Raymond Chandler Speaking [Paperback]

Raymond Chandler (Author), Dorothy Gardiner (Editor), Katherine Sorley Walker (Editor), Paul Skenazy (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 1997

Tough-minded and typically idiosyncratic, here is Chandler on Chandler, the mystery novel, writing, Hollywood, TV, publishing, cats, and famous crimes. This skillfully edited selection of letters, articles, and notes also includes the short story "A Couple of Writers" and the first chapters of Chandler's last Philip Marlowe novel, The Poodle Springs Story, left unfinished at his death. Paul Skenazy has provided a new introduction for this edition as well as a new selected bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The pieces in this collection show the creator of Phillip Marlowe to be a sensitive and thoughtful man, though someone who seemed to like nothing more than speaking his mind. Chandler kept up lively correspondences with friends and in his letters he comments with true candor on books, films, people, and the characters he created. In one priceless letter he berates a publisher over the cover of an edition of Farewell, My Lovely: "The bedspring shown in your cover illustration is entirely wrong, since it is a type of spring which is very light and would be useless as a weapon ..." And with that, he's only getting started. In excerpts from his notebooks he holds forth on writing, and one of the masters of the hardboiled mystery passes along much working knowledge of his craft. Chandler's essay "Writers In Hollywood," which first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1945, holds up wonderfully (though if published today it would require the addition of some zeros to the figures Chandler cites). Raymond Chandler Speaking is a small treasure house of lively thoughts and crisp prose.

From Library Journal

There has been a remarkable resurgence of interest in Chandler in recent years. He is now included in the prestigious Library of America series (Classic Returns, LJ 9/15/95), and the first major biography on him in 20 years was recently published (LJ 4/1/97). This 1962 volume collects a wide number of Chandler's personal letters from 1950 to 1959, divided by subject?e.g., Chandler on mystery, on publishing?plus the opening chapters of The Poodle Springs Story, a Philip Marlowe novel left unfinished at the time of Chandler's death and which was ultimately completed by Robert B. Parker (LJ 7/89). His letters reveal him to be a witty yet softspoken and scholarly man?not at all what you'd expect of a hard-boiled mystery author. Essential for all Chandler hounds.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 275 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (April 30, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520208358
• ISBN-13: 978-0520208353
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #181,332 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #34 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Reference

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It's been surpassed, February 12, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Raymond Chandler Speaking (Paperback)

Originally published in 1962, this collage of excerpts from Chandler's letters, essays and drafts today is a rather unsatisfactory way to begin dabbling in Chandler's non-fiction. A much better book is the Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, and I understand a new book of the man's correspondance will be published in early 2001. The problem with Raymond Chandler Speaking is that everything is sliced, diced and presented in a very artificial order. You have a sections such as "Raymond Chandler on Cats," Raymond Chandler on Detective Novels," and "Raymond Chandler on Writers." Most of the material is excerpted from letters--letters which appear in full and in chronological order in the Selected Letters of RC. In this book, just as Chandler's rhythm starts to click in, just as the writing's beginning to get interesting, the snippet ends. Editor Dorothy Gardiner has made a good first attempt at giving readers a feel for the author, but its been done much better since then. Of course, you get some good oddball selections from RC, like a short story ("A Couple of Writers"), the "Writers in Hollywood" essay and RC's contribution to Poodle Springs, a 12-page start to a novel that Robert B. Parker would later finish and publish as a post-mortem collaboration. There's enough here to warrant a Chandler completist to include in his/her collection, but if you want to read something with a little more momentum and that gives you a better sense of RC as a person, read the Selected Letters first.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chandler: As Rich and Satisfying as Grandma's Custard, May 21, 2000

By 

Joe Oliver (Nacogdoches, TX United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Raymond Chandler Speaking (Paperback)

A "page turner" is a term I usually reserve for compelling and dramatic fiction, but in this case it is apt for "Raymond Chandler Speaking," the closest thing we have to a memoir or autobiography from the most influential mystery writer of the 20th century. Although not a particularly prolific novelist, Chandler was, nevertheless, an inveterate letter writer, and his words, penned in the haunting hours of the night and probably often in an alcoholic stupor, provide wonderful insight into this man who turned a low-brow fictional form into poetry. If you've enjoyed his novels, but not gotten around to this collection of letters and a few other writings (including the first four chapters of his last novel, "Poodle Springs"), then you're in for a treat: the colorful phrase, the scintillating simile, the terse but punchy sentence-all trademarks of his groundbreaking fiction-are found in abundance here, as Chandler waxes philosophically on Hollywood, agents, writers, publishers, and cats (the feline kind). You will find something in this small volume that you could not possibly anticipate on a topic you would think would be off turf: for me it was Chandler writing on the dysfunctional effects of television, as he saw it in 1950; with pen cynically dripping with sarcasm, he wrote: "Television is really what we have been looking for all our lives.... You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought.... You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it." Fifty years later, a good portion of the sum of academic and professional criticism of television are mere extensions of Chandler's intuitive judgment about the medium. Chandler's matchless mind and personality could have led him to many successful careers, if he controlled his personal demons; but he chose detective fiction over business, academics, politics or social/cultural criticism. This volume of letters and writings give us insight into his complex mind with its deep secrets and doubts. Little wonder this book, first published in 1962, remains (with updated introductory material) in print and a staple for libraries and the personal collections of people who like exploring the treads of genius that launched a new literary form.

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting man, January 17, 2011

By 

Paul Rooney "Paul Rooney" (Opotiki,New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Raymond Chandler Speaking (Paperback)

Raymond Chandler was an inveterate letter writer, he wrote hundreds and hundreds of them.

This collection has been brought together in chapters writing on various subjects.

Chandler on Chandler, Chandler on the Mystery Novel, Chandler on Writing and several others. The book finishes with the first four chapters of the novel he was writing when he died in 1959 - The Poodle Springs Story.


He writes to publishers, fans and friends. He can be very cantankerous when describing working in Hollywood and then very touching when writing following the death of his wife. His intelligence shines through these letters, I just wondered how much his alcoholism affected him mentally, it certainly affected him physically.

This collection was first published in 1962 and my copy is a hardback from 1973 which cost me the princely sum of $3 from the Quota Club book fair, God bless them.

If you like diaries and letter collections this is worth the effort.