For a little more background, I got the letter to Hunt from
"Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler" edited by Frank
MacShane (which is larger than the collection that Tom Hiney
co-edited). It's on page 332.
Although we don't have Hunt's side of the correspondence,
MacShane discusses it in his biography of Chandler on page
168 in the context of a passage on the publication of TSAM
short story collection:
"When some of the stories from The Simple Art of Murder were
reissued in paperback in 1952, Chandler received a
complaining letter from E. Howard Hunt of the American
Embassy in Mexico ... accusing Chandler of
self-plagiarism."
MacShane then goes on to give a summary of Chanlder's
response.
Jim, you're right, the stories in TSAM weren't really
cannibalized, so I guess it's like Mark says, Hunt must have
seen the Chandler story in the anthology done by Shaw and
then was emboldened to write about it when TSAM came
out.
In the first paragraph of Chandler's response he says,
"First, as to The Hard-Boiled Omnibus, you were perfectly
right." That's Shaw's anthology and I assume Hunt referenced
it in his letter. This web page gives the table of
contents:
http://www.blackmaskmagazine.com/bmcr_7.html
and you'll see it includes "The Man Who Liked Dogs" which I
believe was cannibalized in Farewell, My Lovely.
--MC
-- www.markcoggins.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 28 Jan 2007 EST