza tym. Mówić, że to co ten człowiek pisze, nie jest literaturą, to tak, jakby się mówiło, że książka nie może być dobra, jeżeli ma się ją ochotę czytać."***
Przytoczone powyżej cytaty nie do końca o tym świadczą, ale listy Raymonda Chandlera czyta się niemal tak dobrze, jak jego kryminały. Pisarz jest błyskotliwym rozmówcą, dowcipnym, sarkastycznym, nie raz i nie dwa, wrednym, jak sto diabłów, co tylko dodaje mu barwności. Korespondencja zebrana w "Mówi Chandler" dotyczy wielu aspektów życia pisarza, tak zawodowego (książki, wydawcy, scenopisarstwo inni pisarze), jak prywatnego (miłość do ukochanej żony, stosunek do ulubionej kotki).
Jaki obraz pisarza, czy szerzej człowieka, wyłania się z tej korespondencji? Na pewno świadomego wartości swoich książek, twardo stąpającego po ziemi i pozbawionego złudzeń, wiele z jego przemyśleń odnośnie literatury, sztuki, pracy, czy życia nie tracą na aktualności do dziś. Jednocześnie Chandler boleśnie przeżywał ignorancję krytyki względem własnych książek (według niego wartość literacka nawet najgenialniejszej powieści sensacyjnej, zawsze będzie deprecjonowana przez wszelkiej maści krytyków od literatury wysokiej, co w sumie do dziś nie uległo zmianie).
*s. 305
**s. 320- 321
***s. 62-63
October 9, 2024
Read all of Chandler's short stories, novels, essays and letters back in the 1970s and thought they were great. Chandler was one of a kind and one of the best. This one reveals Chandler as himself.
December 31, 2021
It's a very good book - a treat for every Chandler fan - yet still I have mixed feelings about it. It was great to know that Chandler very much wanted to write in what we now call 'magical realism' genre, and his 'Atlantic Monthly' essays are great, Chandler had a keen mind and a great sense of humor. I don't think that his attempt to write psychological prose - 'A Couple of Writers' - was successful, but then again, this story was never meant to be published, Chandler simply tried his hand at something new and different from crime fiction. I adore cats and can read about his Persian Taki for hours on end.
The ugly side is that - undoubtedly to attract as many readers and buyers as possible - the editors decided to publish Chandler's extremely weak 'Poodle Springs'. Labelled as 'an unfinished Phillip Marlowe novel', these twenty or something pages stink! Actually, they read like an inept Mickey Spillane pastiche - and come from a guy who despised Spillane! Chandler obviously was very drunk when he wrote this trash. The fact that 'Poodle Springs' was
a) included in this book,
b) continued by some hack of a writer whose name I don't recall at the moment and don't want to recall for anyone who lets the name of Raymond Chandler be humiliated deserves eternal burning in hell
is a slap in the face to all Chandler - and good fiction - lovers. These dirty pages should have been burned, not made public. So, four stars instead of five - and never ever read 'Poodle Springs', re-read 'Farewell, My Lovely' or 'Red Wind' instead.
The ugly side is that - undoubtedly to attract as many readers and buyers as possible - the editors decided to publish Chandler's extremely weak 'Poodle Springs'. Labelled as 'an unfinished Phillip Marlowe novel', these twenty or something pages stink! Actually, they read like an inept Mickey Spillane pastiche - and come from a guy who despised Spillane! Chandler obviously was very drunk when he wrote this trash. The fact that 'Poodle Springs' was
a) included in this book,
b) continued by some hack of a writer whose name I don't recall at the moment and don't want to recall for anyone who lets the name of Raymond Chandler be humiliated deserves eternal burning in hell
is a slap in the face to all Chandler - and good fiction - lovers. These dirty pages should have been burned, not made public. So, four stars instead of five - and never ever read 'Poodle Springs', re-read 'Farewell, My Lovely' or 'Red Wind' instead.
February 4, 2014
This book consists of letters of correspondence Chandler wrote to friends, publishers, other writers etc. If you're into his novels you'll probably like this, I did. He sounds friendlier and funnier than I somehow expected. Even when he delivers criticism he does it in an elegant manner, avoiding harsh dismissals directly. Lots of keen observations and off-the-cuff lines about cats, writing ( he seems very well read up on his contemporaries, and has praise and opinions about them). There is a down to earthiness here that hint of a nice hard-working man with a sober head, in spite of the drinker he's often referred to as.
March 11, 2025
Collections of letters are usually a curate's egg, part-interesting, part-dull, and this is no exception. I mainly bought the book to read the final, unfinished, Philip Marlowe story, which concludes this book, so that's that box ticked. Chandler comes across as something of an old curmudgeon, similar to his main creation, but his views on TV, literary agents and other hangers-on are probably justified.
Anyway, that concludes my reading the Marlowe series, which itself was rather a curate's egg! One of Josephine Tey's novels was praised in one of these letters, so her Inspector Grant series are my next target.
Anyway, that concludes my reading the Marlowe series, which itself was rather a curate's egg! One of Josephine Tey's novels was praised in one of these letters, so her Inspector Grant series are my next target.
December 16, 2022
Devotees of Chandler and Marlowe will love this book. The source of humour in his stories is also apparent from his letters in this collection. And intelligence.
At one point he rails against someone who "..doesn't know the difference between 'each other' and 'one another'..".
I don't know the difference either. I'll take answers on a postcard.
At one point he rails against someone who "..doesn't know the difference between 'each other' and 'one another'..".
I don't know the difference either. I'll take answers on a postcard.
August 15, 2021
Chandler's complete letters, organized by topic. Includes a couple short stories. Very interesting.
August 4, 2024
This is essential reading for anyone who wants to write "hardboiled" detective fiction.
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February 28, 2025Chandler's account of his grief is some of most heartbreaking stuff I've ever read, I still think about it a lot. I also still think about that one letter he wrote while roleplaying as his cat a lot.
September 2, 2016
This collection consists mostly of letters written by Chandler to various people in his life, including his publisher, fellow writers, and fans. Also included are a story which was the basis for an unfinished novel, and another very dark short story which reads as if it was written by Raymond Carver's dad.
If you enjoy Chandler's turns of phrase in his novels, you'll find plenty to enjoy here. The book is compulsively readable, and intrinsically entertaining.
Here's a nice chunk of prose which is especially enjoyable:
"Yes, I am exactly like the characters in my books ... I have friends from all walks of life. I have fourteen telephones on my desk, including direct lines to New York, London, Paris, Rome, and Santa Rosa. My filing case opens out into a very convenient portable bar, and the bartender, who lives in the bottom drawer, is a midget. I am a heavy smoker and according to my mood I smoke tobacco, marijuana, corn silk and dried leaves. I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes. I get my material in various ways, but my favourite procedure consists of going through the desks of other writers after hours. I am thirty-eight years old and have been for the last twenty years. I do not regard myself as a dead shot, but I am a pretty dangerous man with a wet towel. But all in all I think my favourite weapon is a twenty dollar bill."
If you enjoy Chandler's turns of phrase in his novels, you'll find plenty to enjoy here. The book is compulsively readable, and intrinsically entertaining.
Here's a nice chunk of prose which is especially enjoyable:
"Yes, I am exactly like the characters in my books ... I have friends from all walks of life. I have fourteen telephones on my desk, including direct lines to New York, London, Paris, Rome, and Santa Rosa. My filing case opens out into a very convenient portable bar, and the bartender, who lives in the bottom drawer, is a midget. I am a heavy smoker and according to my mood I smoke tobacco, marijuana, corn silk and dried leaves. I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes. I get my material in various ways, but my favourite procedure consists of going through the desks of other writers after hours. I am thirty-eight years old and have been for the last twenty years. I do not regard myself as a dead shot, but I am a pretty dangerous man with a wet towel. But all in all I think my favourite weapon is a twenty dollar bill."
January 16, 2014
This book was a hand-me-down from my father who said Chandler's letters are among the best (as are Cheever's and Chekhov's, he sez - I guess there's just something about names that start with Ch). I hate to say this, because Chandler is a lovable guy, but I found the book tedious, especially the gripes about Hollywood - though I'd give it another try someday. The letters in this book are cleverly organized by themes rather than in chronological order, and I did enjoy the chapters on cats and real crimes.
November 20, 2008
While definitely one for the fans this relatively slim tome gives a valuable and fascinating insight in the real life and day-to-day working technique of a man who, along with Dashiell Hammett, changed film and literature forever, and for the better, and whose witty, gritty, style reassured many a young aspiring hack trapped in the shadows of factories that what others call trash can be, with passion, shaped into treasure.
October 9, 2014
Whatever his other issues, Chandler's gift with a wry phrase made him an icon of American literature. Reading an entire book written in his voice - a collection of his letters - is a treat. My only complaint is that the collection was edited to remove certain slurs and slanders in some of the letters. I wanted the raw, uncut, unlikable alcoholic without censorship. If you read other biographies of him, you can pick up some of the missing pieces.
July 20, 2014
Lots of wonderful quotes here. Chandler is at his least convincing when attempting to demonstrate his fine-tuned mastery of underworld argot (why is it that guys who breathe freedom into a field always end up tying it up with even bigger chains?...it's just like Hopkins with all of his Sprung Rhythm hokum).
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews