After Martha posted the url to the Mat Coward's review of The
RC Papers in the Independent [isn't he a rara-avian?] I
thought I'd see what the Guardian had to say about it
...
The Guardian also has a review of Hiney's biography of
Chandler, as well as links to other stuff, including examples
of Chandler's poetry! See the links on this page:
http://www.booksunlimited.co.uk/authors/author/0,5917,-37,00.html
ED
Long, frank and forlorn goodbye
Robert McCrum Sunday December 3, 2000
The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Non-Fiction
Edited by Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane Hamish Hamilton, £20,
pp266 Buy it at BOL According to Tom Hiney, who has already
written a well-received biography of Raymond Chandler, his
letters 'are an unusually honest and freewheeling journey
into the mind of a man who had seen a lot, read a lot, drunk
a lot, thought a lot and steered perilously close to insanity
in the process...'
This is a useful advertisement for a volume that's basically
for the fans, for whom Chandler's insomniac ramblings,
dictated in the small hours to his Mexican secretary, are the
essential commentary on what Chandler himself described as 'a
rather forlorn sort of life'.
As Hiney freely acknowledges, there have already been two
selections of Chandler papers (1962; 1981) since his death in
1959, and this one depends heavily on the work of the great
Chandler scholar, the late Frank McShane.
The picture it offers is of an obsessive writer, maniacally
wrestling with the demons of alcoholism and loneliness in a
variety of one-horse Californian hotels, sustained by the
love of his wife Cissy, a woman 10 years his senior. Along
the way, we get odd insights into the making of the great
novels, The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The Little Sister
and The Long Goodbye .
Although he might have impressed himself with the coruscating
frankness of his judgments, Chandler, who disdained 'the
anthology racket' and critics who 'write pukey little
introductions and sit back with an indulgent smile and all
nine pockets open' would have had several harsh things to say
about this book. It is sloppily annotated, disgracefully
lacking in source material and absurdly overpriced.
Never mind. Some pages more than repay the cost of entry. 'My
ideas of what constitutes good writing,' he noted in 1957,
'are increasingly rebellious.' He was inclined, he said, 'to
tell all the fancy boys to go to hell, all the subtle-subtle
ones... that subtlety is only a technique... The things that
last,' he went on, 'come from the deeper levels of a writer's
being'.
Oddly enough, this was almost exactly the opinion of his near
contemporary, P.G. Wodehouse. It must have been something
about Dulwich.
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