Suspension of disbelief. This is the crux of Chandler's Essay in "The Simple Art of Murder", where he praises the real and criticises the surreal. However, I couldn't help but feel a whiff of arrogance while reading this essay; his personal biases explode in straight condemnation and criticism when it comes to authors who are not realistic enough in their writing.

Having just read "Trouble is My Business", you can see a similar critique and hatred in his writing. He despises fat men, tall women - he categorises people into small boxes. The main character is a hard drinker and unafraid of death, and seduces the tall gorgeous woman. And this is the same author who is attacking the surreal. Yes, this may just be the postmodernist in me talking, and Chandler is definitely more of a genius than I'll ever be, but this is my take. The hard-boiled John Dalsam is hard-boiled; masculine, immune to fear. The women are either fat, or tall beauties, and the rest have no real defining features.

I'd like to tell Chandler to get off his high horse. Unfortunately, he deserves all the praise and popularity due to the quality of his work. However, having the means to back up your pride does not justify pointing fingers and calling out other writers. People enjoy different mediums of entertainment, and though novels and entertainment are derivative by nature, it does not mean that aspiring writers deserve a whack. Sometimes people read and write to escape reality, not to see an alternative reality with exactly the same rules and laws.

Sometimes you just have to suspend your disbelief.

"In her introduction to the first Omnibus of Crime, Dorothy Sayers wrote: 'It [the detective story] does not, and by hypothesis never can, attain the loftiest level of literary achievement.' And the reason, as she suggested somewhere else, is that it is a 'literature of escape' and not 'a literature of expression.' I do not know what the loftiest level of literary achievement is: neither did Aeschylus or Shakespeare; neither does Miss Sayers. Other things being equal, which they never are, a more powerful theme will provoke a more powerful performance, Yet some very dull books have been written about God, and some very fine ones about how to make a living and stay fairly honest. It is always a matter of who writes the stuff, and what he has in him to write it with.

"As for 'literature of expression' and 'literature of escape' — this is critics’ jargon, a use of abstract words as if they had absolute meanings. Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality: there are no dull subjects, only dull writers. All men who read escape from something else. Some escape into Greek or astronomy or mathematics; some into weeding the yard or playing with the children’s toys or getting tight in little bars. But all men must escape at times from the deadly rhythm of their private thoughts. That is part of the process of life among thinking beings. It is one of the things that distinguish them from the three-toed sloth; he apparently — one can never be quite sure — is perfectly content hanging upside down on a branch, not even reading Walter Lippmann."

I had to savor my reading of The Simple Art of Murder, for with this volume I’ve now read everything by Raymond Chandler that’s in print. ‘Nuf said…

One good story out of 4. Would have been better left unpublished, but I suppose a best-selling author has the right to make a cash grab on his previous, inferior work.

Raymond Chandler turned the pulp genre of the detective story into an art form. That is as evident in his early stories as his later Philip Marlowe novels. This collection of eight stories and an essay, none of which feature Philip Marlowe, is evidence of his early mastery.

For creating mood and memorable dialogue, Chandler has few rivals and no superiors. He evokes a hard bitten, world weariness that you can feel in your bones. This is on best display in the shortest of the eight stories, I’ll Be Waiting, a perfect distillation of Noir into a pithy package of dark, brooding.

Other stories that stood out for me in this collection were; Spanish Blood, The King In Yellow, and Pickup On Noon Street. The book is rounded out with Pearls Are A Nuisance, Smart-Aleck Kill, Guns At Cyrano’s, and Nevada Gas. The title essay, The Simple Art Of Murder, is Chandler’s comparison of the mannered English detective story to the American Noir variety. Unsurprisingly, he found the American contribution to be superior.

Hard-boiled.

Here's one that's not read as often as his others. I liked it a great deal and recommend it to other authors.

A very sub par collection of short stories. It's listed on FictFact as part of the Philip Marlowe series, and that's the only reason why I read it now. Maybe I shouldn't have...

All of these characters are proto-Marlowes. They have all of Marlowe's problems, and none of his qualities. The stories are very dated, uninteresting and badly developed.

I couldn't even finish the essay. It seemed a very unnecessary and purposefully dense study of a subject that has already been developed further than described, and therefore doesn't apply anymore. The second phrase of it, however, stands to memory: "Old-fashioned novels which now seem stilted and artificial to the point of burlesque did not appear that way to the people who first read them." I love the irony of how well it applies to Raymond Chandler himself...

Una gran colección de relatos de Raymond Chandler, con su toque especial de personajes de detectives que se sienten abrumados por la presencia de la mujer, figura que juega un papel inesperado en sus historias.

Chandler sabe recrear la atmósfera de la novela negra como pocos. Leyendo sus relatos uno se traslada a la estética del cine negro norteamericano de los años cincuenta.

Muy recomendable para los amantes de este género.

Synopsis: contains Raymond Chandler's essay on the art of detective stories and eight of his classic mystery shorts.

I reread these classic short stories - and the very important author’s introduction about the art of the mystery - every few years or so. Spot the ones that influenced the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing!

Although I am not a fan of crime novels, and although not every story in this anthology caught my fancy, I overall became a fan of how Chandler writes. Earlier notes that I posted as I worked my way through this book reveal how enamored I became with his deft skill at establishing setting, and his masterful way at defining characters with just a few scant lines. Chandler was a talented writer. I am very intrigued that his first crime short story was published when he was 45, and that his first novel was published when he was 51. He wrote other short stories before WWI, but it's his crime fiction he is most known for. He lived a long, hard life while observing the world around him before he turned those observations into genre defining stories.

Growing up, my tastes in fiction tended to sway towards fantasy and science fiction. I avoided crime noir perhaps because I was born in the 60s and felt this genre was old fashioned. I am glad that as an adult I have discovered his work and stepped outside my comfort zone. To think he was born in 1888 and almost half a century later became such a luminary in the pulp fiction industry. I find that rather inspiring.

This collection of stories is a great introduction to crime fiction, pulp fiction, and the type of story that has entertained Americans since the 1930's. The writing is deceptively simple, packing great details into short bursts of prose. Considering how literary fiction is often concerned with the art of the word, Chandler can teach new writers much because he focused on the art of the story first.

Apparently, earlier print editions of this book from the early 50s featured more short stories. I believe I will hunt for them, though, I imagine that they'll be priced accordingly as collectibles.