Posts tagged Raymond Chandler
Vintage Books & Anchor Books
Books. Books!
“Lines to a Lady With an Unsplit Infinitive”
by Raymond Chandler
Miss Margaret Mutch she raised her crutch
With a wild Bostonian cry.
“Though you went to Yale, your grammar is frail,”
She snarled as she jabbed his eye.
“Though you went to Princeton I never winced on
Such a horrible relative clause!
Though you went to Harvard no decent larva’d
Accept your syntactical flaws.
Taught not to drool at a Public School
(With a capital P and S)
You are drooling still with your shall and will
You’re a very disgusting mess!”
She jabbed his eye with a savage cry.
She laughed at his anguished shrieks.
O’er the Common he fled with a hole in his head.
To heal it took Weeks and Weeks.
“O dear Miss Mutch, don’t raise your crutch
To splinter my new glass eye!
There ain’t no school that can teach a fool
The whom of the me and the I.
There ain’t no grammar that equals a hammer
To nail down a cut-rate wit.
And the verb ‘to be’ as employed by me
Is often and lightly split.
A lot of my style (so-called) is vile
For I learned to write in a bar.
The marriage of thought to words was wrought
With many a strong sidecar.
A lot of my stuff is extremely rough,
For I had no maiden aunts.
O dear Miss Mutch, leave go your clutch
On Noah Webster’s pants!
The grammarian will, when the poet lies still,
Instruct him in how to sing.
The rules are clean: they are right, I ween,
But where do they make the thing?
In the waxy gloam of a Funeral Home
Where the gray morticians bow?
Is it written best on a palimpsest,
Or carved on a whaleboat’s prow?
Is it neatly joined with needlepoint
To the chair that was Grandma’s pride?
Or smeared in blood on the shattered wood
Where the angry rebel died?
O dear Miss Mutch, put down your crutch,
and leave us to crack a bottle.
A guy like I weren’t meant to die
On the grave of Aristotle.
O leave us dance on the dead romance
Of the small but clear footnote.
The infinitive with my fresh-honed shiv
I will split from heel to throat.
Roll on, roll on, thou semicolon,
ye commas crisp and brown.
The apostrophe will stretch like toffee
When we nail the full stop down.
Oh, hand in hand with the ampersand
We’ll tread a measure brisk.
We’ll stroll all night by the delicate light
Of a well placed asterisk.
As gay as a lark in the fragrant dark
We’ll hoist and down the tipple.
With laughter light we’ll greet the plight
Of a hanging participle!”
She stared him down with an icy frown.
His accidence she shivered.
His face was white with sudden fright,
And his syntax lily-livered.
“O dear Miss Mutch, leave down your crutch!”
He cried in thoughtless terror.
Short shrift she gave. Above his grave:
HERE LIES A PRINTER’S ERROR.
SOURCE HERE.
“There are two kinds of truth; The truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The fist of these is science and the second is art.”
― Raymond Chandler
10 Unfinished Novels from The Short List…
“Perhaps you were in the middle of writing your magnum opus. The tome that would have floored literary circles the world over. Unfinished novels are such a troublesome business. Just like that death malarkey. Herewith, 10 great unfinished books. If only they’d tried a bit harder. Procrastinated less. Which, of course, is rich coming from us. We’ve never started a book, let alone not finished one…
1. The Mystery of Edwin Drood – Charles Dickens: When he died, aged 58, in 1870, Charles Dickens was exactly halfway through his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. As well as mixing in the usual Dickensian tropes of social commentary and colourful characters, his death meant that Drood’s puzzling disappearance was never resolved. Many have attempted to piece together the clues the author left behind, not least a recent BBC adaptation, but perhaps Dickens’s last great act was leaving behind a classic whodunit.
2. The Original of Laura – Vladimir Nabokov:Like many authors, feted Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov left express intentions that any unfinished work should be destroyed upon his death. Following his passing in 1977, his final book, The Original of Laura, wasn’t destroyed but held in a bank vault as his son deliberated whether to publish it. In 2009, it finally saw the light of day. A fragmented novel concerned with ageing and the complexities of love, literary figures despaired that the man behind the classic Lolita should not have had his final wish honoured.
3. The Love of the Last Tycoon – F Scott Fitzgerald: Towards the end of his enigmatic, innovative and controversial life, F Scott Fitzgerald worked on the fringes of Hollywood. It’s thought he found such work below him, but it obviously provided the inspiration for his last work, The Love of the Last Tycoon. A thinly veiled account of movie mogul Irving Thalberg, Fitzgerald completed 17 of his proposed 31 chapters before he died in 1940. Edited by his friend Edmund Wilson it was published the year after his death.
4. The Mysterious Stranger – Mark Twain: Mark Twain had worked on three versions of this novel by the time he died in 1910. Unfortunately, none were finished. However, one theme that underpinned all three attempts was Twain’s caustic attacks on the failings of organised religion. Six years after his death a version was published but seems to have clumsily pieced together bits of the different versions. Twain, who was endlessly debated during his lifetime, was continually pored over in death.
5. Poodle Springs – Raymond Chandler (and Robert B Parker): Philip Marlowe is one of literature’s most enduring figures. A tough, complicated and brooding detective, he was a gift for the cinema age – as portrayed memorably by Humphrey Bogart. Created by Raymond Chandler, Marlowe was stepping out for his eighth novel when Chandler died in 1959. However, to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth, contemporary crime writer Robert B Parker, with the blessing of the Chandler estate, completed the novel based upon the four chapters of hardboiled prose Chandler wrote.
6. Weir of Hermiston – Robert Louis Stevenson: Robert Louis Stevenson is best known for the archetypal boy’s own adventure Treasure Island, but at the time of his death he was working on what acolytes have since deemed his masterpiece. Weir of Hermiston is an epic novel set during the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of the 19th Century. Focussing on the travails of Archie Weir, it touches upon the tragic effects of conflict within the family, love and social commentary. Not pirates and buried treasure then.
7. The Ivory Tower – Henry James: The creation of modern America towards the end of the 19th Century was a rich source of material for novelists of the age. Henry James was one such writer, his books, drenched in realism and literary allusions are now seen as fascinating critiques of this time. The Ivory Tower was one such book – a tale of unfathomable riches and the consequences of such wealth upon two families and the rising industrial classes – it was left unfinished when James died in 1916, although it was published the following year.
8. The Garden of Eden - Ernest Hemingway: Although he started work on The Garden of Eden in 1946, it was still uncompleted when Ernest Hemingway died 15 years later. It didn’t see the light of day for another 25 years. The novel tells the story of newlyweds David and Catherine Bourne. While on honeymoon both the Bournes fall for the beautiful Marita, thus setting off a chain of destructive events. The novel itself ran to 800 pages and when it was finally published a number of cuts had to be made which upset Hemingway devotees.
9. The Pale King – David Foster Wallace: Before he committed suicide aged just 46 in 2008, David Foster Wallace was regarded as one of the brightest and most inventive voices in American fiction. His 1996 work, Infinite Jest, was acclaimed as a Great American Novel. The following year he began work on the book that he would still be writing at the time of his death. A complex, multi-layered book that focuses on the human condition and the minutiae of daily life, The Pale King runs to 500 pages and was, according to Wallace, only a third finished. Yet, after much editing it was published in 2011.
10. The First Man – Albert Camus: Student fave Albert Camus was working on perhaps his most realistic and certainly his most personal novel when he was killed in a car crash in 1960. The First Man is based upon his childhood in Algeria, and examines the vexed issues of colonialism, family relationships and politics, while touching upon the more authentic experiences of childhood. Camus’s transcribed the unfinished manuscript and it was finally published in 1994.
Read more here.
“The very nicest thing Hollywood can possibly think of to say to a writer is that he is too good to be only a writer.”
—Raymond Chandler
Clues to Raymond Chandler’s Life and Career in Sale of His Books and Papers
“The very nicest thing Hollywood can possibly think of to say to a writer,” Raymond Chandler wrote, “is that he is too good to be only a writer.” Chandler may have been only a writer himself, but he was a singularly influential one, whose body of work includes the classic detective novels “The Big Sleep” and “Farewell, My Lovely” and contributions to the screenplays for “Double Indemnity” (written with Billy Wilder) and “Strangers on a Train.” Now a sale of books and papers from Chandler’s personal collection offers a unique look at his legacy and literary influence, not to mention his uneasy relationship with that “showman’s paradise,” as he called it, known as Hollywood.
Read more here.
THE LITTLE SISTER by Raymond Chandler. A small, neat girl walks into Philip Marlowe’s office. Orfamay Quest is looking for her brother Orrin. She gives Marlowe twenty dollars and lots of moral disapproval. Marlowe takes the case and finds himself drawn into the glamorous world of the Hollywood film studios.
REVIEW AND HISTORY
The 1959-60 PHILIP MARLOWE TV Series
by Michael ShonkPHILIP MARLOWE. ABC-TV. 1959-1960. Tuesday 9:30-10pm(E). Goodson-Todman Production with California National Productions. Created by Raymond Chandler.
Read More: http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=12788
It is no secret that some of the greatest writers were big drinkers. The question remains if their talent is enhanced or created by their drinking. Regardless, we have to give them credit for their amazing accomplishments—with or without the occasional cocktail…
1. Raymond Chandler
Drink of Choice: Gimlet
Death: Pneumonia & Suicide Attempt
2. Ernest Hemingway
Drink of choice: Mojito
Death: Suicide
3. William Faulkner
Drink of Choice: Mint Julep
Death: Alcohol-Related Heart Complication
4. F. Scott Fitzgerald
Drink of Choice: Gin Rickey
Death: Alcohol-Related Heart Attacks
5. Jack Kerouac
Drink of Choice: Margarita
Death: Alcohol-Related Hemorrhages
Charles Frazier chooses five of the best hardboiled novels
“Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in Black Mask magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world. As in the film noir that they would inspire, the best hardboiled novels make style a primary means of delineating character and place.
Hammett’s first novel, Red Harvest (1929), is a bloody, amoral tale of a private detective in a corrupt mining town. Violence escalates almost comically, but the tight language is like Hemingway describing a Sergio Leone movie.
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) begins with one of the greatest hardboiled opening lines: “They threw me off the hay truck at noon.” From there, James M Cain weaves a confessional tale of lust, greed, jealousy and murder.
The Long Goodbye (1953) has my vote for Chandler’s best novel. It’s not as finely honed as his earlier work, but feels richer and deeper, with an autumnal mood.
Jim Thompson’s bitter, cynical pulp masterpiece, Pop. 1280 (1964), is probably an acquired taste. The first-person narration, though, is brilliant, and the humour couldn’t be much blacker.
Daniel Woodrell’s Give Us a Kiss (1996) is one of my favourite modern descendants of the genre. I’d place it on the Chandler branch of the family tree, mostly because Woodrell’s prose style is a sentence-by-sentence delight.”
—Charles Frazier is the author of COLD MOUNTAIN and the forthcoming NIGHTWOODS
I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won’t let himself get snotty about it.
(Source: facebook.com)
