Customer Reviews

The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved (Vintage)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As soon as people started talking about this book in my book club, I knew I wanted to take a look. What a provocative subject, the long embrace being the decades long marriage between Cissy Pascal and Raymond Chandler, whom she called "Raymio," a takeoff on Romeo I guess. When they met, Raymio was a pretty young guy, raised in England and newly attached to a pair of wealthy Los Angeles friends he had met on shipboard on the way over--glommed onto, it seems, though Judith Freeman makes it seem very natural that he should like these wealthy people, since he was something of a snob--or rather, to escape the class stratification of England, he needed to have middle class friends right away to afford him opportunities he wouldn't have had over there. And Julian and Cissy Pascal, a pair of pianists, lived nearby and were always in the happy circle, right before World War I.

When he realized he had fallen for her, and she a married woman, Ray enlisted and saw action overseas (action he would never again refer to except in the obliquest terms), and when he came back he broke his mother's heart by marrying the now divorced Cissy. In fact Flossie died rather than have to witness the wedding--terribly sad. What Raymio didn't know is that Cissy was much, much older than she purported to be. When he began to suspect she had lied about her age, in the late 20s, it sparked a terrible crisis in their marriage. He had become an oil executive, and she a housewife who did all her housework in the nude.

Judith Freeman shows how nearly everything about their marriage was affected by this odd age difference (Cissy was 18 years older than Ray). She was beyond having children when they met, and had already been married twice; she had posed nude for artists and photographers, and apparently he liked that she had this rakish past as a bohemian Trilby. He claimed that she was highly sexed, perhaps to give himself the reputation of a man who had sex often. Freeman has interviewed two people who knew Chandler fairly well, the painter Don Bachardy, and the pianist Natasha Spender, both of whom were convinced Ray was gay, and you'll believe it too after hearing their testimony.

Freeman has independently decided to write a book about how she went and visited every one of the houses and flats Ray and Cissy rented during their long embrace. This is where the book falls flat, for me. They were constantly moving, sometimes often as three times in a year, and so Freeman went to something like three or four dozen Southern California residences, and during all her visits, or stakeouts, which she described in plenty detail, only two or three interesting things ever happened to her. An editor might have advised her, this isn't working, Ms. Freeman. You will find yourself skipping her visits and these take up a good third of the book. On the other hand, she is a fine writer and I can imagine some people really digging her accounts of her travels, even if they shed no light on the people she is purportedly writing about.

I preferred her accounts of her research in the two great repositories of Chandler material--one here in the US, the other at the Bodleian Library in Britain.

Freeman excels at bringing to light odd bits of social and pop cultural material from the far corners of history. She explains why Cissy did her housework naked--she was following a fad developed by an expatriate American woman who inspired a whole cult of nude homemakers in Europe and in the US with her system of body toning anf posture improving. Her name was Bess Mensendieck. "Even putting on and taking off a fur coat," writes Freeman, "provided an opportunity for a woman to exercise and encourage proper body alignment."

Another interesting chapter of California history comes when Freeman discusses (all too briefly) the "state societies." These came about as social gstherings for Los Angelenos transplanted from elsewhere, feeling homesick they would gather together regularly at places like cafeterias and social halls--the "Iowa State Society," the "Kentucky State Society," etc. All too little has been written about this important movement that tried to alleviate the disconnect these western pioneers must have felt in 1920s LA. Cissy remains a mystery alas. In fact now that I know more about her, she has become indescribably dull, like a stained glass window over which a carpet has been installed. Still I would not hesitate to recommend this book to those who wish to know more about the way Chandler was viewed by Bachardy, Natasha Spender, or by Dilys Powell, the film critic who sort of sums it all up in Freeman's opinion.

Illustrated with many rare photographs!

Reading these seven prior reviews, it stands out that all of them are pretty much right. The strengths of this book are its strengths and the weaknesses are its weaknesses. But that isn't the whole story.

The Long Embrace is a subjective account of a subjective experience that in turn requires a particular frame for the subjective experience of the reader in relationship to Raymond Chandler. If you love Raymond Chandler and his work as much as Freeman, you will love this book. It you don't like Chandler or are neutral to his work, you might not like it. It's a homage, and a reverie, and a critical work, and above all, the projection of an author in search of both objective and subjective correlatives for her vision and life experience. Objectively she is struggling to map her own biography and history with the history and the landscape of Los Angeles, but not just any Los Angeles - it's the Los Angeles of Raymond Chandler's fiction that constitutes her quest, an imaginary landscape more real to her than the smoggy basin she inhabits. That makes the search doubly difficult. So she spends energy and time driving the city streets in search of markers for the many way-stations with which Chandler and his wife Cissy mapped their own erratic trajectory through life, his career, and a city that devours itself daily. Because Chandler's vision seized Freeman's heart and soul as well as her agile and creative mind, she needed to build a three-dimensional tic-tac-toe-like representation of all this, and as I say, if you too have loved Chandler and his special gift to us, you will appreciate, savor and understand the compelling necessity of her quest.

Young people who have not experienced the constant destruction of the markers of our histories as American cities bulldoze the external signs of our past may not appreciate the emotional impact of Freeman's journey, her attempt to overlay transparencies of the current physical city in which she lives on the even deeper emotional landscape of Chandler's fiction. Maybe only middle-aged people and older ones can really appreciate why this book exists.

And people who do not intuitively understand why noir is the appropriate lens for those of us who grew to maturity in post World War 2 America may not resonate with this quest. When Freeman cites the film Chinatown as the "most brilliant movie of them all," either you know exactly what she means, or not. You sit up and quack like a duck, or you don't. Since I cite in my own work - my speeches and my non-fiction collection, Islands in the Clickstream, in particular - Chinatown and Blade Runner, another LA-noir classic, more frequently than any other two films, I think I do understand. If you know what I mean when I say that, if you smile with recognition, you will love reading this book.

Yes, there are passages you might scan, when Freeman indulges herself in her own experiences and observations on site, but that might also be because her existential journey which this book represents is not your primary interest. That's fair enough. But if you can see yourself vicariously tracing the footsteps of this enigmatic couple in order to under their relationship, so constitutive of the identity and energies of this uniquely American writer, then you will linger over those passages too. It is precisely the ephemeral nature of her observations - who she sees, the time of day, the smell and look and feel of places present to her and to us through her writing and only through her writing through which she attempts to divine the former essence of what was there, once, and is gone forever - that call attention to the ephemeral nature of our own memories, linked to the books or films that meant so much and which have become even more real to us than the places they depict.

What is needed now, of course, is someone who explores Judith Freeman's life to understand her compelling need to understand the dynamics of this relationship, her obsessive pursuit of "Ray," as she calls him; what is needed is someone who visits all the places Freeman lived, explores her relationship to friends, husbands, lovers, and her childhood history. That subjective biographical quest would in turn be imposed on hers, inviting alas another quest, one in search of Freeman's biographer, and on and on, turtles all the way down, as they say, and perhaps that is the crux of this lovely, insightful, well-written book: primary materials, no matter how abundant, never fully explain the mystery of the Other, and when that Other has affected us deeply, we always write as much about ourselves as the one we describe. Memories link, blur, and recede in infinite regress, pointing toward poetic or spiritual writing as the ultimate frame of the illusion of objectivity, an illusion we inherit from the twentieth century, too, and which in fact is the foundation of the detective story in the first place. We solve mysteries vicariously through these books, pretending that a scientific method is all we need, because we know deep in our hearts that we can never solve the real mysteries of life. We are all searching for coherence and meaning and harmony in a symphony hall full of dead spaces, filling in the blanks with the contents of our lives.

(..)

"The Long Embrace" is not a conventional biography of Raymond Chandler. Instead, Judith Freeman embraces the writer's right to tell her story the way she wants to, and focuses instead on the marriage between Chandler and Cissy Eugenie Pascal, and a quest to visit all of the places they lived in. Both prove to be daunting journeys.

Cissy is an enigma. Little is known about her. As a young woman, she was an artist's model who sometimes posed nude. She was a concert pianist, twice-married, and after her marriage to Ray, she vanishes. They did little socializing and she rarely let herself be photographed. As if to finish the job, Ray burned their letters. We know so little about her that one wonders if she were fated to bind herself to the English-raised oil company executive with ambitions of writing.

Ray, on the other hand, is easy to figure out. He had a thing for taking care of women, a trait he passed on to his detective hero Philip Marlowe. He took care of his ailing mother, until she died. Two weeks later, he married Cissy. He was 35. She said she was 43, but she was actually a decade older. Ray may not have known her true age, but as the years passed, he probably guessed. That he was deeply attached to his wife, there's no doubt. After she died, he lasted only five sad years.

"The Long Embrace" is a labor of love. Freeman trolls through the two collections of Chandler's papers, split between California and Oxford, and comes up with some evocative items, among them the passport photo and the list, in Cissy's writing, of the animal knick-knacks they collected, with their cute names.

As part of her research, she follows the Chandlers in their frequent moves. Except for one period, when they spent eight years in a house overlooking the sea in La Jolla, outside of San Diego, they moved yearly among a series of furnished apartments. The list of addresses reads like an atlas: Redondo Beach, Santa Monica, Silverlake, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Big Bear Lake, Cathedral City.

Not surprisingly, time has not been good to the Chandler residences. Some have fallen to the bulldozers. Others were occupied by people who never heard of Chandler and wanted nothing to do with this strange white woman with her camera. But she comes across the house in LaJolla, the only one they bought, just before it was destroyed. This was the one they stayed in the longest, the one in which Cissy died, and miraculously it had changed little since then. Here, Freeman's quest was worthwhile.

But with that exception, it's not the houses that tell us something about the Chandlers, it's the fact that they were never willing to put down roots.

This is the sort of discussion "The Long Embrace" generates. I read this book more than a month ago, and I still catch myself reflecting on Ray and Cissy's peripatetic life. In her roundabout way, Freeman created a very human Raymond Chandler, who knew that life was 6 to 5 against, but placed his bet anyway.

An excellent book. Five stars, nice job. Freeman meanders all over L.A. (and elsewhere) in search of uncovering the key to two of the more enigmatic words in the English language, "Raymond Chandler". The top layer of grime that is the current century turns out to be a layer an inch or so above the grime that was 1930's L.A. (I think I learned more about the city of L.A. from this book than 20 years of happy, in-depth reports on "Good Morning, America" and "Nightline".) Freeman walks the walk and follows the footsteps above this layer that is one inch down and occasionally pokes through to it. Chandler himself paid the price that all good writers pay, and Freeman pays it too, in the same way. Raymond Chandler was a guy who could write about depressing stuff, sentence upon sentence, without ever making you depressed-- an achievement in itself-- try it-- and end up with a kind of optimism, of a sort-- a relentless forging on of the present. Finally, in a series of commonplace, nondescript bungalows lived a husband/wife team that would hardly catch your eye if you saw them in the street, but was actually a great, inspiring love story in progress. Every Chandler fan needs to read this book, and frankly every fan needs to become a Chandler fan. --Larry W. Phillips
www.larrywphillips.com

Proof That Behind Every Famous Man Is A Good Woman.

When I started this book I knew very little about Raymond Chandler. He turned out to be a much different character that I expected. Initially I found the book a little slow moving but once I read a little further, I was hooked. One of the things that fascinated me about this biography by a novelist was that there was so little information available on Cissy Chandler, that the author had to put together a portrait of her from Chandler's own writings, interviews, and information gained from visiting former homes of the main characters. Raymond had destroyed all her letters and he and Cissy had lived very secluded lives. The author visited the 36 L.A. addresses where Ray and his wife lived during their 30 plus years together. Chandler was a nomad who was constantly moving from one furnished apartment to another and only owned one house during his lifetime.
This tendency of Freeman to reach conclusions based on very little actual fact and a lot on women's intuition sometimes seemed a bit of a reach. I didn't always agree with her conclusions and assumptions. She also did more psychoanalyzing of Chandler's personality, also based largely on her intuitions as another women, than I was comfortable with--especially the discussions about whether Chandler was a closet homosexual. I felt she was treading on thin ice in several sections of her book.
Ray's wife Cissy was 18 years older than him. She was apparently able to maintain her secret because she looked very young for the duration of her long life. She was especially sexy looking when Ray stole her away from her second husband. It's doubtful he had the slightest idea of their true age difference since he didn't even know for certain when she died. Once it became apparent to Ray that he had been greatly deceived about their age difference it had the expected effect on him, but he remained married and devoted to the woman who eventually became his substitute mother. Cissy was the one person who was able to control Raymond Chandler's alcoholism. She kept him under control and enabled him to function both as a member of the human race and as a gifted writer. When she died, Ray lost his moorings and survived only about five years before his alcoholism killed him.
This is a book worth reading. It's well researched by an obvious admirer of Raymond Chandler's writings. It's also an interesting approach to writing biography when very little actual fact remains. It's very helpful if one knows the geography of the city and county of Las Angles. As someone who lived in L.A. for a few years it was relatively easy for me to visualize the many locations discussed, but it may seem like a maze to non-Californians. I liked some of Freeman's writing very much. But keep in mind while reading this work that it serves as a perfect example of the old folk saying that "behind every famous man is a good woman."

This book, "The Long Embrace" promises more that it delivers. Author Judith Freeman does not have enough factual material about Raymond Chandler and his wife Cissy for a book of some 330 pages. This book is not so much a biography of the Chandlers as it is the author's reflections of her journey to discover the Chandlers. The problem is that Chandler destroyed most of Cissy's papers. Accordingly, much of the book is filler: lots of speculation, author's rambling, repetition, and irrelevant details. For example, Ms. Freeman spends most of chapter six pondering whether Chandler and his hard-boiled detective, Philip Marlowe are homosexulas. At the end of this chapter she says, "...and the less I felt it was by busines." Exactly! Who cares. It's the Chandler novels that count.

Maddeningly, she does not caption the numerious photographs scattered throughout the book.

She spends an inordinate amout of text on the Chandler's frequent moves from house to house--31 times in Los Angeles and four in La Jolla--not counting their lengthly visits to the United Kingdom. She visits these houses, or what's left of them, and ponders on the Chandlers' life in these houses. Not relevant.

The facts she does have about the Chandlers is writen in an easy, informative style. Chapter eleven is the gem of the book--the last chapter. She discusses Chandler's creative, mental, and physical decline--and his death. It's compelling reading.

This book captured me on many levels.
I found in this book, not only a love and reverence for Raymond Chandler, but also for Los Angeles.
I think that the Long Embrace is really the embrace of Los Angeles.
An embrace that impacted Chandler and Freeman and readers.

I am a native of Los Angeles and in the age bracket beyond midlife. I understand the journey and searching for a person's and a city's history.
I enjoyed her almost tangible manipulations of Los Angeles sights, sounds, textures and smells. I recognize her experiences as my experiences lovingly put into words. I recognize many of the streets and areas.

Also, my own memories of a Los Angeles with oil wells pumping,
where we did not have to lock our car or house doors at night!
Of a time when the building of the Music Center downtown showed that we were not a "hick town".

A city where some of the best places are hidden away from the traffic and the tourists still to this day.

Freeman's research intertwines Chandler and Los Angeles.
She brings up questions and presents answers about
the impact on Los Angeles of the automobile, oil, films, police corruption and the unlikely heroes that reveal themselves in the midst of it all. (as Chandler did)


It is interesting to finally learn about Chandler's wife, Cissy.
As to her giving the incorrect age- all the women friends of my mother and grandmother's did not give their true age. I remember them telling me " a woman never gives her true age". Children and men were not supposed to ask. I know of women who refused to use Medicare benefits because they did not want to reveal their true age.
It was not unusual(among some circles) for creative women to have real loving relationships with younger men or gay men. (i.e. Neysa Mcmein-artist).

Judith Freeman has real skill at blending research, fiction and her own interpretations on her lovingly selected subjects. She continues in the same vein in this book.

If you are familiar and enjoy her writing you will love this one.
If you are a Los Angeles native (whether born here or relocated here) you will enjoy learning more about your city.

"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid", Raymond Chandler wrote of his knight-errant protagonist Phillip Marlowe in a famous essay titled "The Simple Art of Murder". Like Marlowe, Judith Freeman takes us down those mean streets and the decay of Los Angeles since Chandler lived there from the 1930s into the 1950s. So little is known about Cissy (Pearl) Eugenie Pascal, Chandler's wife 18 years his senior, that this work obviously required a great deal of rumination on Freeman's part about the strange relationship between this odd couple. Despite the dearth of material about her, the author has been extremely thorough and unrelenting on her research and the book will rest significantly on its laurels as the most definitive work on the subject. As she acknowledges, she is greatly indebted to both Frank MacShane's biography of Chandler and his edited collection of Chandler's letters. In her seeking out the 30-plus known residences of the Chandlers over the years, Freeman's search for the real Cissy has a "Waiting for Godot" type quality to it, often finding the addresses no longer existed as the structures that stood there had been demolished. Freeman is driven by a complusion and obsession to uncover a past she knows she cannot fully present but her persistence is admirable. One senses that a great weight must have been lifted from her when she finally completed the book. "Embrace" also delves heavily into Chandler's personality with a few pages on the question of whether he had latent homosexual feelings which at times bled over into his work, although this is minutiae of small significance. I thought I was long done with Raymond Chandler and would probably have passed this one up but I'm glad I didn't. I know all too well searching the streets of southern California for places and people that no longer exist or existed only in my youth. In the early 1970s I went looking for 77 Sunset Strip, only to learn that no such address ever existed, and then learned the exteriors for the early '60s TV show were shot at Dean Martin's pizza joint in the 8000 block. I remember searching for an apartment building 35 years later formerly on Gower off Hollywood Boulevard then but now just a chain-linked parking lot. Sometimes I wonder whether Chandler, like Ross Macdonald, will withstand the test of time, the Chandler LOA editions notwithstanding. Some of Chandler's work didn't make a whole lot of sense ("The Blue Dahlia" screenplay in particular) and while writing he often didn't know where his plot turns would end up. The last decade's new generation of noir has far superceded their works. But the steaming sidewalks of L.A. and other Southern California towns still haunt me to this day, as do the writers present at The Creation.

Interesting biography about a very unusual couple. The history of LA was a real added benefit to readers of the book.

"The Long Embrace" is a strange but somehow enthralling pilgrimage to the houses and apartments where Raymond Chandler and his wife lived during their long marriage. Descriptions of those buildings that still exist are interspersed with anecdotes about Chandler and Cissy, and about the author's career as a novelist and screen writer. Chandler was a footloose soul and the couple seldom remained for more than six months in any of their Southern California homes. Freeman admits to an obsession with Chandler's residences and most Chandler enthusiasts who read this book will be equally caught up. An absorbing account.