Chandler collection uncovers delights By Douglas Perry
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Raymond Chandler: Collected Stories by Raymond Chandler
Fiction Everyman's Library, $27.50
"I like you," says the femme fatale in Raymond Chandler's
Mandarin Jade.
"You look like a guy who was almost a heel and then something
stopped him
-- just at the last minute."
That description pretty well fits every hero Raymond Chandler
ever created
-- the wiseguy who speaks out of the side of his mouth, the
cynic who's seen it all but always finds he can't quite shake
his principles. It also could be argued that it describes the
modern American male, or at least his ideal, shaped and
manipulated through years of TV shows, movies and ads that
all owe a debt to the creator of Philip Marlowe.
Which is why Chandler's 1,300-page Collected Stories is such
a surprise. The man whose novels all but define the detective
genre is not what you would expect. At least, not
entirely.
The author of The Big Sleep and The Long Goddbye began
writing stories for pulp magazines in the 1930s, creating a
vision of Los Angeles as a sybarite's snakepit that the city
has never been able to shake. Chandler was also one of the
first writers to trivialize violence, with hard guys as
heroes who shrug their shoulders at being shot at or brutally
knocked about. And that's all here in stories like Bay City
Blues and Pearls Are a Nuisance, where the basic detective
plot works its way to its inevitable conclusion.
Chandler's story sense is rather juvenile -- especially
compared with later mystery writers like Jim Thompson and
James Ellroy -- but this rarely matters. Chandler's stories
are about people and places, and he never needs much space to
nail them down. "The lobby was not quite as big as Yankee
Stadium," Chandler's shamus narrates in Trouble Is My
Business. "It was floored with a pale blue carpet with sponge
rubber underneath. It was so soft it made me want to lie down
and roll."
The girl of the moment in Mandarin Jade "looked quiet, but
not mousy-quiet. She looked smart, but not
Hollywood-smart."
Rest at
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/living/4540938.htm
Mark Hall
markhall@gol.com
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