View source for Raymond Chandler

{{short description|American novelist and screenwriter (1888–1959)}}
{{for |the 14th United States Sergeant Major of the Army|Raymond F. Chandler}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=June 2021}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
| image            = Raymond Chandler (Lady in the Lake portrait, 1943).jpg
| alt              = Man with slicked-back black hair facing left, smoking a pipe
| caption          = Chandler {{circa}} 1943
| birth_name       = Raymond Thornton Chandler
| birth_date       = {{birth date|1888|7|23}}
| birth_place      = [[Chicago]], Illinois, U.S.
| death_date       = {{death date and age|1959|3|26|1888|7|23}}
| death_place      = [[San Diego]], California, U.S.
| resting_place    = [[Mount Hope Cemetery (San Diego)|Mount Hope Cemetery]], San Diego, U.S.
| occupation       = {{hlist|Novelist|screenwriter}}
| nationality      = American <small>(1888–1907, 1956–1959)</small><br />British <small>(1907–1959)</small>
| period           = 1933–1959
| genre            = [[Crime fiction]], [[suspense]], [[hardboiled]]
| subject          = 
| movement         = 
| spouse           = {{marriage|Cissy Pascal|1924|1954|reason = died}}
| signature        = 
| website          = 
| education        = [[Dulwich College]]
}}

'''Raymond Thornton Chandler''' (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and [[screenwriter]]. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a [[detective fiction]] writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the [[Great Depression]]. His first short story, "[[Blackmailers Don't Shoot]]", was published in 1933 in ''[[Black Mask (magazine)|Black Mask]],'' a [[pulp magazine]]. His first novel, ''[[The Big Sleep]]'', was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by [[Robert B. Parker]]). All but ''[[Playback (novel)|Playback]]'' have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the [[Mystery Writers of America]].{{sfn|Chandler|1950|loc="About the Author"}}

Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the [[hardboiled]] school of detective fiction, along with [[Dashiell Hammett]], [[James M. Cain]] and other ''Black Mask'' writers. The [[protagonist]] of his novels, [[Philip Marlowe]], like Hammett's [[Sam Spade]], is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by [[Humphrey Bogart]], whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.

''The Big Sleep'' placed second on the [[Crime Writers' Association]] poll of the 100 best crime novels; ''[[Farewell, My Lovely]]'' (1940), ''[[The Lady in the Lake]]'' (1943) and [[The Long Goodbye (novel)|''The Long Goodbye'']] (1953) also made the list.<ref>{{cite web| title=Crime Writers Association - Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time| date=August 19, 2012| url=https://cozy-mystery.com/blog/crime-writers-association-top-100-crime-novels-of-all-time/}}</ref> The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's ''[[The Glass Key]]'', published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "[[The Simple Art of Murder]]" is the canonical essay in the field.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Sheffield Hallam Working Papers: The Thirties Now |url=https://extra.shu.ac.uk/wpw/thirties/thirties%20brauer.html |access-date=2022-05-02 |website=extra.shu.ac.uk}}</ref>{{sfn|Pronzini|Adrian|1995|p=169}} In it he wrote: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."<ref>{{cite news| last=Chandler| first=Raymond| title=The Simple Art of Murder| date=December 1944| work=[[The Atlantic]]| url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1944/12/the-simple-art-of-murder/656179/}}</ref>

Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."<ref>{{cite news| last=Parker| first=Robert B.| title=The Big Text| date=October 8, 1995| work=[[The New York Times]]| url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/25/specials/parker-chandler.html}}</ref>

==Life and career==
===Early life===
[[File:Raymond Chandler house, Waterford.jpg|thumb|upright|A [[blue plaque]] marks the house in Cathedral Square where Chandler stayed in [[Waterford]], Ireland.]] 
Chandler was born in 1888 in Chicago, the son of Florence Dart (Thornton) and Maurice Benjamin Chandler.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Raymond Thornton Chandler |date=February 2013 |encyclopedia=[[Columbia Encyclopedia]] }}</ref> He spent his early years in [[Plattsmouth, Nebraska]], living with his mother and father near his cousins and his aunt (his mother's sister) and uncle.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/hiney-chandler.html |title= Chapter One Raymond Chandler| work =The New York Times | access-date = June 2, 2014}}</ref> Chandler's father, a civil engineer who worked for the railway, was alcoholic and abandoned the family in the early 1890s.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://waterfordireland.tripod.com/raymond_chandler.htm| title = Waterfordland}}</ref> To obtain the best possible education for Raymond, his mother, who was originally from Ireland, went to live in England with Raymond in 1900 (in [[Upper Norwood]], now in the London Borough of [[Croydon]]).<ref>{{Citation |title=Census |year=1900 |contribution=Plattsmouth, Nebraska |place=US}}</ref><ref name=":0" /> Raymond lived there with his mother, unmarried aunt, and maternal grandmother between 1901 and 1907.<ref name=":0">{{cite web|url=http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about-us/search-news/blue-plaque-raymond-chandler |title=Blue Plaque for Raymond Chandler |publisher=[[English Heritage]] |date=October 17, 2014 |access-date=February 20, 2016}}</ref> Another uncle, a successful lawyer in [[Waterford]], Ireland, reluctantly supported them<ref name = "nyrb-12-06-2007">{{cite news | first = Pico | last = Iyer | title = The Knight of Sunset Boulevard | work = New York Review of Books | pages = 31–33 | date = December 6, 2007 |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/dec/06/the-knight-of-sunset-boulevard/?pagination=false}}</ref> while they lived in London. Raymond was a first cousin to the actor [[Max Adrian]], a founding member of the Royal Shakespeare Company; Max's mother Mabel was a sister of Florence Thornton. Chandler was classically educated at [[Dulwich College]], London (a [[Public school (United Kingdom)|public school]] whose alumni include the authors [[P. G. Wodehouse]]<ref name="nyrb-12-06-2007" /> and [[C. S. Forester]]). He spent some of his childhood summers in Waterford in Ireland with his mother's family.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://waterfordireland.tripod.com/raymond_chandler.htm | title = Raymond Chandler | work = Waterford Ireland | publisher = Tripod | access-date = July 19, 2012}}</ref> He did not go to university, instead spending time in Paris and [[Munich]] improving his foreign language skills. In 1907, he was naturalized as a [[British subject]] in order to take the [[Civil Service (United Kingdom)|civil service]] examination, which he passed. He then took an [[Admiralty (United Kingdom)|Admiralty]] job, lasting just over a year. His first poem was published during that time.

Chandler disliked the servility of the civil service and resigned, to the consternation of his family. He then became a reporter for the ''[[Daily Express]]'' and also wrote for ''[[The Westminster Gazette]]''.{{sfn|MacShane|1976|p=17}} He was unsuccessful as a journalist, but he published reviews and continued writing [[Romanticism|romantic]] poetry. An encounter with the slightly older [[Richard Barham Middleton]] is said to have influenced him into postponing his career as writer. "I met&nbsp;... also a young, bearded, and sad-eyed man called Richard Middleton.&nbsp;... Shortly afterwards he committed suicide in Antwerp, a suicide of despair, I should say. The incident made a great impression on me, because Middleton struck me as having far more talent than I was ever likely to possess; and if he couldn't make a go of it, it wasn't very likely that I could."  Accounting for that time he said, "Of course in those days as now there were&nbsp;... clever young men who made a decent living as freelances for the numerous literary weeklies", but "I was distinctly not a clever young man. Nor was I at all a happy young man."{{Sfn | Chandler | 1962 | p = 24}}

In 1912, at the age of 24, he borrowed money from his Waterford uncle, who expected it to be repaid with interest, and returned to America, visiting his aunt and uncle before settling in San Francisco for a time, where he took a correspondence course in bookkeeping, finishing ahead of schedule. His mother joined him there in late 1912. Encouraged by Chandler's attorney/oilman friend Warren Lloyd, they moved to Los Angeles in 1913,<ref>{{Citation | contribution = Florence arrives | date = December 1912 | title = Passenger Manifest SS Merion}}</ref> where he strung tennis rackets, picked fruit and endured a time of scrimping and saving. He found steady employment with the Los Angeles Creamery. In 1917, he traveled to Victoria, where in August he enlisted in the 50th Reinforcement Battalion [[Canadian Expeditionary Force]].<ref>{{cite web|last=Hawthorn |first=Tom|title=When Raymond Chandler Came to Victoria to Fight the Great War|url=https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2018/08/14/When-Chandler-Came-Fight-Great-War/|website=[[The Tyee]]|date=August 14, 2018|access-date=October 28, 2023}}</ref> He saw combat in the trenches in France with the 7th Battalion C.E.F. (British Columbia Regiment).<ref>{{cite web|last=Trott|first=Sarah|title=Raymond Chandler and the Trauma of War|url=https://strandmag.com/raymond-chandler-and-the-trauma-of-war/|website=[[The Strand Magazine]]|date=February 16, 2017|access-date=October 28, 2023}}</ref> He was twice hospitalized with [[Spanish flu]] during the pandemic<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thekeptgirl.com/2017/07/the-clews-from-raymond-chandlers-war.html|title=The clews from Raymond Chandler's war|website=www.thekeptgirl.com|access-date=November 30, 2018}}</ref> and was undergoing flight training in the fledgling [[Royal Air Force]] (RAF) when the war ended.<ref name = "nyrb-12-06-2007" />

After the [[Armistice of 11 November 1918|armistice]], he returned to Los Angeles by way of Vancouver, and soon began a love affair with Pearl Eugenie ("Cissy") Pascal, a married woman 18 years his senior and the stepmother of Gordon Pascal, with whom Chandler had enlisted.<ref name="nyrb-12-06-2007" /> Cissy amicably divorced her husband, Julian, in 1920, but Chandler's mother disapproved of the relationship and refused to sanction the marriage. For the next four years Chandler supported both his mother and Cissy. After the death of Florence Chandler on September 26, 1923, he was free to marry Cissy. They were married on February 6, 1924.<ref name = "nyrb-12-06-2007" /><ref name = rcinfo>{{Citation |url=http://raymondchandler.info/ | title = Raymond Chandler}}'s Shamus Town Timeline and Residences pages using official government sources (death certificate, census, military & civil – city & phone directories).</ref> Having begun in 1922 as a bookkeeper and auditor, Chandler was by 1931 a highly paid vice president of the [[Dabney Oil Syndicate]], but his alcoholism, absenteeism, promiscuity with female employees, and threatened suicides<ref name = "nyrb-12-06-2007" /> contributed to his dismissal a year later, after ten years with the company.

===As a writer===
In straitened financial circumstances during the [[Great Depression]], Chandler turned to his latent writing talent to earn a living, teaching himself to write [[Pulp magazine|pulp fiction]] by analyzing and imitating a novelette by [[Erle Stanley Gardner]]. Chandler's first professional work, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in ''Black Mask'' magazine in 1933. According to genre historian Herbert Ruhm, "Chandler, who worked slowly and painstakingly, revising again and again, had taken five months to write the story.  Erle Stanley Gardner could turn out a pulp story in three or four days—and turned out an estimated one thousand."<ref>Herbert Ruhm, "Introduction", in Herbert Ruhm (1977), ed., ''The Hard-boiled Detective:  Stories from "Black Mask" Magazine, 1920–1951'', New York:  Vintage, p. xvii.</ref>

His first novel, ''[[The Big Sleep]]'', was published in 1939, featuring the detective Philip Marlowe, speaking in the first person.  In 1950, Chandler described in a letter to his English publisher, Hamish Hamilton, why he began reading pulp magazines and later wrote for them:

<blockquote>Wandering up and down the Pacific Coast in an automobile I began to read pulp magazines, because they were cheap enough to throw away and because I never had at any time any taste for the kind of thing which is known as women's magazines. This was in the great days of the ''Black Mask'' (if I may call them great days) and it struck me that some of the writing was pretty forceful and honest, even though it had its crude aspect. I decided that this might be a good way to try to learn to write fiction and get paid a small amount of money at the same time.  I spent five months over an 18,000 word novelette and sold it for $180. After that I never looked back, although I had a good many uneasy periods looking forward.{{sfn|Chandler|1969|p=vii}}</blockquote>

His second Marlowe novel, ''[[Farewell, My Lovely]]'' (1940), became the basis for three movie versions adapted by other screenwriters, including the 1944 film ''[[Murder My Sweet]]'', which marked the screen debut of the Marlowe character, played by [[Dick Powell]] (whose depiction of Marlowe was applauded by Chandler). Literary success and film adaptations led to a demand for Chandler himself as a screenwriter. He and [[Billy Wilder]] co-wrote ''[[Double Indemnity]]'' (1944), based on [[James M. Cain]]'s [[Double Indemnity (novel)|novel of the same title]]. The [[film noir|noir]] screenplay was nominated for an [[Academy Award]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1945|title=The 17th Academy Awards {{!}} 1945|website=www.oscars.org|date=October 4, 2014 |language=en|access-date=2023-08-26}}</ref> Said Wilder, "I would just guide the structure and I would also do a lot of the dialogue, and he (Chandler) would then comprehend and start constructing too." Wilder acknowledged that the dialogue which makes the film so memorable was largely Chandler's.

Chandler's only produced original screenplay was ''[[The Blue Dahlia]]'' (1946). He had not written a [[denouement]] for the script and, according to producer [[John Houseman]], Chandler concluded he could finish the script only if drunk, with the assistance of round-the-clock secretaries and drivers, which Houseman agreed to. The script gained Chandler's second Academy Award nomination for screenplay.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1947|title=The 19th Academy Awards {{!}} 1947|website=www.oscars.org|date=October 4, 2014 |language=en|access-date=2023-08-26}}</ref>

Chandler collaborated on the screenplay of [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s ''[[Strangers on a Train (film)|Strangers on a Train]]'' (1951), an ironic murder story based on [[Patricia Highsmith]]'s [[Strangers on a Train (novel)|novel]], which he thought implausible. Chandler clashed with Hitchcock and they stopped talking after Hitchcock heard Chandler had referred to him as "that fat bastard".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Gustini |first=Ray |date=2012-01-10 |title=Don't Waste Raymond Chandler's Time; Roald Dahl Achieves Stamp Immortality |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2012/01/dont-waste-raymond-chandlers-time-roald-dahl-achieves-stamp-immortality/333309/ |access-date=2023-08-08 |website=The Atlantic |language=en |quote=There's a famous, possibly apocryphal story of Hitchcock pulling up outside Chandler's house in a limousine and The Big Sleep author saying none-too-softly, "Look at that fat bastard trying to get out of his car!"}}</ref> Hitchcock made a show of throwing Chandler's two draft screenplays into the studio trash can while holding his nose, but Chandler retained the lead screenwriting credit along with [[Czenzi Ormonde]].

In 1946, the Chandlers moved to [[La Jolla]], an affluent coastal neighborhood of San Diego, California, where Chandler wrote two more Philip Marlowe novels, ''[[The Long Goodbye (novel)|The Long Goodbye]]'' and his last completed work, ''Playback''. The latter was derived from an unproduced courtroom drama screenplay he had written for [[Universal Pictures|Universal Studios]].

Four chapters of a novel, unfinished at his death, were transformed into a final Philip Marlowe novel, ''[[Poodle Springs]]'', by the mystery writer and Chandler admirer [[Robert B. Parker]], in 1989. Parker shares the authorship with Chandler. Parker subsequently wrote a sequel to ''The Big Sleep'' entitled ''[[Perchance to Dream (novel)|Perchance to Dream]]'', which was salted with quotes from the original novel. Chandler's final Marlowe short story, circa 1957, was entitled "The Pencil". It later provided the basis of an episode of the HBO miniseries (1983–86), ''[[Philip Marlowe, Private Eye]]'', starring [[Powers Boothe]] as Marlowe.

In 2014, "The Princess and the Pedlar" (1917), a previously unknown comic operetta, with libretto by Chandler and music by Julian Pascal, was discovered<ref>
{{Citation
 | last = Weinman
 | first = Sarah
 | title = Unpublished Raymond Chandler Work Discovered in Library of Congress
 | newspaper = The Guardian
 | location = London
 | date = December 2, 2014
|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/02/raymond-chandler-libretto-library-congress
 }}</ref> among the uncatalogued holdings of the [[Library of Congress]]. The work was never published or produced. It has been dismissed by the Raymond Chandler estate as "no more than… a curiosity."<ref>{{cite web
 | last = Cooper
 | first = Kim
 | title = Goblin Wine
 |url=http://www.goblinwine.com/p/story.html
 | access-date = December 30, 2014 }}</ref> A small team under the direction of the actor and director [[Paul Sand]] is seeking permission to produce the operetta in Los Angeles.

The University of [[University of Oxford|Oxford]] preserves some of Chandler's papers in the archives of the [[Bodleian Library|Bodleian]] Library.  These include correspondence with his publisher, [[Hamish Hamilton]], Ltd.<ref>{{Cite web |last=University of Oxford, Bodleian Libraries |title=Raymond Chandler, Correspondence with Hamish Hamilton Ltd., 1939-1951 {{!}} Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts |url=https://archives.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repositories/2/archival_objects/62943 |access-date=2025-08-09 |website=archives.bodleian.ox.ac.uk}}</ref>

===Later life and death===
Cissy Chandler died in 1954, after a long illness. Heartbroken and drunk, Chandler neglected to inter her cremated remains, and they sat for 57 years in a storage locker in the basement of Cypress View Mausoleum. 

After Cissy's death, Chandler's loneliness worsened his propensity for [[Major depressive disorder|clinical depression]]; he returned to drinking alcohol, never quitting it for long, and the quality and quantity of his writing suffered.<ref name="nyrb-12-06-2007" /> In 1955, he attempted suicide. In ''The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved'', Judith Freeman says it was "a cry for help," given that he called the police beforehand, saying he planned to kill himself. Chandler's personal and professional life were both helped and complicated by the women to whom he was attracted, notably Helga Greene (his literary agent), Jean Fracasse (his secretary), [[Sonia Orwell]] ([[George Orwell]]'s widow), and [[Natasha Spender]] ([[Stephen Spender]]'s wife). Chandler regained his U.S. citizenship in 1956, while retaining his British rights.

After a respite in England, he returned to La Jolla. He died at Scripps Memorial Hospital of pneumonial peripheral vascular shock and prerenal uremia (according to the death certificate) in 1959. Helga Greene inherited Chandler's $60,000 estate, after prevailing in a 1960 lawsuit filed by Fracasse contesting Chandler's [[Holographic will|holographic]] [[codicil (will)|codicil]] to his will.

Chandler is buried at [[Mount Hope Cemetery (San Diego)|Mount Hope Cemetery]], in San Diego, California. As Frank MacShane noted in his biography, ''The Life of Raymond Chandler'', Chandler wished to be cremated and placed next to Cissy in Cypress View Mausoleum.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Italie |first=Hillel |date=December 11, 2023 |title=Rare Raymond Chandler poem is a tribute to his late wife, with a surprising twist |url=https://apnews.com/article/raymond-chandler-poem-wife-requiem-9fdefbb098e7e3e59602fb4c0c1c264f |access-date=2024-12-06 |website=AP News |language=en}}</ref> Instead, he was buried in Mount Hope, because he had left no funeral or burial instructions.{{sfn|Hiney|1999|p=275–276}} When he died he was remembered as, "the author of “''The Big Sleep'',” and other mystery novels."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Monteagudo |first=Merrie |date=2019-03-26 |title=60 years ago: Raymond Chandler dies in La Jolla |url=https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2019/03/26/60-years-ago-raymond-chandler-dies-in-la-jolla/ |access-date=2024-12-06 |website=San Diego Union-Tribune |language=en-US}}</ref>
[[File:Raymond Chandler gravestone.jpg|thumb|Raymond and Cissy Chandler's tombstone]]
In 2010, Chandler historian Loren Latker, with the assistance of attorney Aissa Wayne (daughter of [[John Wayne]]), brought a petition to disinter Cissy's remains and reinter them with Chandler in Mount Hope. After a hearing in September 2010 in [[California superior courts|San Diego Superior Court]], Judge Richard S. Whitney entered an order granting Latker's request.<ref>Bell, Diane (September 8, 2010).  [http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/sep/08/ashes-chandlers-wife-join-him-eternity/ "Ashes of Chandler's wife to join him for eternity"]. SignOnSanDiego.com. Retrieved 2011-11-26.</ref>

On February 14, 2011, Cissy's ashes were conveyed from Cypress View to Mount Hope and interred under a new grave marker above Chandler's, as they had wished.<ref>Bell, Diane (February 14, 2011). [http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/feb/14/philip-marlowe-appears-at-raymond-chandler/ "Raymond Chandler and His Wife, Cissy, Are Finally Reunited"]. SignOnSanDiego.com.  Retrieved 2011-11-26.</ref> About 100 people attended the ceremony, which included readings by the Rev. Randal Gardner, [[Powers Boothe]], Judith Freeman and Aissa Wayne. The shared gravestone reads, "Dead men are heavier than broken hearts", a quotation from ''The Big Sleep''. Chandler's original gravestone, placed by Jean Fracasse and her children, is still at the head of his grave; the new one is at the foot.

==Views on pulp fiction==
{{Over-quotation|lengthy|date=August 2025}}

In his introduction to ''Trouble Is My Business'' (1950), a collection of many of his short stories, Chandler provided insight on the formula for the detective story and how the pulp magazines differed from previous detective stories:

{{Blockquote|The emotional basis of the standard detective story was and had always been that murder will out and justice will be done. Its technical basis was the relative insignificance of everything except the final denouement. What led up to that was more or less passage work. The denouement would justify everything. The technical basis of the ''Black Mask'' type of story on the other hand was that the scene outranked the plot, in the sense that a good plot was one which made good scenes. The ideal mystery was one you would read if the end was missing.  We who tried to write it had the same point of view as the film makers. When I first went to Hollywood a very intelligent producer told me that you couldn't make a successful motion picture from a mystery story, because the whole point was a disclosure that took a few seconds of screen time while the audience was reaching for its hat. He was wrong, but only because he was thinking of the wrong kind of mystery.}}

{{Blockquote|As to the emotional basis of the hard-boiled story, obviously it does not believe that murder will out and justice will be done-unless some very determined individual makes it his business to see that justice is done. The stories were about the men who made that happen. They were apt to be hard men, and what they did, whether they were called police officers, private detectives or newspaper men, was hard, dangerous work: It was work they could always get. There was plenty of it lying around. There still is. Undoubtedly the stories about them had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so closeknit a group of people, nor within so narrow a frame of logic. This was inevitable because the demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand. This could get to be pretty silly, but somehow it didn't seem to matter. A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.}}

Chandler also described the struggle that writers of pulp fiction had in following the formula demanded by the editors of the pulp magazines:

{{Blockquote|As I look back on my stories it would be absurd if I did not wish they had been better. But if they had been much better they would not have been published. If the formula had been a little less rigid, more of the writing of that time might have survived. Some of us tried pretty hard to break out of the formula, but we usually got caught and sent back. To exceed the limits of a formula without destroying it is the dream of every magazine writer who is not a hopeless hack.{{sfn|Chandler|1950|pp=viii–ix}} }}

==Reputation==
Critics and writers, including [[W. H. Auden]], [[Evelyn Waugh]] and [[Ian Fleming]], greatly admired Chandler's prose.<ref name="nyrb-12-06-2007" /> In a radio discussion with Chandler, Fleming said that Chandler offered "some of the finest dialogue written in any prose today".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/james_bond/12601.shtml |title=Archive – James Bond – Ian Fleming and Raymond Chandler |publisher=[[BBC]] |access-date=February 20, 2016}}</ref> Contemporary mystery writer [[Paul Levine]] has described Chandler's style as the "literary equivalent of a quick punch to the gut".<ref>{{cite web|author=Paul Levine |url=http://www.paul-levine.com/hard-boiled-dialogue-philip-marlowe-jake-lassiter/ |title=Hard-Boiled Dialogue: From Philip Marlowe to Jake Lassiter |website=Paul-levine.com |date=December 16, 2014 |access-date=February 20, 2016}}</ref> Chandler's swift-moving, hardboiled style was inspired mostly by [[Dashiell Hammett]], but his sharp and lyrical [[simile]]s are original: "The muzzle of the [[Luger pistol|Luger]] looked like the mouth of the Second Street tunnel"; "He had a heart as big as one of [[Mae West|Mae West's]] hips"; "Dead men are heavier than broken hearts"; "I went back to the seasteps and moved down them as cautiously as a cat on a wet floor"; "He was crazy as a pair of waltzing mice, but I liked him"; "I felt like an amputated leg"; "He was about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food." Chandler's writing redefined the [[Private investigator|private eye]] fiction genre, led to the coining of the adjective "Chandleresque", and inevitably became the subject of parody and [[pastiche]]. Yet the detective Philip Marlowe is not a stereotypical tough guy, but a complex, sometimes sentimental man with few friends, who attended university, who speaks some [[Spanish language|Spanish]] and sometimes admires Mexicans and Blacks, and who is a student of chess and classical music. He is a man who refuses a prospective client's fee for a job he considers unethical.

The high regard in which Chandler is generally held today is in contrast to the critical sniping that stung the author during his lifetime. In a March 1942 letter to Blanche Knopf, published in ''Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler'', he wrote, "The thing that rather gets me down is that when I write something that is tough and fast and full of mayhem and murder, I get panned for being tough and fast and full of mayhem and murder, and then when I try to tone down a bit and develop the mental and emotional side of a situation, I get panned for leaving out what I was panned for putting in the first time."

Although his work enjoys general acclaim today, Chandler has been criticized for certain aspects of his writing. ''[[The Washington Post]]'' reviewer Patrick Anderson described his plots as "rambling at best and incoherent at worst" (notoriously, even Chandler did not know who murdered the chauffeur in ''The Big Sleep''<ref>"Entertainment" in ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'', December 4, 1997</ref>) and Anderson criticized Chandler's treatment of black, female, and homosexual characters, calling him a "rather nasty man at times".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Woods |first1=Paula L. |date=March 11, 2007 |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-mar-11-bk-woods11-story.html |title=Criminal Minds |work=Los Angeles Times }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Sante |first1=Luc |title=Rising Crime |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/books/review/Sante.t.html |work=The New York Times |date=18 February 2007 }}</ref> Anderson nevertheless praised Chandler as "probably the most lyrical of the major crime writers".<ref>Butki, Scott. (August 2, 2007) [http://blogcritics.org/an-interview-with-patrick-anderson-author1/ "An Interview With Patrick Anderson, Author of The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks, and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction, Part Two,"] ''Blog Critics''. Retrieved on September 8, 2017.</ref>

Chandler's short stories and novels are evocatively written, conveying the time, place and ambiance of Los Angeles and environs in the 1930s and 1940s.<ref name="nyrb-12-06-2007" /> The places are real, if pseudonymous: Bay City is [[Santa Monica, California|Santa Monica]], Gray Lake is [[Silver Lake, Los Angeles|Silver Lake]], and Idle Valley a synthesis of wealthy [[San Fernando Valley]] communities.

[[Playback (novel)|''Playback'']] is the only one of his novels not to have been made into a movie. Arguably the most notable adaptation is [[Howard Hawks]] [[The Big Sleep (1946 film)|''The Big Sleep'']] (1946), with [[Humphrey Bogart]] as Marlowe. [[William Faulkner]] and [[Leigh Brackett]] were co-writers of the screenplay. Chandler's few screenwriting efforts and the cinematic adaptation of his novels proved stylistically and thematically influential on the American [[film noir]] genre. Notable for its revised take on Marlowe is [[Robert Altman]]'s 1973 [[neo-noir]] adaptation of [[The Long Goodbye (film)|''The Long Goodbye'']]. Later in a review for ''[[The New Yorker]]'' discussing the film adaptation of ''[[The Long Goodbye (film)|The Long Goodbye]],'' [[Pauline Kael]] describes Chandler as "locked in the conventions of pulp writing" and that he "never found a way of dealing with that malaise."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kael |first=Pauline |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Age_of_Movies_Selected_Writings_of_P/tkShTL84MrcC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=the+age+of+movies+selected+writings+of+pauline+kael&printsec=frontcover |title=The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael: A Library of America Special Publication |date=2011-10-27 |publisher=Library of America |isbn=978-1-59853-171-8 |pages=384 |language=en}}</ref>

===Legacy===
In 2014, the [[Hollywood Walk of Fame]] [[Hollywood Chamber of Commerce|selection committee]] announced that Raymond Chandler would be included the following year,<ref>{{Cite news |last=Holman |first=Jordyn |date=June 19, 2014|title=Hollywood Walk of Fame 2015 Honorees Revealed |url=https://variety.com/2014/biz/news/walk-of-fame-2015-honorees-revealed-1201223538/ |publisher=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]] |language=en-US}}</ref> but as of 2025, he has not been.<ref>{{Cite news |accessdate=October 16, 2024|title=Hollywood Star Walk - Select a Star |url=https://projects.latimes.com/hollywood/star-walk/list/ |newspaper=[[Los Angeles Times]] |language=en-US}}</ref>

The intersection of [[Hollywood Boulevard]] and [[Cahuenga Boulevard|Cahuenga Avenue]] in [[Hollywood, California]] is named Raymond Chandler Square, a tribute both to the author and to the belief that [[Phillip Marlowe]]'s office was located in [[Security Trust and Savings]] at the northeast corner of this intersection.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Zollo |first=Paul |date=October 7, 1998 |title=Chandler Square |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-oct-07-me-29977-story.html |newspaper=[[Los Angeles Times]] |language=en-US}}</ref> In 1994, the Square was designated [[Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument]] #597.<ref name=LAHCM>{{Cite web |title=Historical Cultural Monuments List |url=https://planning.lacity.org/odocument/24f6fce7-f73d-4bca-87bc-c77ed3fc5d4f/Historical_Cultural_Monuments_List.pdf |publisher=[[Government of Los Angeles|City of Los Angeles]] |access-date=October 16, 2024 |language=en-US}}</ref>

The lifetime achievement award of the [[Noir in Festival]] is named the Raymond Chandler Award.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Raymond Chandler Award 2023 |url=https://www.noirfest.com/en/chandler-award-eng/ |publisher=Noirfest |access-date=October 16, 2024 |language=en-US}}</ref> In 1991, [[Fulbright Program]] gave out a "Raymond Chandler Mystery Writing Award"<ref>{{Cite web |title=Raymond Chandler Mystery Writing Award |url=https://fulbrightscholars.org/node/1281184 |publisher=[[Fulbright Program]] |access-date=October 16, 2024 |language=en-US}}</ref> and in 1994, they gave out a "Raymond Chandler Award".<ref>{{Cite news |title=A Briton's American Independence : Fulbright Chandler award gives Denise Danks, here soaking up U.S. culture, something most mothers don't have--free time. |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-11-29-ls-2923-story.html |first=Dennis |last=Mclellan |newspaper=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date=November 29, 1994 |language=en-US}}</ref>

==Works==
{{Main|Raymond Chandler bibliography}}

=== Novels and novellas ===
Chandler left an unfinished novel when he died. This was completed by [[Robert B. Parker]] and published in 1989 as ''[[Poodle Springs]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |last=McLellan |first=Dennis |date=1989-10-19 |title=Philip Marlowe Returns to the Mean 'Springs' |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-10-19-vw-447-story.html |access-date=2024-03-04 |website=Los Angeles Times |language=en-US}}</ref>

* ''[[The Big Sleep]]'' (1939)
* ''[[Farewell, My Lovely]]'' (1940)
* ''[[The High Window]]'' (1942)
* ''[[The Lady in the Lake]]'' (1943)
* ''[[The Little Sister]]'' (1949)
* [[The Long Goodbye (novel)|''The Long Goodbye'']] (1953)
* [[Playback (novel)|''Playback'']] (1958)

==References==
{{Reflist}}

===Works cited===
* {{cite book |last1=Chandler |first1=Raymond |title=Trouble is my business : and other stories |date=1950 |publisher=Harmondsworth, Middlesex ; New York : Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-14-000741-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/troubleismybusin0000chan_j7g6/page/n259/mode/2up}}
* {{cite book |last1=MacShane |first1=Frank |title=The life of Raymond Chandler |date=1976 |publisher=New York : E. P. Dutton |isbn=978-0-525-14552-3 |url=https://archive.org/details/lifeofraymondcha00macs}}

* {{cite book |editor1-last=Pronzini |editor1-first=Bill |editor2-last=Adrian |editor2-first=Jack |title=Hard-boiled : an anthology of American crime stories |date=1995 |publisher=New York : Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-508499-3 |url=https://archive.org/details/hardboiledanthol0000unse}}

===General references===
* {{cite book |last=Chandler |first=Raymond |year=1962 |title=Raymond Chandler Speaking |editor1-first=Dorothy |editor1-last=Gardiner |editor2-first=Kathrine Sorley |editor2-last=Walker |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |isbn=978-0-520-20835-3}}
* {{cite book |last1=Chandler |first1=Raymond |title=The Raymond Chandler Omnibus |date=1969 |publisher=Hamilton |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lYGbwgEACAAJ}}, Foreword by Powell, Lawrence Clark
* {{cite book |last1=Hiney |first1=Tom |title=Raymond Chandler: A Biography |date=June 1999 |publisher=Grove Press |isbn=978-0-8021-3637-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=skYLWcp7zN8C }}

==Further reading==
{{refbegin|30em}}
* [[Matthew J. Bruccoli|Bruccoli, Matthew J.]], ed. (1973). ''Chandler Before Marlowe: Raymond Chandler's Early Prose and Poetry, 1908–1912''. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.{{ISBN?}}
* Chandler, Raymond (1976). ''The Blue Dahlia'' (screenplay). Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.{{ISBN?}}
* Chandler, Raymond (1985). ''Raymond Chandler's Unknown Thriller'' (unfilmed screenplay for ''Playback''). New York: The Mysterious Press.{{ISBN?}}
* {{cite book |last1=Chandler |first1=Raymond |title=The world of Raymond Chandler : in his own words |date=2014 |publisher=New York : Alfred A. Knopf |isbn=978-0-385-35236-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/worldofraymondch0000chan}}
* Freeman, Judith (2007). ''The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved''. N.Y.: Pantheon. {{ISBN|978-0-375-42351-2}}.
* Gross, Miriam (1977). ''The World of Raymond Chandler''. New York: A & W Publishers. {{ISBN?}}
* Hiney, Tom and MacShane, Frank, eds. (2000). ''The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909–1959''. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.{{ISBN?}}
* Howe, Alexander N. "The Detective and the Analyst: Truth, Knowledge, and Psychoanalysis in the Hard-Boiled Fiction of Raymond Chandler." ''Clues: A Journal of Detection'' 24.4 (Summer 2006): 15–29.
* Howe, Alexander N. (2008). ''It Didn't Mean Anything: A Psychoanalytic Reading of American Detective Fiction''. North Carolina: McFarland. {{ISBN|0-7864-3454-6}}.
* [[S. T. Joshi|Joshi, S. T.]] (2019). "Raymond Chandler: Mean Streets" in ''Varieties of Crime Fiction'' (Wildside Press) {{ISBN|978-1-4794-4546-2}}.
* King, Stewart (2022). "Rethinking Raymond Chandler's 'The Simple Art of Murder.' (1944/1946)" ''Clues: A Journal of Detection'' 40.2: 9–17.
* MacShane, Frank (1976). ''The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler & English Summer: A Gothic Romance''.  New York: The Ecco Press.
* MacShane, Frank, ed. (1981). ''Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler''.  New York: Columbia University Press.
* Moss, Robert (2002.) ''Raymond Chandler: A Literary Reference'', New York: Carrol & Graf.{{ISBN?}}
* Swirski, Peter (2005). "Raymond Chandler's Aesthetics of Irony" in ''From Lowbrow to Nobrow''. Montreal, London: McGill-Queen's University. {{ISBN|978-0-7735-3019-5}}.
* Ward, Elizabeth and Alain Silver (1987). ''Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles''. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press. {{ISBN|0-87951-351-9}}.
* Williams, Tom (2014).  '' A Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of Raymond Chandler ''. New York: Chicago Review Press. {{ISBN|978-1613736784}}.
{{refend}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Raymond Chandler}}
{{Wikiquote}}
* {{FadedPage|id=Chandler, Raymond|name=Raymond Chandler|author=yes}}
* {{IMDb name|id=0151452}}
* [http://www.detnovel.com/Chandler.html An essay on Chandler and Los Angeles history by William Marling] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180704130540/http://www.detnovel.com/Chandler.html |date=July 4, 2018 }}
* [http://shamustown.com Shamus Town] The Los Angeles of Philip Marlowe where Raymond Chandler lived, worked and wrote about.
* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b007jpd7 "Down the Mean Streets with Philip Marlowe"] BBC streaming audio programme on Chandler
* [http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2010/10/daylight-noir.html Photographs of Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles] by [[Catherine Corman]] at ''[[The New Yorker]]''
* [https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/jun/05/raymond-chandler-double-indemnity-cameo "Chandler's double identity: Adrian Wootton on a writer's secret cameo"]; ''[[The Guardian]]'', June 5, 2009
* [http://fanac.org/fanzines/Cheap_Truth/Cheap_Truth11-02.html? "Cheap Truth 11 – page 2"]; ''Fanac'', September 1, 2017

{{Raymond Chandler|state=expanded}}
{{Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel}}
{{Authority control}}

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