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| − | {{Infobox Writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox Writer/doc]] —>
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| − | |name =Raymond Chandler
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| − | |pseudonym =
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| − | |birthdate ={{birth date|1888|7|23}}
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| − | |birthplace=[[Chicago]], [[Illinois]], [[United States]]
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| − | |deathdate ={{death date and age|1959|3|26|1888|7|23}}
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| − | |deathplace=[[San Diego, California]], [[United States]]
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| − | |occupation =[[Novelist]]
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| − | |nationality=[[United States|American]] ''(1888–1907, 1956–1959)''<br/>[[United Kingdom|British]] ''(1907–1956)''
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| − | |period =1933–1959
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| − | |genre =[[crime fiction]]
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| − | |subject =
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| − | |movement = [[hardboiled]]
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| − | |influences = [[Dashiell Hammett]]
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| − | |influenced = [[Robert B. Parker]]
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| − | '''Raymond Thornton Chandler''' (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an [[United States|American]] [[author]] of the so-called hardboiled [[detective fiction]], a subset of [[crime fiction|crime stories and novels]]. His work was immensely influential on the style of the modern [[private eye]] story, especially in the style of the writing and the attitudes now characteristic of the genre.
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| − | His [[protagonist]], [[Philip Marlowe]], is together with [[Dashiell Hammett]]'s [[Sam Spade]], the epitome of the hardboiled private detective, a tough, sometimes violent investigator who does whatever is necessary to do his job.
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| − | Beginning in the late 1930s, Chandler's work helped to refine the genre of hardboiled [[detective fiction]]. From its earliest days, hardboiled fiction was published in and closely associated with so-called [[pulp magazines]], most famously ''[[Black Mask (magazine)|Black Mask]]''. Later, many hardboiled novels were published by houses specializing in paperback originals, also colloquially known as "pulps." Consequently, "pulp fiction" is often used as a synonym for hardboiled crime fiction.
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| − | Marlowe and Spade's popularity grew through the iconic performances of [[Humphrey Bogart]] in [[John Huston]]'s 1941 film version of Hammett's ''The Maltese Falcon'' and [[Howard Hawks]]' 1946 film adaptation of ''The Big Sleep'', with a screenplay adapted by [[William Faulkner]]. These two roles set the standard for a genre of hardboiled detective films that remains popular into the 21st century.
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| − | ==Early life==
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| − | Chandler was born in [[Chicago]], [[Illinois]], in 1888, but moved to [[Great Britain|Britain]] in 1895 with his [[Irish people|Irish]]-born mother after they were abandoned by his father, an alcoholic civil engineer who worked for an American railway company. His uncle, a successful lawyer, supported them.<ref name="nyrb-12-06-2007">
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| − | {{cite news
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| − | | first = Pico
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| − | | last = Iyer
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| − | | title = The Knight of Sunset Boulevard
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| − | | work = The New York Review of Books
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| − | | pages = 31–33
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| − | | date =December 6 2007}}</ref> In 1900, after attending a local school in [[Upper Norwood]], Chandler was classically educated at [[Dulwich College]], London (the [[public school]] in which [[P.G. Wodehouse]] learned to write prose)<ref name="nyrb-12-06-2007"/>. He did not attend university, instead spending time in [[France]] and [[Germany]]. In 1907, he was naturalized as a British subject in order to take the [[Civil Service]] examination, which he passed with the third-highest score. He then took an [[Admiralty]] job lasting slightly more than a year. His first poem was published during that time.<ref>[http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~gnik/crime-fiction/chandler/chandler-biography.html Raymond Chandler] Retrieved January 19, 2009.</ref>
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| − | Chandler disliked the servile mindset of the civil service and quit, to the consternation of his family, becoming a [[reporter]] for the ''[[Daily Express]]'' and the Bristol ''[[Western Gazette]]'' newspapers. He was an unsuccessful [[journalism|journalist]], published reviews, and continued writing [[Romanticism|Romantic]] poetry. Accounting for that checkered time he said, "Of course in those days as now there were...clever young men who made a decent living as freelances for the numerous literary weeklies...“ but “...I was distinctly not a clever young man. Nor was I at all a happy young man.” <ref>Raymond Chandler: ''Raymond Chandler Speaking'' (Dorothy Gardiner and Kathrine Sorley Wakker, ed.) p.24 ([[Houghton Mifflin Company]] (1962) ISBN 978-0520208353.</ref>
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| − | In 1912, he borrowed money from his uncle (who expected it repaid with interest), and returned to the U.S., eventually settling in [[Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles]]. He strung tennis rackets, picked fruit and endured a generally difficult time personally and financially. Finally, he took a correspondence bookkeeping course, finished ahead of schedule, and found a steady job. In 1917, when the U.S. entered [[World War I]], he enlisted in the [[Canadian Expeditionary Force]], saw combat in the trenches in [[France]] with the [[Gordon Highlanders]], and was undergoing flight training in the fledgling [[Royal Air Force]] (RAF) in England at war’s end.<ref name="nyrb-12-06-2007"/>
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| − | After the [[Armistice with Germany (Compiègne)|armistice]], he returned to Los Angeles and his mother, and soon began a love affair with Cissy Pascal, a married woman eighteen years his senior.<ref name="nyrb-12-06-2007"/> Chandler's mother, who had opposed the union, died on 26 September 1923, and not long after, in 1924, Chandler and Pascal married.<ref name=rcinfo>[http://raymondchandler.info/ Raymond Chandler's Shamus Town] Timeline and Residences pages using official government sources (death certificate, census, military & civil - city & phone directories) Retrieved January 19, 2009.</ref><ref name="nyrb-12-06-2007"/> By 1932, in the course of his bookkeeping career, he became a vice-president of the Dabney Oil syndicate, but a year later, his [[alcoholism]], absenteeism, and a threatened [[suicide]]<ref name="nyrb-12-06-2007"/> provoked his firing.
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| − | ==Pulp writer==
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| − | To earn a living with his creative talent, he taught himself to write [[Pulp magazine|pulp fiction]]; his first story, “Blackmailers Don't Shoot,” was published in ''[[Black Mask (magazine)|Black Mask]]'' magazine in 1933; his first novel, ''[[The Big Sleep]]'', was published in [[1939 in literature|1939]]. Literary success led to work as a [[Hollywood]] screenwriter: he co-wrote ''[[Double Indemnity (film)|Double Indemnity]]'' ([[1944 in film|1944]]) with [[Billy Wilder]], based upon on [[James M. Cain]]'s novel of [[Double Indemnity (novel)|the same name]]. His only original screenplay was ''[[The Blue Dahlia]]'' ([[1946 in film|1946]]). Chandler collaborated on the screenplay of [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s ''[[Strangers on a Train (film)|Strangers on a Train]]'' ([[1951 in film|1951]])—a story he thought implausible—based on [[Patricia Highsmith]]'s [[Strangers on a Train|novel]]. By then, the Chandlers had moved to [[La Jolla]], California, a rich coastal town near San Diego. This move would prove significant for his work.
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| − | Chandler’s short stories and novels are evocatively written, conveying the time, place, and ambience of [[Los Angeles]] and environs in the 1930s and 1940s.<ref name="nyrb-12-06-2007"/> The places are real, if pseudonymous: Bay City is [[Santa Monica]], Gray Lake is [[Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California|Silver Lake]], and Idle Valley a synthesis of rich [[San Fernando Valley]] communities.
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| − | His protagonist is the perfect extension of his locale. Philip Marlowe is not a stereotypical tough guy, but a complex, sometimes sentimental man of few friends, who attended university, speaks some Spanish and, at times, admires Mexicans, is a student of classical [[chess]] games and classical music. He will refuse a prospective client’s money if he is ethically unsatisfied by the job.
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| − | ==Later life and death==
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| − | In 1954, Cissy Chandler died after a long illness, during which time Raymond Chandler wrote ''[[The Long Goodbye (novel)|The Long Goodbye]]''. His subsequent loneliness worsened his natural propensity for [[clinical depression|depression]], and he returned to drink, never quitting it for long, which caused the quality and quantity of his writing to suffer.<ref name="nyrb-12-06-2007"/> In 1955, he attempted suicide, calling the police in advance to notify them of his plan. <ref>In ''[[The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved]]'', Judith Freeman called it “a cry for help.”</ref> Raymond Chandler’s personal and professional life was both helped and complicated by the women to whom he was attracted—notably Helga Greene (his literary agent); Jean Fracasse (his secretary); Sonia Orwell ([[George Orwell]]'s widow); and [[Natasha Spender]] ([[Stephen Spender]]'s wife), the latter two of whom assumed Chandler to be a repressed homosexual.<ref>[http://www.nysun.com/arts/man-who-gave-us-marlowe/65983/ The Man Who Gave Us Marlowe] Retrieved January 19, 2009.</ref>
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| − | He regained US citizenship in 1956.<ref>[http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~gnik/crime-fiction/chandler/chandler-biography.html Raymond Chandler] Retrieved January 19, 2009.</ref>
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| − | After his time in England he returned to La Jolla, where he died of pneumonial peripheral vascular shock and pre-renal uremia in the Scripps Memorial Hospital. Helga Greene inherited the Chandler estate after a lawsuit with Jean Fracasse. Raymond Chandler is buried at [[Mount Hope Cemetery, San Diego|Mount Hope Cemetery]], San Diego, California, as per Frank MacShane, ''The Raymond Chandler Papers'', Chandler directed he be buried next to Cissy, but wound up in the cemetery's [[Potter’s field]], because of the lawsuit over his estate.
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| − | ==Philip Marlowe==
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| − | Philip Marlowe is [[Raymond Chandler]]'s most popular creation–a recurring character in a series of novels including ''[[The Big Sleep]]'' and ''[[The Long Goodbye (novel)|The Long Goodbye]]''. Marlowe first appeared, under that name, in ''The Big Sleep'', published in 1939. Chandler's early [[short story|short stories]], published in [[pulp]] magazines like ''[[Black Mask]]'' and ''Dime Detective'', featured essentially identical characters with names like "Carmady" and "John Dalmas." Some of those short stories were later combined and expanded into novels featuring Marlowe, a process Chandler called "cannibalizing." When the non-cannibalized stories were republished years later in the short story collection ''[[The Simple Art of Murder]]'', Chandler changed the names of the [[protagonist|protagonists]] to Philip Marlowe.
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| − | Philip Marlowe's character is foremost within the genre of [[hardboiled]] [[crime fiction]] that originated in the 1920s, most notably in ''[[Black Mask (magazine)|Black Mask]]'' magazine, in which [[Dashiell Hammett]]'s [[The Continental Op]] and [[Sam Spade]] first appeared.
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| − | Underneath the wisecracking, hard drinking, tough private eye, Marlowe is quietly contemplative and philosophical. He enjoys [[chess]] and [[poetry]]. While he is not afraid to risk physical harm, he does not dish out violence merely to settle scores. Morally upright, he is not bamboozled by the genre's usual [[femme fatale|femmes fatale]], like Carmen Sternwood in ''The Big Sleep''. As Chandler wrote about his detective ideal in general, "I think he might seduce a duchess, and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin."
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| − | Chandler's treatment of the [[detective fiction|detective novel]] exhibits a continuing effort to develop the art form. His first full length book, ''The Big Sleep'', was published when Chandler was 51; his last, ''[[Playback (novel)|Playback]]'', when he was 70. All eight novels were produced in the last two decades of his life.
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| − | ==Critical reception==
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| − | Critics and writers, ranging from [[W. H. Auden]] to [[Evelyn Waugh]] to [[Ian Fleming]] greatly admired the finely wrought prose of Raymond Chandler.<ref name="nyrb-12-06-2007"/> The high critical regard in which Chandler is generally held today is in contrast to the critical pans that stung Chandler in his lifetime. In a March 1942 letter to Mrs. Blanche Knopf, published in ''Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler,'' Chandler complained: "The thing that rather gets me down is that when I write something that is tough and fast and full of mayhem and murder, I get panned for being tough and fast and full of mayhem and murder, and then when I try to tone down a bit and develop the mental and emotional side of a situation, I get panned for leaving out what I was panned for putting in the first time."
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| − | ==Works==
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| − | ===Novels===
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| − | *''[[The Big Sleep]]'' ({{lty|1939}}). Based on the short stories ''[[Killer in the Rain]]'' ({{lty|1935}}) and [[The Curtain (Chandler short story)|The Curtain]] ({{lty|1936}}).<ref name=durham> Philip Durham, Introduction, Killer in the Rain, Ballantine Books 1964</ref>
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| − | *''[[Farewell, My Lovely]]'' ({{lty|1940}}). Based on the short stories, The Man Who Liked Dogs ({{lty|1936}}) / Try The Girl ({{lty|1937}}) / Mandarin's Jade (1937).<ref name=durham/>
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| − | *''[[The High Window]]'' ({{lty|1942}}).
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| − | *''[[The Lady in the Lake]]'' ({{lty|1943}}). Based on the short stories, Bay City Blues ({{lty|1938}}), The Lady In The Lake ({{lty|1939}}), No Crime In The Mountains ({{lty|1941}}).<ref name=durham/>
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| − | *''[[The Little Sister]]'' ({{lty|1949}}).
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| − | *''[[The Long Goodbye (novel)|The Long Goodbye]]'' (end of {{lty|1953}} UK; Sept {{lty|1954}} USA; [[Edgar Award]] for Best Novel, {{lty|1955}}).
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| − | *''[[Playback (novel)|Playback]]'' ({{lty|1958}}).
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| − | *''[[Poodle Springs]]'' ({{lty|1959}}). (incomplete; completed by [[Robert B. Parker]] in {{lty|1989}}).
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| − | These are the criminal cases of [[Philip Marlowe]], a [[Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles]] [[private investigator]]. Their plots follow a pattern in which the men and women hiring him reveal themselves as corrupt, corrupting, and criminally complicit as those against whom he must protect his erstwhile employers.
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| − | ===Short stories===
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| − | Typically, the short stories chronicle the cases of Philip Marlowe and other down-on-their-luck private detectives (e.g. John Dalmas, Steve Grayce) or [[Good Samaritan|good samaritan]]s (e.g. Mr Carmady). The exceptions are the macabre ''The Bronze Door'' and ''English Summer'', a [[Gothic fiction|Gothic]] romance set in the [[England|English]] countryside.
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| − | Interestingly, in the 1950s radio series ''The Adventures of Philip Marlowe'', that included adaptations of the short stories, the Philip Marlowe name was replaced with the names of other detectives, e.g. Steve Grayce, in ''The King in Yellow''. Such changes restored the stories to their originally published versions. It was later, when they were republished, as Philip Marlowe stories that the Philip Marlowe name was used, with the exception of ''The Pencil''.
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| − | ====Detective short stories====
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| − | *''Blackmailers Don't Shoot'' (1933)
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| − | *''Smart-Aleck Kill'' (1934)
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| − | *''Finger Man'' (1934)
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| − | *''Killer in the Rain'' (1935)
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| − | *''Nevada Gas'' (1935)
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| − | *''Spanish Blood'' (1935)
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| − | *''The Curtain'' (1936)
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| − | *''Guns at Cyrano's'' (1936)
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| − | *''Goldfish'' (1936)
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| − | *''The Man Who Liked Dogs'' (1936)
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| − | *''Pickup on Noon Street'' (1936; originally published as ''Noon Street Nemesis'')
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| − | *''Mandarin's Jade'' (1937)
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| − | *''Try the Girl'' (1937)
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| − | *''Bay City Blues'' (1938)
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| − | *''The King in Yellow'' (1938)<ref>Not to be confused with the 1895 short story collection ''[[The King in Yellow]]'' by [[Robert W. Chambers]]</ref>
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| − | *''Red Wind'' (1938)
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| − | *''The Lady in the Lake'' (1939)
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| − | *''Pearls Are a Nuisance'' (1939)
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| − | *''Trouble is My Business'' (1939)
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| − | *''No Crime in the Mountains'' (1941)
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| − | *''The Pencil'' (1959; published posthumously; originally published as ''Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate'', also published as ''Wrong Pigeon'' and ''Philip Marlowe's Last Case'')
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| − | Most of the short stories published before 1940 appeared in pulp magazines like ''[[Black Mask]]'', and so had a limited readership. Chandler was able to recycle the plot lines and characters from those stories when he turned to writing novels intended for a wider audience.
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| − | ====Non-detective short stories====
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| − | *''I'll Be Waiting'' (1939)
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| − | *''The Bronze Door'' (1939)
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| − | *''Professor Bingo's Snuff'' (1951)
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| − | *''English Summer'' (1976; published posthumously)
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| − | ''I'll Be Waiting'', ''The Bronze Door'' and ''Professor Bingo's Snuff'' all feature [[unnatural death]]s and [[investigator]]s (a [[hotel]] detective, [[Scotland Yard]] and [[California]] local police, respectively), but the emphasis is not on the investigation of the deaths.
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| − | ''[[Atlantic Monthly]]'' magazine articles:
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| − | *''Writers in Hollywood'' (December 1944)
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| − | *''The Simple Art of Murder'' (November 1945)
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| − | *''Oscar Night in Hollywood'' (March 1948)
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| − | *''Ten Percent of your Life'' (February 1952)
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| − | ===Anthologies===
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| − | *''Stories & Early Novels: Pulp Stories, The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window'' (Frank MacShane, ed.) ([[Library of America]], 1995) ISBN 978-1-88301107-9.
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| − | *''Later Novels & Other Writings: The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Playback, Double Indemnity, Selected Essays & Letters'' (Frank MacShane, ed.) ([[Library of America]], 1995) ISBN 978-1-88301108-6.
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| − | ==Legacy==
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| − | Although his swift-moving, [[hardboiled]] style was inspired mostly by [[Dashiell Hammett]], his sharp and lyrical [[simile]]s are original: "The muzzle of the Luger looked like the mouth of the Second Street tunnel"; "The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips," defining [[Private investigator|private eye]] fiction genre, and leading to the coining of the adjective 'Chandleresque', which is subject and object of [[parody]] and [[pastiche]].
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| − | His influence on the genre was widely felt. In the United States, the original hardboiled style has been emulated by innumerable writers, notably including [[Chester Himes]], [[Mickey Spillane]], [[Ross Macdonald]], [[John D. MacDonald]], [[Robert B. Parker]], [[Sara Paretsky]], [[Sue Grafton]], and [[Walter Mosley]].
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| − | Chandler was also a perceptive critic of pulp fiction; his essay "[[The Simple Art of Murder]]" is the standard reference work in the field.
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| − | All of his novels have been cinematically adapted, notably ''[[The Big Sleep (1946 film)|The Big Sleep]]'' (1946), by [[Howard Hawks]], with [[Humphrey Bogart]] as Philip Marlowe; novelist [[William Faulkner]] was a co-screenplay writer. Raymond Chandler's few screen writing efforts and the cinematic adaptation of his novels proved stylistically and thematically influential upon the American [[film noir]] genre.
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| − | ==Notes==
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| − | {{reflist}}
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| − | == References ==
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| − | *Freeman, Judith (2007). ''The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved''. N.Y.:Pantheon. ISBN 978-0-375-42351-2 (0-375-42351-6)
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| − | *Hiney, Tom (1999). ''Raymond Chandler''. N.Y.: Grove Press. ISBN 0-80213-637-0
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| − | *Howe, Alexander N. "The Detective and the Analyst: Truth, Knowledge, and Psychoanalysis in the Hard-Boiled Fiction of Raymond Chandler." ''CLUES: A Journal of Detection'' 24.4 (Summer 2006): 15-29. {{ISSN| 0742-4248}}
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| − | *Howe, Alexander N. (2008). ''It Didn't Mean Anything: A Psychoanalytic Reading of American Detective Fiction.'' North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 0786434546
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| − | *MacShane, Frank (1976). ''The Life of Raymond Chandler''. N.Y.: E.P. Dutton. ISBN 9780525145523
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| − | *Moss, Robert (2002) ''Raymond Chandler A Literary Reference''. New York Carrol & Graf. ISBN 9780786711796
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| − | *Ward, Elizabeth and Alain Silver (1987). ''Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles''. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press. ISBN 0-87951-351-9
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| − | ==External links==
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| − | All links Retrieved January 17, 2009.
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| − | {{wikiquote}}
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| − | *[http://home.comcast.net/~mossrobert/ The Raymond Chandler website]
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| − | *{{imdb name|id=0151452|name=Raymond Chandler}}
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| − | *[http://www.catcorman.com/chandler01.html Raymond Chandler Photo Portfolio] Photographs of locations in Raymond Chandler's work, taken by Catherine Corman.
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| − | *[http://www.esotouric.com/chandler Raymond Chandler's LA: In A Lonely Place tour from L.A. bus adventure company Esotouric]
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| − | *[http://thrillingdetective.com/trivia/chandler.html Raymond Chandler at Thrilling Detective]
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| − | *[http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/chandlerbib.htm Bibliography of UK 1st Editions ]
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| − | *[http://www.nakedtheatre.co.uk/ The Opposite of Show Business] A play by [[Jim Grover (playwright)|Jim Grover]] about how Raymond Chandler became a writer.
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| − | *[http://www.immortalgame.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=RaymondChandler.WritingTheLongGoodbye Writing The Long Goodbye]
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| − | *[http://www.yourfleshmag.com/artman/publish/article_729.shtml 1996 Essay by George Pelecanos]
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| − | *[http://riordansdesk.blogspot.com/2007/03/his-masters-voice.html Recording of Ian Fleming’s interview of Raymond Chandler for BBC Radio, July 1958]
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| − | *[http://homepage.mac.com/llatker/ Raymond Chandler's Shamus Town] A history of Los Angeles via the locations where Raymond Chandler lived and wrote about, 1912-1946.
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| − | [[category:Art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
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| − | [[category:Writers and poets]]
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| − | {{credits|Raymond_Chandler|257878892|Philip_Marlowe|262679681|Hardboiled|257359071}}
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