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If you're going to read Chandler - and you should - you might as well get it all in one place, so these Library of America volumes are all you really need.
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Raymond Chandler: Stories and Early Novels
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In Raymond Chandler’s hands, the pulp crime story became a haunting mystery of power and corruption, set against a modern cityscape both lyrical and violent. Now Chandler joins the authoritative Library of America series in a comprehensive two-volume set displaying all the facets of his brilliant talent.
In his first novel, The Big Sleep (1939), the classic private eye finds his full-fledged form as Philip Marlowe: at once tough, independent, brash, disillusioned, and sensitive—and man of weary honor threading his way (in Chandler’s phrase) “down these mean streets” among blackmailers, pornographers, and murderers for hire.
In Farewell, My Lovely (1940), Chandler’s personal favorite among his novels, Marlowe’s search for a missing woman leads him from shanties and honky-tonks to the highest reaches of power, encountering an array of richly drawn characters. The High Window (1942), about a rare coin that becomes a catalyst by which a hushed-up crime comes back to haunt a wealthy family, is partly a humorous burlesque of pulp fiction. All three novels show Chandler at a peak of verbal inventiveness and storytelling drive
Stories and Early Novels also includes every classic noir story from the 1930s that Chandler did not later incorporate into a novel—thirteen in all, among them such classics as “Red Wind,” “Finger Man,” The King in Yellow," and “Trouble Is My Business.” Drawn from the pages of Black Mask and Dime Detective, these stories show how Chandler adapted the violent conventions of the pulp magazine—with their brisk exposition and rapid-fire dialogue—to his own emerging vision of 20th-century America.
In his first novel, The Big Sleep (1939), the classic private eye finds his full-fledged form as Philip Marlowe: at once tough, independent, brash, disillusioned, and sensitive—and man of weary honor threading his way (in Chandler’s phrase) “down these mean streets” among blackmailers, pornographers, and murderers for hire.
In Farewell, My Lovely (1940), Chandler’s personal favorite among his novels, Marlowe’s search for a missing woman leads him from shanties and honky-tonks to the highest reaches of power, encountering an array of richly drawn characters. The High Window (1942), about a rare coin that becomes a catalyst by which a hushed-up crime comes back to haunt a wealthy family, is partly a humorous burlesque of pulp fiction. All three novels show Chandler at a peak of verbal inventiveness and storytelling drive
Stories and Early Novels also includes every classic noir story from the 1930s that Chandler did not later incorporate into a novel—thirteen in all, among them such classics as “Red Wind,” “Finger Man,” The King in Yellow," and “Trouble Is My Business.” Drawn from the pages of Black Mask and Dime Detective, these stories show how Chandler adapted the violent conventions of the pulp magazine—with their brisk exposition and rapid-fire dialogue—to his own emerging vision of 20th-century America.
1199 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1,1933
This edition
- Format
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1199 pages, Hardcover
- Published
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October 1, 1995 by Library of America
- ISBN
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9781883011079
- ASIN
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1883011078
- 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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Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 90 votes)
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I need to find someone who writes prose this well today.
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About twenty years back I tried to read Raymond Chandler but never, ever cracked the book. Being a fan of neo-film noir, I knew I would like it if I ever started. What I didn't know was that I would discover the lost world of my father. While Chandler was born in the late nineteenth century, my father was born in 1919 so the diction, thoughts, and mannerisms of these works are from father's milieu more than Chandler's. The hoods, jazz cats, and dicks of Chandler's stories are the future Greatest Generation of World War II. The LA of these stories is a boom town of oil, the studio system, and decadence that money and power breeds in a new frontier. These works are smoke-filled, bigoted, misogynistic, bloody - and exciting.
The book contains thirteen pulp stories including "The King in Yellow". This reference to "The King" shows that while Chandler was creating with Dashiell Hammett the hard-boiled detective genre, he also was aware of the work of other pulp writers such as H.P. Lovecraft's expansion of Ambrose Bierce and Robert Chambers' 19th century Cthulhu mythos. That story's detective and jazz enthusiast, Steve Grayce's fleeting reference: "The King in Yellow. I read a book with that title once..." alerts the reader that Steve has fallen from grace or the sanity of a normal man. He is living on borrowed time. In general, these stories paint a world of dames, broads, hustlers, gamblers, playboys, and enforcers both legal and illegal, and all of them are corrupted by the lure of fame and money.
The book finishes with his first three novels: "The Big Sleep", "Farewell, My Lovely", and "The High Window". Each of them suffers from the feeling of being a double or triple version of his short stories - solutions come in multiples. Yet, you can't help but like the fully developed, chain smoking, alcoholic Philip Marlowe. His legacy has come down to us through the adoption of film noir trops by Cyberpunk works like Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" and William Gibson's "Neuromancer". In Larry McLafferty's book, "Storming the Reality Studio", he and Richard Kadrey's "Cyperpunk 101: A Schematic Guide" says this:
"The Big Sleep" (Raymond Chandler, 1939, Random House). Chandler's smooth, polychromatic prose style and vision of the detective as knight-errant has influence more than one cyberpunk."
And of course, it is why we read Chandler. We know that while many will die, most of them will deserve it but that Marlowe will perhaps save the innocent or at least the redeemable. For despite all of his street smarts he is still a force of good and a protector of the weak. These stories are quests for a better world where Might still serves Right.
The book contains thirteen pulp stories including "The King in Yellow". This reference to "The King" shows that while Chandler was creating with Dashiell Hammett the hard-boiled detective genre, he also was aware of the work of other pulp writers such as H.P. Lovecraft's expansion of Ambrose Bierce and Robert Chambers' 19th century Cthulhu mythos. That story's detective and jazz enthusiast, Steve Grayce's fleeting reference: "The King in Yellow. I read a book with that title once..." alerts the reader that Steve has fallen from grace or the sanity of a normal man. He is living on borrowed time. In general, these stories paint a world of dames, broads, hustlers, gamblers, playboys, and enforcers both legal and illegal, and all of them are corrupted by the lure of fame and money.
The book finishes with his first three novels: "The Big Sleep", "Farewell, My Lovely", and "The High Window". Each of them suffers from the feeling of being a double or triple version of his short stories - solutions come in multiples. Yet, you can't help but like the fully developed, chain smoking, alcoholic Philip Marlowe. His legacy has come down to us through the adoption of film noir trops by Cyberpunk works like Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" and William Gibson's "Neuromancer". In Larry McLafferty's book, "Storming the Reality Studio", he and Richard Kadrey's "Cyperpunk 101: A Schematic Guide" says this:
"The Big Sleep" (Raymond Chandler, 1939, Random House). Chandler's smooth, polychromatic prose style and vision of the detective as knight-errant has influence more than one cyberpunk."
And of course, it is why we read Chandler. We know that while many will die, most of them will deserve it but that Marlowe will perhaps save the innocent or at least the redeemable. For despite all of his street smarts he is still a force of good and a protector of the weak. These stories are quests for a better world where Might still serves Right.
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The PG Wodehouse of Hardboil.
Chandler's concern with mood to the point of cannibalizing plot points word-for-word and leaving plot holes is incredible (but you wouldn't notice). Top 10-ish despite some of the seedier plot elements.
"I felt terrible. I felt like an amputated leg."
"The voice that answered was fat. It wheezed softly, like the voice of a man who had just won a pie-eating contest."
"I wasn't doing any work that day, just catching up on my foot-dangling."
Chandler's concern with mood to the point of cannibalizing plot points word-for-word and leaving plot holes is incredible (but you wouldn't notice). Top 10-ish despite some of the seedier plot elements.
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I really enjoyed reading Chandler's stories and first novels in order this way. The progress of his development as a writer and storyteller is obvious and quite interesting to track. I particularly liked the stories "Guns at Cyrano's" and "Pick-Up on Noon Street," and absolutely loved The High Window by the time I got to it. I'll definitely be moving on to Volume II.
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This book includes stories from other books:
Pulp fiction (short stories)
- Blackmailers don't shoot
- Smart-Aleck kill
- Finger man
- Nevada gas
- Spanish blood*
- Guns at Cyrano's
- Pick up on noon street
- Goldfish
- Red Wind
- The king in yellow*
- Pearls are a Nuisance*
- Trouble is my business
- I'll be waiting*
* - also in the book: The simple art of murder
Full length books #1-3 Phillip Marlowe
1 - The big sleep
2 - Farewell, my lovely
3 - The high window
Pulp fiction (short stories)
- Blackmailers don't shoot
- Smart-Aleck kill
- Finger man
- Nevada gas
- Spanish blood*
- Guns at Cyrano's
- Pick up on noon street
- Goldfish
- Red Wind
- The king in yellow*
- Pearls are a Nuisance*
- Trouble is my business
- I'll be waiting*
* - also in the book: The simple art of murder
Full length books #1-3 Phillip Marlowe
1 - The big sleep
2 - Farewell, my lovely
3 - The high window
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loved it
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I EFFING LOVE CHANDLER, and I ADORE the Library of America collections of his writings.
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