In a message dated 12/14/02 3:09:45 PM Eastern Standard Time,
owner-rara-avis@icomm.ca writes:
<<
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 10:57:32 -0000
From: "Al Guthrie" <
allanguthrie@ukonline.co.uk>
Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Chandler's Influence
- ----- Original Message -----
From: "JIM DOHERTY" <
jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com>
> What I CAN say is that,
> post-Chandler, the idea of a the hard-boiled PI
being
> an American who worked out of (if not always in)
a
> large American city became so iron-clad an
ingredient
> of the PI novel that even writers who'd never set
foot
> in the US, like James Hadley Chase, wrote
about
> American private eyes in American cities,
and
> characters like Jo Gar, who weren't
particularly
> numerous to begin with, became even more
rare.
Chase was known to have visited both Miami and New
Orleans. To claim that
he never set foot in the US is inaccurate.
Of his 80 or so novels, less than ten percent feature
PIs. He's known as a
thriller writer, not as a PI writer.
However, given that he did write a few PI novels, let's
look at his most
famous. Featuring PI, Dave Fenner, NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS
BLANDISH was written
in 1938 and published the following year. THE BIG SLEEP
was also published
in 1939. I find it hard to see how the large American
city setting element
of the Marlowe Paradigm (or any other element)
established by THE BIG SLEEP,
could have influenced Chase when neither he, nor anyone
else, had read it.
>>
I can't say whether Chase read THE BIG SLEEP before he wrote
ORCHIDS and you are right that they were published in the
same year. I will point out that big hunks of THE BIG SLEEP
were published as novelettes in US magazines prior to 1939
and in plenty of time for Chase to have read them. As a
writer who proved to be quite a "fan" of Chandler, Hammett
and Latimer, Chase (or Rene Raymond to give his real name)
had incentive to seek them out.
I put the "fan" in quotes as while we may not be able to say
Raymond was influenced by Chandler, we can say he stole from
him and admitted to this plagiarism in a letter to "The
Bookseller" magazine in the UK and promised to refrain from
future plagiarims as well as to pay all legal costs. The
novel in question was BLONDE'S REQUIEM published by Raymond
under the name Raymond Marshall and in which he lifted
passages from Latimer, Hammett as well as Chandler.
This is all detailed in Frank MacShane's THE LIFE OF RAYMOND
CHANDLER as well as his SELECTED LETTERS OF RAYMOND CHANDLER
and in Tom Hiney's RAYMOND CHANDLER, A BIOGRAPHY.
This post and my previous one on the MacDonald vs Macdonald
controversy should make me the bio/biblio champ for the
moment on Rara. As such I would like to withdraw any advice
or suggestions I have made to others in the recent past on
what should or should not be included in Rara posts.
Everybody should write what they like and it was dumb of me
to offer anyone suggestions.
Richard Moore
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