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Raymond Chandler: Later Novels and Other Writings
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With humor, along with an unerring sense of dialogue and the telling details of dress and behavior, Raymond Chandler created a distinctive fictional universe out of the dark side of sunlit Los Angeles. In the process, he transformed both crime writing and the American language.
Written during the war, The Lady in the Lake (1943) takes Philip Marlowe out of the seamy L.A. streets to the deceptive tranquility of the surrounding mountains, as the search for a businessman’s missing wife expands into an elegy of loneliness and loss. The darker tone typical of Chandler’s later fiction is evident in The Little Sister (1949), in which an ambitious starlet, a blackmailer, and a seemingly naïve young woman from Manhattan, Kansas, are the key players in a plot that provides fuel for a bitter indictment of Hollywood and Chandler’s most savage portrayal of his adopted city.
The Long Goodbye (1953), his most ambitious and self-revealing novel, uncovers a more anguished resonance in the Marlowe character, in a plot that hinges on the betrayal of friendship and the compromises of middle age. Playback (1958), written originally as a screenplay, is Chandler’s seventh and last novel.
A special feature of this volume is Chandler’s long-unavailable screenplay for the film noir classic, Double Indemnity (1944), adapted from James M. Cain’s novel. Written with director Billy Wilder, it is one of the best screenplays in American cinema, masterful in construction and dialogue. Supplementing the volume, and providing a more personal glimpse of Chandler’s personality, is a selection of letters and essays—including “The Simple Art of Murder,” in which Chandler muses on his pulp roots and on the special qualities of his hero and style.
Written during the war, The Lady in the Lake (1943) takes Philip Marlowe out of the seamy L.A. streets to the deceptive tranquility of the surrounding mountains, as the search for a businessman’s missing wife expands into an elegy of loneliness and loss. The darker tone typical of Chandler’s later fiction is evident in The Little Sister (1949), in which an ambitious starlet, a blackmailer, and a seemingly naïve young woman from Manhattan, Kansas, are the key players in a plot that provides fuel for a bitter indictment of Hollywood and Chandler’s most savage portrayal of his adopted city.
The Long Goodbye (1953), his most ambitious and self-revealing novel, uncovers a more anguished resonance in the Marlowe character, in a plot that hinges on the betrayal of friendship and the compromises of middle age. Playback (1958), written originally as a screenplay, is Chandler’s seventh and last novel.
A special feature of this volume is Chandler’s long-unavailable screenplay for the film noir classic, Double Indemnity (1944), adapted from James M. Cain’s novel. Written with director Billy Wilder, it is one of the best screenplays in American cinema, masterful in construction and dialogue. Supplementing the volume, and providing a more personal glimpse of Chandler’s personality, is a selection of letters and essays—including “The Simple Art of Murder,” in which Chandler muses on his pulp roots and on the special qualities of his hero and style.
1076 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1,1995
This edition
- Format
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1076 pages, Hardcover
- Published
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October 1, 1995 by Library of America
- ISBN
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9781883011086
- ASIN
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1883011086
- Language
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English
About the author
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Raymond 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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everything
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In round two of these round-up's, I get to Playback. It appears to be another of the thin ones but it carries on somewhat (in plot anyway) from The Long Goodbye, as Chandler was finally ready for Marlowe to age.
The best part of the thorough chronology? "Quits excessive drinking" followed by "resumes excessive drinking" followed by "quits excessive drinking" and so on. I think it skipped a "resumes" at one point.
And the best part of the thorough notes? They let you know every time a "yeah" got excised. A lot of them did.
The best part of the thorough chronology? "Quits excessive drinking" followed by "resumes excessive drinking" followed by "quits excessive drinking" and so on. I think it skipped a "resumes" at one point.
And the best part of the thorough notes? They let you know every time a "yeah" got excised. A lot of them did.
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I haven't read much noir crime, but I recently got watched some of the classic films of this genre and I really enjoyed them (the Third Man, the Asphalt Jungle, The Maltese Falcon, etc.). I've always wanted to read more Chandler, Hammet and even Spillane. I love the lurid old pulp covers too, though this Library of America version has a boring cover (and super thin pages).
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I enjoy reading these stories, and I like the writing. I would even say I am likely to read them again. I just can't say they are great or that I even exactly think they are good. They are repetitive and not just dark but kind of ugly and negative. The Long Goodbye did seem better than the rest.
In Playback, I did find the intimations that Marlowe has fallen in love with the woman from the previous story a bit maudlin and ridiculous. Marlowe is not a character that develops. He seems like he should be considered a fully-formed, consistent force and never have experiences or change.
In Playback, I did find the intimations that Marlowe has fallen in love with the woman from the previous story a bit maudlin and ridiculous. Marlowe is not a character that develops. He seems like he should be considered a fully-formed, consistent force and never have experiences or change.
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The Long Goodbye is the best of the bunch, the book-end to all of his work.
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Rereading the Little Sister and The Long Goodbye- last time around all I got was bitterness and cynicism expressed through tropic unnuanced one-liners, unfiltered by the editorcensors (sadly). After a few years and having read Ross MacDonald's later novels a couple times, it's easier to read this as a demystification of the genre and maybe even the moral lifestyle. In a way, it's a refreshing departure from the Puritanical bends of his earlier novels, but Little SIster is pretty mediocre, both as mystery novel and character study. Long Goodbye is pretty massive, tons of dialogue and texture. You start smelling the scenes.
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A rare collection with no weak links. The Long Goodbye and Double Indemnity are familiar to even casual fans of noir and I think I prefer the screen treatment of Indemnity to the book (rare, I know). The first two novels are both prime Chandler, if not as well known as some others. Playback was a pleasant surprise, if just for the ending / postscript.
At the end Marlowe's old flame, Linda Loring, reappears from Paris to re-establish their relationship. This made me laugh, as it sets Marlowe up at the character from Dashiell Hammett's much earlier novel The Thin Man, where a retired, heavy drinking private eye from the west coast marries a wealthy heiress and they solve crimes together. So now when I watch a Thin Man movie, I'll have Marlowe in mind as the Nick Charles character.
Just a very solid collection, as with all the Library of America titles.
At the end Marlowe's old flame, Linda Loring, reappears from Paris to re-establish their relationship. This made me laugh, as it sets Marlowe up at the character from Dashiell Hammett's much earlier novel The Thin Man, where a retired, heavy drinking private eye from the west coast marries a wealthy heiress and they solve crimes together. So now when I watch a Thin Man movie, I'll have Marlowe in mind as the Nick Charles character.
Just a very solid collection, as with all the Library of America titles.
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