The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction 1909-1959
Chandler, author of such hard-boiled detective classics as The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, wrote highly entertaining letters on subjects ranging from literature to Hollywood to cats letters, no question, from a poet of the mean streets and an extremely witty curmudgeon. Regarding detectives, he notes: "The real life private eye is a sleazy little judge from the Burns Agency, or a strong arm guy with no more personality than a blackjack." On publishers: "If you start talking about money, they retire coldly to their professional eminence, and if you start talking about literature, they immediately yank the dollar sign before your eyes." Hiney, author of a 1997 biography of Chandler, has gathered this collection largely from the superior The Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler (1981), edited by MacShane (who did the first full biography on Chandler in 1976). Hiney's notes presume a bit too much knowledge for a new reader (and, oddly, he seems to think that Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman were married). Previously unpublished scraps provide fresh material, and the few paragraphs about trench warfare in WWI fought by the young author and a late-life meeting with gangster "Lucky" Luciano that Chandler was too drunk to clearly recall are very nice. Reinventing such a standard author for a new century is only a matter of course; since this is Chandler's writing, quotable, funny, even hilarious comments appear on every page.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.