Customer Reviews

Raymond Chandler: Collected Stories (Everyman's Library)

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I was dubious. Not of the quality of Chandler's writings, but of the veracity of this book's claim to collect ALL of his short fiction. But it does. From Blackmailers Don't Shoot to The Pencil, with everything in between, this has them all. This also includes three that are available nowhere else: Professor Bingo's Snuff, The Bronze Door and English Summer. These last three really do not really qualify as pulpy mysteries (or even as typical Chandler, although his imprint in them is still distinct), but I had been seeking them for a while and bought the book for them alone anyway. And because, well, Chandler could write a grocery list and I'd buy it to read. He's that good.

For those who already know Chandler, that will not come as any surprise. He took up the torch which Hammett lit, toward making detective fiction respectable literature. And no one outside of Hemingway has been more influential or distinctive, in any style, anywhere, ever. And no one has ever been more entertaining. Chandler wrote in an extremely visceral, visual, atmospheric way, and made the language sit up, salute and perform pirouettes. His cynical California Gothic prose defined postwar America and combined intelligentsia with slang and squalor with romanticism into a new form that has not been exceeded. I could ramble on indefinitely, but I hope this paragraph has been some small yet clear indication of the fact that I happen to like Raymond Chandler's writing.

The three previously unpublished stories were treats, to see Chandler working in ways I was unaccustomed to. One was even subtitled 'A Gothic Romance'; that made me a little nervous, but is only a romance in the sense that The Big Sleep is a romance. All three deal with murder- one at a quaint but decaying English manor, one via a magical door to nowhere, and one by an invisible man. You read that last part correctly. Chandler delves into fantasy in these pages; and I was delighted. But for those of you passionately inclined to LA noir, don't worry: as unconventional as these stories are, they still retain most of the basic elements found in his other crime stories.

In Chandler's first Black Mask story, Blackmailers Don't Shoot, his style was present, but it was somewhat forced and imitative; he wore the attitude like a coat, keeping it a separate and distant thing. By just a couple of stories later, the attitude had become a second skin. Chandler had cemented his voice and begun to truly inhabit the world of his creations. Thereby we too are liberated, and transported, into his rich, dark, slinky and dangerous territory. By the late 30's everything was in place: atmosphere, language, attitude, et al. Raymond Chandler was combining (cannibalizing, he called it) two of the stories in this volume with new material to become his first and most famous novel, The Big Sleep. And we can all be thankful for that.

But it begins here. Some of these stories don't use the ingenious metaphors he later became renowned for, some are overly confusing, some aren't even great mysteries. (Chandler himself would tell you he was not the best plotter, giving that acclaim to Woolrich, but plots were secondary to Chandler anyway.) Still, these are all great stories, of the coolest era in history and of the last great rugged individualist. In some stories he is called Dalmas. In some Carmady. In some he is no one in particular. And yet they are all his lasting creation Marlowe under the surface, all *Chandler* himself in fact, using the crime story form to express his own philosophies of life. While never failing to blow your socks off with his skill.

For those who don't know Chandler this may not be the place to start. For that I recommend Farewell, My Lovely or The Little Sister, both among Chandler's most atmospheric and funny novels. But I do recommend starting down these mean streets which Marlowe himself prowled. You will (or should) become hooked, and may eventually wind up back at this collection anyway, where you can see the writer- and his characters- develop, and see grains of the novels his stories would become.

If you have never read Chandler before, you have a vast world newly open to you. Lucky you.

If you have read him before, welcome back. Curl up and stay awhile.

P.S. The introduction to this volume breaks no new ground. Don't get me wrong, it's OK. But this is An Historic Publishing Event, so I was expecting something a little more official and substantive. A small gripe.

This is the one to buy, it has virtually everything. It almost makes me mad that it is finally here because of all I had to go through to find the missing pieces not offered in the scandalously misleading Library of America collection. "Raymond Chandler Speaking" has the one missing story and it is easily obtainable, although otherwise useless. Buy the entire set from the new Everyman's Library, it is comparable in price to the LOA set and this set delivers what it promises.

Yes, there are a lot of great stories in this book, but for me the real interest is seeing Chandler develop the traits and try out the plotlines that will be fully fleshed out with the definitive Philip Marlowe. I was introduced to Chandler by a good friend (thanks, Darlene) about 25 years ago, and I still read his novels at least once a year. I would read The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, and Farewell, My Lovely first to get a sense of who Marlowe is and then backtrack into these stories to find out where Marlowe comes from. Marlowe has been my favorite literary character for a very long time. Down these mean pages, a man must go. An excellent collection and an excellent value.

It's always problematic in reviewing a book of short stories because it would take a long time to describe each story. That's especially true of this book, which collects all of Raymond Chandler's short stories and comes out to a whopping 1,300 pages. So I'm just going to deal with general issues and some highlights.

From the bibliography most of these stories were published between 1933 and 1939, when Chandler began turning these short stories into novels. The last three or so were published near or after his death in 1959.

As you'd expect, most of these are detective stories. They feature a variety of lead characters, who are generally all the same. There's the familiar Philip Marlowe from Chandler's novels, but also Nick Carmady, John Dalmas, John Evans, and others. By and large they are all private investigators, a bit world-weary and cynical, a bit down on their luck, but who maintain their own moral code. They want to finish the jobs they start and do it right, though they have no compunction about hiding evidence from the law if they feel it necessary. There are a couple of notable exceptions to this: "Pearls Are a Nuisance" features a learned playboy as the investigator and "The Bronze Door" features an old henpecked British man. The latter is actually more of a supernatural horror story than a detective story, one that could have made for a good "Twilight Zone" episode years later. "Professor Bingo's Snuff" is another in the supernatural vein, involving snuff that turns the user invisible. And "English Summer: A Gothic Romance" sounds very un-Chandler-like, but does get the mandatory murder in there.

Generally, like Chandler's novels, the stories feature the private investigator getting wrapped up into a case combining some (or all) of four crimes: missing persons, murder, blackmail, and theft--the thefts usually involving jewels. There's usually a girl involved. Sometimes she's bad, sometimes she's good, or sometimes she's good and turns out to be bad.

As with most short story collections I've read (including my own!) there can at times be some drag involved from too many stories that seem the same. None of the stories are really bad, but at times they feel a little too similar to each other. If you've read Chandler's novels then some of these might seem really familiar because he apparently used these stories as fodder for his novels.

My favorite of the collection is "Red Wind." This is a Marlowe story taking place on a hot night. It involves murder, blackmail, and a jewelry heist. The introduction talks about how in later novels Chandler began winding down Marlowe's career (and his own) by having Marlowe get softer with the dames, going so far as to hook him up with one. You can see the seeds for this planted in "Red Wind," where Marlowe definitely has a crush on the girl involved, though things don't work out.

What's interesting is to read the Marlowe stories from the '30s and compare them to the last one "The Pencil" from 1959. There's a huge difference in Marlowe's personality and narration. The character becomes more personable, or jauntier, probably because by then Chandler was so intimately familiar with Marlowe from the novels.

Anyway, I think if you really like Chandler's novels and want to see a bit of how they came about, then read this. But at 1,300 pages I don't think it's for the casual reader. A casual reader should try the novels first. Might as well since they're much the same, right? So I'd recommend this for only the real Chandler enthusiasts.

That is all.

Right off the bat, let me make clear that this is a beautifully bound and printed collection, that it's a bargain at Amazon's discounted price, and that these stories do exhibit Chandler's famously skillful writing style. In a couple of the stories in this collection, Chandler seems to be trying to write a Twilight Zone script, and in another he seems to be imitating P.G. Wodehouse, but in all of the rest he's true to form.

There is an important sense, however, in which this collection will be a mixed blessing to you if you've read and appreciated Chandler's novels. In a remarkable number of instances, the stories mix-and-match the plot lines from the novels. To be chronologically-correct, I should say that it's the other way around, I guess. In any case, it is disorienting to read Episodes X, Y, and Z from Novels A, B, and C all occurring in the same story. It's like having Nicholas Nickleby and David Copperfield team up to get Oliver Twist out of a jam. If you like to remember the things you read, you should be aware that the stories are likely to confuse your memories of the novels.

What's remarkable about Chandler is how even the same episode transplanted into a different story comes across interesting and fresh the second time around.

All the classics are here. Red Wind. Nevada Gas. Goldfish. Every John Dalmas story and every Philip Marlowe story. Even the ones he cannibalized for his novels and the fantasy stories. The intro is by Iris Murdoch's husband who compares Chandler's skills to that of an interior decorator. Blimey, he's right.

I'm a big fan of Raymond Chandler, and I'm also a big fan of Everyman's library.

I purchased this book after completing all of Chandler's novels. As usual with Everyman's Library, this is a very high quality hardcover edition with a cloth cover and high quality paper at a bargain price. Also, I believe this is the most complete set of Chandler's short stories you can currently buy (if I recall correctly, the Library of America collection, which is also quite a good buy, leaves out several stories).

One word of caution - if you plan to read both, I'd recommend reading Chandler's novels before the short stories, as he cannabalized a good amount of his earlier short stories when constructing some of his novels, so you'll end up reading some of the material twice. That said, for the most part, these stories are every bit as satisfying as his full length novels and I'd highly recommend this edition for any fan of Chandler's writing.

I have reviewed Raymond Chandler's seven full Phillip Marlowe epics elsewhere in this space. For those who doubt that a mere plebian detective in a once seedy genre can hold your attention and win your admiration as very, very good literature then try these short pieces to work up the 'big' boys. You will not be disappointed. Moreover, you will get a fair peek at what makes Marlowe tick in his previous guises-his sense of honor, his doggedness in the face of adversity and his tilting after windmills when he gets his teeth in a case. And it does not hurt if there is a good-looking 'dame' in the bargain.

ON BECOMING PHILLIP MARLOWE


Apparently there are many, many editions of this work listed under the Trouble is My Business label. I have reviewed the one that has Chandler's introduction about his take on the place of the detective novel in American literature circa 1950. Since then I have found a copy under the same title that has 12 stories in it many of which are different from the above. If you can find it- Vintage Paperback-1988- you will be justly rewarded because what you will get are snatches of stories with various charcters, locales, named detectives and different ending that will later go on to become The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely and Lady in the Lake. Get it if you can, if for no other reason than to see how the master noir detective writer moved the work forward. Amazing.

Fun, diverting entertainment -- shady hoods, plenty of slang and fast-paced stories make this collection a real treat. Wonderful that Everyman has put this out!

Yes, this collection of the Raymond Chandler pulp stories is
one of the most classic and historic possible in this whole
division of literature. And we can call it "literature" because
of Chandler.
Although Hammett made an early contribution, he so quickly
burned out, devoured by alcoholism and his unfathomable romance
with Communism, that his effective writings ended rather quickly.
But Chandler worked his magic over many years, and although
his output was slim in volume, he continued to glow over a long
period of time.
And his start was here in these pulp contributions. His very
first writings seem a little stilted now, but they are still
Chandler, and we can see the beginnings of his great prose.
Shortly into his short-story writing, his style becomes pure
Chandler, and it is recognizable by any mystery reader.
Chandler always easily admitted that his great novels were
put together from some of these early stories, and, as such,
they shouldn't be missed by any mystery reader.
His use of metaphore is not to be missed, and the reader will
encounter those throughout his work; the use of language in
these stories is like the use of musical notes by a master
classical violinist--until you encounter them, you wouldn't have
believed such combinations possible. Most readers will find
pleasure in going back and re-reading favorite phrases; they
will have to be savored.
This collection is complete, and it's one that will give pleasure for a long time. Grab it now.