The issue of ESPIONAGE with the Phillips interview is from
November 1985.
Here's what Phillips says when Nevins asks about the
Chandler and the blurb:
"I had read and admired his work for yers. He was always
vivid and always had the give for felicitous phrases. He
could describe the seamy side of the West Coast better than
anybody who ever lived. Then, one night--this was sometime in
the middle of the late Fifties, I guess--he called me
up.
It was around midnight California time and a couple of
hours later where I was, I guess. He was in his cups. He said
he just wanted to tell me how much he'd admired some story of
mine that he'd read in Collier's. I really couldn't take it
very seriously becuase I knew that anybody who wrote as well
as he did wsan't going to admire anything of mine he'd read
in Collier's. Those stories had to be workmanlike, and I'm
sure that he thought I wrote a fairly clean line, but you
weren't going to find anything in the Saturday Evening Post
or Collier's that would compare with Chandler's.
They wouldn't have published anything that good,
because their stories were written to a formula. Anyway, he
called me three or four times. I remember, now, I had a big
house in Ft. Worth then, and it was always around 3:00 A.M.
Texas time when he called, and he was always loaded to the
gills.
He was just as garrulous as a country farmer."
"And he also wrote you a lot of letters?"
"No, only the one letter. I mentioned it several years later
to Knox Burger and he took it form me and ran that quote. I
never got the letter back and I don't know whatever happened
to it."
So there you have it. The entire interview is fascinating, by
the way.
Bill Crider
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