The Raymond Chandler Papers : Selected Letters and Non-Fiction 1909-1959 - Softcover

Tom Hiney & Frank MacShane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140279741 ISBN 13: 9780140279740

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2001

Synopsis

This selection of Chandler's letters, poetry and journalism features previously unseen material, including a lost interview with the American gangster, Lucky Luciano, conducted in a Naples hotel in 1957, as well as Chandler's classic account of attending the 1948 Oscars ceremony. Chandler's letter writing is already famous and THE RAYMOND CHANDLER PAPERS contains many newly discovered letters showing Chandler at his funniest, saddest, and most brilliant. This ultimate collection of Chandler's non-fiction also features a biographical commentary by his biographer, Tom Hiney.

About this title

About the Author

Raymond Thornton Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888, but moved to England with his family when he was twelve, where he attended Dulwich College, alma mater to some of the twentieth century's most renowned writers. Returning to America in 1912, he settled in California, worked in a number of jobs, and later married. It was during the Depression era that he seriously turned his hand to writing, and his first published story appeared in the pulp magazine Black Mask in 1933, followed six years later, when he was fifty, by his first novel, The Big Sleep. Chandler died in 1959, having established himself as the finest crime writer in America.

From Booklist

Chandler, whom Time once dubbed the "poet laureate of the loner," was a recluse whose human dealings consisted primarily of long letters dictated, usually, while drunk. This is the third collection of Chandler letters (following Raymond Chandler Speaking in 1962 and The Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler in 1981) and represents never-before-published correspondence (including his first letter to the publisher of The Big Sleep, letters to friends, and letters to Erle Stanley Gardner) and unpublished early writings, which give us, among other treasures, an inquiry to an attorney about the habits of private eyes, a sketch of his meeting with Lucky Luciano, an eyewitness account of a 1940s Oscar ceremony, and numerous critiques of other mystery writers. Hiney, one of Chandler's biographers, and the late MacShane, who edited The Selected Letters, have organized their material into "Five Acts," centering on Chandler's struggles with and thoughts on the writing craft and the writing life, extending from 1909 to two weeks before his death, in 1959. Each section is preceded by helpful biographical notes. This collection includes one of Chandler's last letters, in which he wrote that he pictured Philip Marlowe "always in a lonely room, in lonely streets, puzzled but never quite defeated." The same picture emerges of Chandler in this masterfully edited collection. A must for serious readers of hard-boiled fiction. Connie Fletcher
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Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140279741
• ISBN 13: 9780140279740
• Binding: Paperback