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Profile of Raymond Chandler

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Introduction to Raymond Chandler:

Though America's finest hard-boiled detective novelist is known for exposing L.A.'s seedy underbelly and for his streetwise (if poetic) writing style, he was actually a highly educated, even genteel man, who studied in England and France. Not until adulthood did he come to Southern California, the place that was to dominate his fiction.

Chandler's Early Life and Education:

Born on July 23, 1888, in Chicago, Raymond Chandler's early life was marked by his father's alcohol abuse and his parents' marital problems. When he was seven, he and his mother moved to England to live with his grandmother, where he would attend Dulwich College Preparatory School. During these years, he absorbed both his grandmother's Victorian morals and Dulwich's British upper-class code of honor and service, both of which would influence his fiction. Trips to Ireland exposed him to the ideas about class that would underpin his work. After prep school, he studied in Europe briefly and then returned to London.

Young Adulthood:

From early on, Chandler harbored literary ambitions, and upon returning to Britain, he entered the civil service, thinking a government job would allow him time to write. Unable to submit to the bureaucracy, he tried for a life of letters, publishing reviews, poetry, and essays. After three years, Chandler gave up this dream and turned his attention to America, which had always fascinated him.

Life in America:

In 1912, he borrowed money from his uncle to make the move to the U.S., where he worked at odd jobs and then working as an accountant until WWI broke out. He enlisted in the Canadian infantry, participating in some of the most brutal trench warfare on the Western Front and returning disillusioned. After the war, he took a job as an executive at an oil company in Southern California and married Cissy Pascal in 1924, a high society woman 18 years his senior.

Raymond Chandler Returns to Writing:

Chandler's life with Cissy was initially rocky, largely due to his own struggles with alcoholism. When the Depression struck and he lost his job at the oil company, Chandler returned to his earlier literary aspirations, studying the works of writers such as Hemingway, Dreiser, and Ring Lardner. He also began reading pulp magazines, where he discovered Dashiell Hammett, a major influence on his work. He published his first story in 1933 in Black Mask, the most prestigious of the pulp magazines; during the 1930s he continued to write and publish detective stories.

Marlowe, and Chandler's Life as a Writer:

Having honed his craft with the short story, Chandler launched Philip Marlowe, the character that would make his name, with 1939's The Big Sleep. The disillusioned, smart, incorruptible detective would figure in all of his novels, providing a moral center for works that were essentially critiques of Western culture. Dubbed by Time the "poet laureate of the loner," Chandler wrote that he pictured Philip Marlowe "always in a lonely room, in lonely streets, puzzled but never quite defeated."

Later Life:

With the post-WWII emergence of a paperback industry (and the reprint of his novels), Chandler was able to break with Hollywood and move to La Jolla, CA, with Cissy. In their later years, Cissy developed health problems, eventually dying in 1954. After her death, Chandler struggled with alcoholism and depression, writing less as his own health and state-of-mind declined. He died alone in La Jolla in 1959 of pneumonia. Though only 17 people attended his funeral, Chandler continues to influence writers today, including contemporary novelists such as Ross McDonald and Robert B. Parker.

Best-Known Works:

In the course of his career, Chandler penned seven novels, including The Big Sleep (1939), Farewell, My Lovely (1940), and The Long Good-Bye (1953), as well as some 20 short stories. He also had a successful, if frustrating career as a screenwriter, writing or co-authoring films such as Double Indemnity (1944), The Blue Dahlia (1946), and Strangers on a Train (1951).

Awards:

The Philip Marlowe novels brought Chandler both critical and popular acclaim. He won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for The Blue Dahlia and The Long Goodbye. He was also nominated for Academy Awards for best screenplay in 1944 for Double Indemnity and in 1946 for The Blue Dahlia.