Raymond Chandler Biography and List of Works

"Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks
and has nothing to say."

American motion picture screenwriter and author of detective fiction. Began writing stories for crime fiction magazine Black Mask, which also published Dashiell Hammett's stories. Chandler is best known for his tough but honest private detective Philip Marlowe (the name originating from the English 15th century writer Christopher Marlowe, who had a violent temper). As a representative and master of the “hard-boiled” school of crime fiction Chandler criticized classical puzzle writers for their lack of realism. His most famous target in a much quoted essay The Simple Art of Murder (1944) was A.A. Milne's The Red House Mystery.

Chandler was born in Chicago, but he grew up in England after the divorce of his parents. He attended at Dulwich College Preparatory School in London, and then studied in France and Germany. He worked as a teacher at Dulwich and a journalist for the Daily Express and Western Gazette. Before returning to the United States in 1912, Chandler published twenty-seven poems and his first story, 'The Rose-Leaf Romance.' Back in America he worked in St. Louis, then on a ranch, in a sporting goods firm, and as a bookkeeper in a creamery. During  World War I he served in the Canadian Army (1917-18) and was later transferred to the Royal Air Force (1918-19). In 1924 he married 18-years older Pearl Cecily Hurlburt, twice married and divorced. When she wed Chandler she was fifty-three, but looked far younger and listed her age as forty-three.

After the war Chandler worked in a bank in San Francisco, wrote for the Daily Express, and then became a bookkeeper and auditor for Dabney Oil Syndicate from 1922 to 1932. When Chandler lost his job during the Great Depression - he was fired for drinking and absenteeism - he began writing stories for Black Mask Magazine. At the age of forty-five, with the support of his wife, Chandler devoted himself entirely to writing. He prepared himself for his first submission by carefully studying Erle Stanley Gardner and other representatives of pulp fiction, and spent five months writing his first story, Blackmailers Don't Shoot. It appeared in December 1933 in Black Mask, the foremost among magazines publishing in the hard-boiled school.

Chandler was a slow writer. Between 1933 and 1939 he produced a total of nineteen pulp stories, eleven in Black Mask, seven in Dime Detective, one in Detective Fiction Weekly. Unlike most of his pulp-writing colleagues, Chandler tried to expand the limits of the pulp formula to more ambitious and humane direction. His fourth published story, Killer in the Rain, was used in THE BIG SLEEP (1939), Chandler's first novel. The story introduced Philip Marlowe, a 38-year-old P.I., a man of honour and a modern day knight with a college education. In his role as narrator, Marlowe moves through the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930s, helps General Sternwood, a paralysed California millionaire from heartbreak, by rescuing his daughter from a potentially embarrassing blackmail scheme. The story ends in resigned contemplation: "What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? ... you were not bothered by things like that. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell..." In FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1940) Marlowe searches for an ex-convict Moose Malloy a missing girlfriend, Velma Valento. Velma is described by Moose as "cute as lace pants," and during his investigation Marlowe deals with Los Angeles' gambling circuit, a murder, and three potentially deadly women.

His next novel, THE HIGH WINDOW (1942), Chandler considered his worst. It was written at the same time as THE LADY IN THE LAKE (1943), which Ross Macdonald included in his list of favourites. Chandler's writing had already excited interest in the film community, and for Double Indemnity (1944) Chandler and the director Billy Wilder worked together. In 1946 Chandler received the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his screenplay, and in 1954 for novel. When Warner Brothers was making The Big Sleep (1946), Chandler discussed the story with the screenwriters, Leigh Brackett and William Faulkner, director Howard Hawks, and star Humphrey Bogart. He even wrote a new ending, which was not used.

THE LITTLE SISTER (1949), which included the author's opinions about Hollywood, received negative reviews. The sixth novel in the series, THE LONG GOODBYE (1953), has been admired by many critics, but is burdened with an atmosphere of self-pity. Marlowe's long and complicated investigation begins innocently enough with his desire to help a friend. Marlowe's willingness to suffer on behalf of others differs completely from the attitude of Mike Hammer, who is ready to kill without the slightest compunction. When his wife died in 1954 Chandler was devastated. He sailed for England and met Jessica Tyndale, a banker, on board, and they became close.

PLAYBACK, Chandler's last finished novel, appeared in 1958. In the story Marlowe renews his affair with Linda Loring, who made her first appearance in The Long Goodbye. During the writing process Helga Greene became Chandler's literary agent. He and Helga Greene were induced by Ian Fleming to Capri, and to interview Lucky Luciano along the way in Naples. Chandler’s essay 'My Friend Luco' was not published. In 1959 Helga flew to California, and Chandler proposed to her from his hospital bed. Chandler died on March 26, 1959. His unfinished novel POODLE SPRING was completed by Robert B. Parker, who has also written a sequel to The Big Sleep, entitled PERCHANCE TO DREAM (1990). In 1998 the playwright Tom Stoppard wrote a screenplay for Poodle Springs, which was made into a television movie. Parker's doctoral dissertation was The Violent Hero, Wilderness Heritage and Urban Reality: A Study of the Private Eye in the Novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald (1970). Parker's own Boston private eye Spenser combines Marlowe's knightly inclinations and Archer's passionate concern for the welfare of the young.

American writers in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s: William Faulkner from the 1930s to the 1950s, Ben Hecht nearly 40 years from the late 1920s, Nathanael West, James M. Cain, John Fante, Daniel Fuchs, Horace McCoy, Clifford Odets, Maxwell Anderson, Dorothy Parker, John Don Passos, Theodore Dreiser, Dashiell Hammett, F. Scott Fitzgerald. - See also: "hard-boiled" writers Jonathan Latimer, Mickey Spillane, Horace McCoy, Chester Himes. - Norman Mailer's hard-boiled detective novel Tough Guy's Dont Dance (1984) owed much to Chandler's style.

For further reading: Raymond Chandler Speaking, ed. by Dorothy Gardiner and Katherine Sorley Walker (1962); The Life of Raymond Chandler by Frank MacShane (1976); The World of Raymond Chandler, ed. by M. Gross (1977); Raymond Chandler: A Descriptive Bibliography by Matthew J. Bruccoli (1979); Raymond Chandler by J. Speir (1981); Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, ed. by Frank MacShayne (1981); Chandlertown: The Los Angeles of Philip Marlowe by Edward Thorpe (1983); Hardboiled Burlesque by K. Newlin (1984); Something More Than Night by P. Wolfe (1985); The Critical Response to Raymond Chandler, ed. by J.K. Van Dover (1995); Raymond Chandler in Hollywood by Al Clark (1996); Raymond Chandler: A Biography by Tom Hiney (1997); Encyclopedia of World Literature, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999, vol. 1).

Philip Marlowe: a man about forty, tall, with grey eyes and a hard jaw, has a college education, listens to classical music and solves chess problems. Marlowe works in Los Angels, he is betrayed by his friends, women and lying clients, but never loses his ability to catch people with a wisecrack.

Other famous PIs solving crimes in Los Angeles: Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer; Erle Stanley Gardner's Bertha Cool and Donald Lam; Johanthan Kellerman's Alex Delaware; Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins, Anthony Boucher's Fergus O'Breen; Frank Gruber's Simon Lash - see also: Hollywood, Los Angeles under Carter Brown.

THE BIG SLEEP, (1939)