Raymond Chandler
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Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and
screenwriter A screenwriter (also called scriptwriter, scribe, or scenarist) is a person who practices the craft of writing for visual mass media, known as screenwriting. These can include short films, feature-length films, television programs, television ...
. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a
detective fiction Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an criminal investigation, investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around ...
writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the
Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
. His first short story, " Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in '' Black Mask,'' a popular
pulp magazine Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 until around 1955. The term "pulp" derives from the Pulp (paper), wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed, due to their ...
. 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 Humphrey DeForest Bogart ( ; December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957), nicknamed Bogie, was an American actor. His performances in classic Hollywood cinema made him an American cultural icon. In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Bogart ...
, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe. ''The Big Sleep'' placed second on the
Crime Writers' Association The Crime Writers' Association (CWA) is a specialist authors' organisation in the United Kingdom, most notable for its "Dagger" awards for the best crime writing of the year, and the Diamond Dagger awarded to an author for lifetime achievement. ...
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."


Biography


Early life

Chandler was born in 1888 in Chicago, the son of Florence Dart (Thornton) and Maurice Benjamin Chandler. He spent his early years in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, living with his mother and father near his cousins and his aunt (his mother's sister) and uncle. Chandler's father, a civil engineer who worked for the railway, was alcoholic and abandoned the family in the early 1890s. To obtain the best possible education for Raymond, his mother, who was originally from Ireland, went to live in England with Raymond in 1900 (in
Upper Norwood Upper Norwood is an area of south London, England, within the London Boroughs of London Borough of Bromley, Bromley, London Borough of Croydon, Croydon, London Borough of Lambeth, Lambeth and London Borough of Southwark, Southwark. It is north ...
, now in the London Borough of
Croydon Croydon is a large town in South London, England, south of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Croydon, a Districts of England, local government district of Greater London; it is one of the largest commercial districts in Greater Lond ...
). Raymond lived there with his mother, unmarried aunt, and maternal grandmother between 1901 and 1907. Another uncle, a successful lawyer in
Waterford Waterford ( ) is a City status in Ireland, city in County Waterford in the South-East Region, Ireland, south-east of Ireland. It is located within the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster. The city is situated at the head of Waterford H ...
, Ireland, reluctantly supported them while they lived in London. Raymond was a first cousin to the actor Max Adrian, a founding member of the Royal Shakespeare Company; Max's mother Mabel was a sister of Florence Thornton. Chandler was classically educated at
Dulwich College Dulwich College is a 2-18 private, day and boarding school for boys in Dulwich, London, England. As a public school, it began as the College of God's Gift, founded in 1619 by Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn, with the original purpose of ...
, London (a public school whose alumni include the authors P. G. Wodehouse and C. S. Forester). He spent some of his childhood summers in Waterford in Ireland with his mother's family. He did not go to university, instead spending time in Paris and
Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...
improving his foreign language skills. In 1907, he was naturalized as a British subject in order to take the
civil service The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil service personnel hired rather than elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil service offic ...
examination, which he passed. He then took an Admiralty job, lasting just over a year. His first poem was published during that time. Chandler disliked the servility of the civil service and resigned, to the consternation of his family. He then became a reporter for the ''
Daily Express The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first ...
'' and also wrote for '' The Westminster Gazette''. He was unsuccessful as a journalist, but he published reviews and continued writing romantic poetry. An encounter with the slightly older Richard Barham Middleton is said to have influenced him into postponing his career as writer. "I met ... also a young, bearded, and sad-eyed man called Richard Middleton. ... Shortly afterwards he committed suicide in Antwerp, a suicide of despair, I should say. The incident made a great impression on me, because Middleton struck me as having far more talent than I was ever likely to possess; and if he couldn't make a go of it, it wasn't very likely that I could." Accounting for that 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." In 1912, at the age of 24, he borrowed money from his Waterford uncle, who expected it to be repaid with interest, and returned to America, visiting his aunt and uncle before settling in San Francisco for a time, where he took a correspondence course in bookkeeping, finishing ahead of schedule. His mother joined him there in late 1912. Encouraged by Chandler's attorney/oilman friend Warren Lloyd, they moved to Los Angeles in 1913, where he strung tennis rackets, picked fruit and endured a time of scrimping and saving. He found steady employment with the Los Angeles Creamery. In 1917, he traveled to Victoria, where in August he enlisted in the 50th Reinforcement Battalion
Canadian Expeditionary Force The Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF; French: ''Corps expéditionnaire canadien'') was the expeditionary warfare, expeditionary field force of Canada during the First World War. It was formed on August 15, 1914, following United Kingdom declarat ...
. He saw combat in the trenches in France with the 7th Battalion C.E.F. (British Columbia Regiment). He was twice hospitalized with Spanish flu during the pandemic and was undergoing flight training in the fledgling
Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...
(RAF) when the war ended. After the
armistice An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace. It is derived from t ...
, he returned to Los Angeles by way of Vancouver, and soon began a love affair with Pearl Eugenie ("Cissy") Pascal, a married woman 18 years his senior and the stepmother of Gordon Pascal, with whom Chandler had enlisted. Cissy amicably divorced her husband, Julian, in 1920, but Chandler's mother disapproved of the relationship and refused to sanction the marriage. For the next four years Chandler supported both his mother and Cissy. After the death of Florence Chandler on September 26, 1923, he was free to marry Cissy. They were married on February 6, 1924.'s Shamus Town Timeline and Residences pages using official government sources (death certificate, census, military & civil – city & phone directories). Having begun in 1922 as a bookkeeper and auditor, Chandler was by 1931 a highly paid vice president of the Dabney Oil Syndicate, but his alcoholism, absenteeism, promiscuity with female employees, and threatened suicides contributed to his dismissal a year later, after ten years with the company.


As a writer

In straitened financial circumstances during the
Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
, Chandler turned to his latent writing talent to earn a living, teaching himself to write pulp fiction by analyzing and imitating a novelette by Erle Stanley Gardner. Chandler's first professional work, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in ''Black Mask'' magazine in 1933. According to genre historian Herbert Ruhm, "Chandler, who worked slowly and painstakingly, revising again and again, had taken five months to write the story. Erle Stanley Gardner could turn out a pulp story in three or four days—and turned out an estimated one thousand." His first novel, '' The Big Sleep'', was published in 1939, featuring the detective Philip Marlowe, speaking in the first person. In 1950, Chandler described in a letter to his English publisher, Hamish Hamilton, why he began reading pulp magazines and later wrote for them:
Wandering up and down the Pacific Coast in an automobile I began to read pulp magazines, because they were cheap enough to throw away and because I never had at any time any taste for the kind of thing which is known as women's magazines. This was in the great days of the ''Black Mask'' (if I may call them great days) and it struck me that some of the writing was pretty forceful and honest, even though it had its crude aspect. I decided that this might be a good way to try to learn to write fiction and get paid a small amount of money at the same time. I spent five months over an 18,000 word novelette and sold it for $180. After that I never looked back, although I had a good many uneasy periods looking forward.
His second Marlowe novel, '' Farewell, My Lovely'' (1940), became the basis for three movie versions adapted by other screenwriters, including the 1944 film '' Murder My Sweet'', which marked the screen debut of the Marlowe character, played by Dick Powell (whose depiction of Marlowe was applauded by Chandler). Literary success and film adaptations led to a demand for Chandler himself as a screenwriter. He and Billy Wilder co-wrote ''
Double Indemnity ''Double Indemnity'' is a 1944 American film noir directed by Billy Wilder and produced by Buddy DeSylva and Joseph Sistrom. Wilder and Raymond Chandler adapted the screenplay from James M. Cain's Double Indemnity (novel), novel of the same na ...
'' (1944), based on James M. Cain's novel of the same title. The noir screenplay was nominated for an
Academy Award The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...
. Said Wilder, "I would just guide the structure and I would also do a lot of the dialogue, and he (Chandler) would then comprehend and start constructing too." Wilder acknowledged that the dialogue which makes the film so memorable was largely Chandler's. Chandler's only produced original screenplay was '' The Blue Dahlia'' (1946). He had not written a denouement for the script and, according to producer John Houseman, Chandler concluded he could finish the script only if drunk, with the assistance of round-the-clock secretaries and drivers, which Houseman agreed to. The script gained Chandler's second Academy Award nomination for screenplay. Chandler collaborated on the screenplay of
Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featu ...
's '' Strangers on a Train'' (1951), an ironic murder story based on
Patricia Highsmith Patricia Highsmith (born Mary Patricia Plangman; January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character T ...
's
novel A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...
, which he thought implausible. Chandler clashed with Hitchcock and they stopped talking after Hitchcock heard Chandler had referred to him as "that fat bastard". Hitchcock made a show of throwing Chandler's two draft screenplays into the studio trash can while holding his nose, but Chandler retained the lead screenwriting credit along with Czenzi Ormonde. In 1946, the Chandlers moved to La Jolla, an affluent coastal neighborhood of San Diego, California, where Chandler wrote two more Philip Marlowe novels, '' The Long Goodbye'' and his last completed work, ''Playback''. The latter was derived from an unproduced courtroom drama screenplay he had written for Universal Studios. Four chapters of a novel, unfinished at his death, were transformed into a final Philip Marlowe novel, '' Poodle Springs'', by the mystery writer and Chandler admirer Robert B. Parker, in 1989. Parker shares the authorship with Chandler. Parker subsequently wrote a sequel to ''The Big Sleep'' entitled '' Perchance to Dream'', which was salted with quotes from the original novel. Chandler's final Marlowe short story, circa 1957, was entitled "The Pencil". It later provided the basis of an episode of the HBO miniseries (1983–86), '' Philip Marlowe, Private Eye'', starring Powers Boothe as Marlowe. In 2014, "The Princess and the Pedlar" (1917), a previously unknown comic operetta, with libretto by Chandler and music by Julian Pascal, was discovered among the uncatalogued holdings of the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
. The work was never published or produced. It has been dismissed by the Raymond Chandler estate as "no more than… a curiosity." A small team under the direction of the actor and director Paul Sand is seeking permission to produce the operetta in Los Angeles.


Later life and death

Cissy Chandler died in 1954, after a long illness. Heartbroken and drunk, Chandler neglected to inter her cremated remains, and they sat for 57 years in a storage locker in the basement of Cypress View Mausoleum. When he died he was remembered as, "the author of “''The Big Sleep'',” and other mystery novels." After Cissy's death, Chandler's loneliness worsened his propensity for
clinical depression Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known as clinical depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of pervasive low mood, low self-esteem, and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. Intro ...
; he returned to drinking alcohol, never quitting it for long, and the quality and quantity of his writing suffered. In 1955, he attempted suicide. In ''The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved'', Judith Freeman says it was "a cry for help," given that he called the police beforehand, saying he planned to kill himself. Chandler's personal and professional life were 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 Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...
's widow), and Natasha Spender (
Stephen Spender Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry ...
's wife). Chandler regained his U.S. citizenship in 1956, while retaining his British rights. After a respite in England, he returned to La Jolla. He died at Scripps Memorial Hospital of pneumonial peripheral vascular shock and prerenal uremia (according to the death certificate) in 1959. Helga Greene inherited Chandler's $60,000 estate, after prevailing in a 1960 lawsuit filed by Fracasse contesting Chandler's holographic codicil to his will. Chandler is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, in San Diego, California. As Frank MacShane noted in his biography, ''The Life of Raymond Chandler'', Chandler wished to be cremated and placed next to Cissy in Cypress View Mausoleum. Instead, he was buried in Mount Hope, because he had left no funeral or burial instructions. In 2010, Chandler historian Loren Latker, with the assistance of attorney Aissa Wayne (daughter of
John Wayne Marion Robert Morrison (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), known professionally as John Wayne, was an American actor. Nicknamed "Duke", he became a Pop icon, popular icon through his starring roles in films which were produced during Hollywood' ...
), brought a petition to disinter Cissy's remains and reinter them with Chandler in Mount Hope. After a hearing in September 2010 in San Diego Superior Court, Judge Richard S. Whitney entered an order granting Latker's request. On February 14, 2011, Cissy's ashes were conveyed from Cypress View to Mount Hope and interred under a new grave marker above Chandler's, as they had wished. About 100 people attended the ceremony, which included readings by the Rev. Randal Gardner, Powers Boothe, Judith Freeman and Aissa Wayne. The shared gravestone reads, "Dead men are heavier than broken hearts", a quotation from ''The Big Sleep''. Chandler's original gravestone, placed by Jean Fracasse and her children, is still at the head of his grave; the new one is at the foot.


Views on pulp fiction

In his introduction to ''Trouble Is My Business'' (1950), a collection of many of his short stories, Chandler provided insight on the formula for the detective story and how the pulp magazines differed from previous detective stories: Chandler also described the struggle that writers of pulp fiction had in following the formula demanded by the editors of the pulp magazines:


Critical reception

Critics and writers, including W. H. Auden, Evelyn Waugh and Ian Fleming, greatly admired Chandler's prose. In a radio discussion with Chandler, Fleming said that Chandler offered "some of the finest dialogue written in any prose today". Contemporary mystery writer Paul Levine has described Chandler's style as the "literary equivalent of a quick punch to the gut". Chandler's swift-moving, hardboiled style was inspired mostly by Dashiell Hammett, but his sharp and lyrical
simile A simile () is a type of figure of speech that directly ''compares'' two things. Similes are often contrasted with metaphors, where similes necessarily compare two things using words such as "like", "as", while metaphors often create an implicit c ...
s are original: "The muzzle of the Luger looked like the mouth of the Second Street tunnel"; "He had a heart as big as one of Mae West's hips"; "Dead men are heavier than broken hearts"; "I went back to the seasteps and moved down them as cautiously as a cat on a wet floor"; "He was crazy as a pair of waltzing mice, but I liked him"; "I felt like an amputated leg"; "He was about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food." Chandler's writing redefined the private eye fiction genre, led to the coining of the adjective "Chandleresque", and inevitably became the subject of parody and pastiche. Yet the detective Philip Marlowe is not a stereotypical tough guy, but a complex, sometimes sentimental man with few friends, who attended university, who speaks some Spanish and sometimes admires Mexicans and Blacks, and who is a student of chess and classical music. He is a man who refuses a prospective client's fee for a job he considers unethical. The high regard in which Chandler is generally held today is in contrast to the critical sniping that stung the author during his lifetime. In a March 1942 letter to Blanche Knopf, published in ''Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler'', he wrote, "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." Although his work enjoys general acclaim today, Chandler has been criticized for certain aspects of his writing. ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'' reviewer Patrick Anderson described his plots as "rambling at best and incoherent at worst" (notoriously, even Chandler did not know who murdered the chauffeur in ''The Big Sleep'') and Anderson criticized Chandler's treatment of black, female, and homosexual characters, calling him a "rather nasty man at times". Anderson nevertheless praised Chandler as "probably the most lyrical of the major crime writers". Chandler's short stories and novels are evocatively written, conveying the time, place and ambiance of Los Angeles and environs in the 1930s and 1940s. The places are real, if pseudonymous: Bay City is
Santa Monica Santa Monica (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast (California), South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 United Sta ...
, Gray Lake is Silver Lake, and Idle Valley a synthesis of wealthy
San Fernando Valley The San Fernando Valley, known locally as the Valley, is an urbanized valley in Los Angeles County, Los Angeles County, California. Situated to the north of the Los Angeles Basin, it comprises a large portion of Los Angeles, the Municipal corpo ...
communities. ''Playback'' is the only one of his novels not to have been made into a movie. Arguably the most notable adaptation is
Howard Hawks Howard Winchester Hawks (May 30, 1896December 26, 1977) was an American film director, Film producer, producer, and screenwriter of the Classical Hollywood cinema, classic Hollywood era. Critic Leonard Maltin called him "the greatest American ...
''The Big Sleep'' (1946), with
Humphrey Bogart Humphrey DeForest Bogart ( ; December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957), nicknamed Bogie, was an American actor. His performances in classic Hollywood cinema made him an American cultural icon. In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Bogart ...
as Marlowe.
William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for William Faulkner bibliography, his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in fo ...
and Leigh Brackett were co-writers of the screenplay. Chandler's few screenwriting efforts and the cinematic adaptation of his novels proved stylistically and thematically influential on the American
film noir Film noir (; ) is a style of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood Crime film, crime dramas that emphasizes cynicism (contemporary), cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of Ameri ...
genre. Notable for its revised take on Marlowe is Robert Altman's 1973 neo-noir adaptation of ''The Long Goodbye''.


Legacy

In 2014, the Hollywood Walk of Fame selection committee announced that Raymond Chandler would be included the following year, but as of 2024, he has not been. The intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga Avenue in
Hollywood, California Hollywood, sometimes informally called Tinseltown, is a List of districts and neighborhoods in Los Angeles, neighborhood and district in the Central Los Angeles, central region of Los Angeles County, California, within the city of Los Angeles. ...
is named Raymond Chandler Square, a tribute both to the author and to the belief that Phillip Marlowe's office was located in Security Trust and Savings at the northeast corner of this intersection. In 1994, the Square was designated Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument #597. Noirfest's lifetime achievement award is named the Raymond Chandler Award. In 1991, Fulbright Program gave out a "Raymond Chandler Mystery Writing Award" and in 1994, they gave out a "Raymond Chandler Award".


Works


Novels and novellas

Chandler left an unfinished novel when he died. This was completed by Robert B. Parker and published in 1989 as '' Poodle Springs''. * '' The Big Sleep'' (1939) * '' Farewell, My Lovely'' (1940) * '' The High Window'' (1942) * '' The Lady in the Lake'' (1943) * '' The Little Sister'' (1949) * ''The Long Goodbye'' (1953) * ''Playback'' (1958)


References


Works cited

* * *


General references

* * , Foreword by Powell, Lawrence Clark *


Further reading

* Bruccoli, Matthew J., ed. (1973). ''Chandler Before Marlowe: Raymond Chandler's Early Prose and Poetry, 1908–1912''. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. * Chandler, Raymond (1976). ''The Blue Dahlia'' (screenplay). Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. * Chandler, Raymond (1985). ''Raymond Chandler's Unknown Thriller'' (unfilmed screenplay for ''Playback''). New York: The Mysterious Press. * * Freeman, Judith (2007). ''The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved''. N.Y.: Pantheon. . * Gross, Miriam (1977). ''The World of Raymond Chandler''. New York: A & W Publishers. * Hiney, Tom and MacShane, Frank, eds. (2000). ''The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909–1959''. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. * 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. * Howe, Alexander N. (2008). ''It Didn't Mean Anything: A Psychoanalytic Reading of American Detective Fiction''. North Carolina: McFarland. . * Joshi, S. T. (2019). "Raymond Chandler: Mean Streets" in ''Varieties of Crime Fiction'' (Wildside Press) . * King, Stewart (2022). "Rethinking Raymond Chandler's 'The Simple Art of Murder.' (1944/1946)" ''Clues: A Journal of Detection'' 40.2: 9–17. * MacShane, Frank (1976). ''The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler & English Summer: A Gothic Romance''. New York: The Ecco Press. * MacShane, Frank, ed. (1981). ''Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler''. New York: Columbia University Press. * Moss, Robert (2002.) ''Raymond Chandler: A Literary Reference'', New York: Carrol & Graf. * Swirski, Peter (2005). "Raymond Chandler's Aesthetics of Irony" in ''From Lowbrow to Nobrow''. Montreal, London: McGill-Queen's University. . * Ward, Elizabeth and Alain Silver (1987). ''Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles''. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press. . * Williams, Tom (2014). '' A Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of Raymond Chandler ''. New York: Chicago Review Press. .


External links

* *
An essay on Chandler and Los Angeles history by William Marling

Shamus Town
The Los Angeles of Philip Marlowe where Raymond Chandler lived, worked and wrote about.
"Down the Mean Streets with Philip Marlowe"
BBC streaming audio programme on Chandler

by Catherine Corman at ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
''
"Chandler's double identity: Adrian Wootton on a writer's secret cameo"
''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'', June 5, 2009
"Cheap Truth 11 – page 2"
''Fanac'', September 1, 2017 {{DEFAULTSORT:Chandler, Raymond 1888 births 1959 deaths 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American screenwriters 20th-century English male writers 20th-century English novelists 20th-century British screenwriters 20th-century short story writers American crime fiction writers American detective fiction writers American emigrants to England American male novelists American male screenwriters American male short story writers American short story writers American mystery writers American people of English descent American people of Irish descent British Army personnel of World War I Burials at Mount Hope Cemetery (San Diego) Canadian Expeditionary Force soldiers Civil servants in the Admiralty Deaths from pneumonia in California Edgar Award winners English crime fiction writers English mystery writers English male screenwriters Gordon Highlanders soldiers Military personnel from Chicago Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom Novelists from Chicago People educated at Dulwich College People from Upper Norwood Pulp fiction writers Screenwriters from California Screenwriters from Chicago Writers from Los Angeles Writers of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction