Library of America Tour: Raymond Chandler

[00:00:01]Hello, my friends. Hello, and welcome once again to Stately Von Manor, where Roger and I have returned.

[00:00:09]Where today we're going to continue, Roger, with my Library of America book tour. I'm going through my Library of America books one author at a time or one uh anthology at a time, depending on what I'm talking about. And it's been a month since I did the first one.

[00:00:29]We've got to get through these books quicker than that. We'll We'll get through these books quicker than that.

[00:00:33]>> [snorts] >> But I think it was about a month ago when I talked about Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of my very favorite authors.

[00:00:39]Uh and the two fantastic volumes that are available from Library of America.

[00:00:43]And we're going to talk about two other fantastic volumes and another one of my very favorite authors, and that would be Raymond Chandler. Raymond Chandler.

[00:00:54]Sorry, Roger. Raymond Chandler.

[00:00:57]One of the greatest crime writers of all time.

[00:01:03]Creator of the private detective Philip Marlowe.

[00:01:08]And a series of detective novels that have been some of the most influential detective novels ever written, as well as, you know, some of the greatest detective novels ever written. So, Chandler was fantastic. So, let's talk about Raymond Chandler. Let's talk about his place in the Library of America and what is included in these two fantastic volumes.

[00:01:34]So, Raymond Chandler rose to prominence in Black Mask magazine.

[00:01:41]The very famous pulp magazine that published crime stories and detective stories.

[00:01:48]Originally, Black Mask would publish all kinds of stuff, but eventually it started to specialize in crime stories and detective stories.

[00:01:57]And the two biggest stars of that magazine were Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. And there were others.

[00:02:04]Earl Stanley Gardner wrote, I believe, in Black Mask.

[00:02:08]I'm certain he did.

[00:02:10]And, you know, a ton of other great writers.

[00:02:14]But two of the most famous are Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

[00:02:19]And Raymond Chandler was just absolutely fantastic. Uh what an amazing talent this guy had.

[00:02:26]His books were some of the greatest detective novels of all time, and he wrote some great crime stories for Black Mask.

[00:02:38]And tremendously influential. It's It's hard to even think what detective novels would have been if it hadn't been for Raymond Chandler and his character Philip Marlowe.

[00:02:50]Uh that creation and these novels were just so in- influential that it pretty much colors our view of what a private detective in literature is.

[00:03:07]And they were just great books.

[00:03:11]Raymond Chandler started off writing short stories in Black Mask.

[00:03:15]He created a character called Mallory.

[00:03:19]Eventually, this character became Philip Marlowe.

[00:03:25]And Chandler wrote a series of just great books, like I said. Not a lot of them. He wasn't a terribly prolific author.

[00:03:35]But the books that he did write were of very high quality.

[00:03:40]And he also did screenplays. He worked in Hollywood for a bit.

[00:03:45]He had, you know, a lot of the usual issues. He was an alcoholic.

[00:03:49]Drank too much.

[00:03:51]You know, stuff like that. But, he was an excellent writer. Just so good. And just such a pleasure to read.

[00:03:59]I discovered Raymond Chandler when I was in my 20s. I knew of him already because I had seen The Big Sleep on television with with uh Humphrey Bogart, my favorite actor of all time.

[00:04:11]And I discovered his stories and novels in paperback books.

[00:04:17]Eventually, I found the Library of America set. And this is the set I held on to all of that time.

[00:04:26]Library of America, you know, nowadays, it's common for Library of America to publish what we think of as genre fiction. You know, they publish science fiction. They've even published horror.

[00:04:37]They They publish different things. But, when Library of America started, it wasn't that way.

[00:04:44]But, somebody at Library of America really must have liked crime fiction because crime fiction was some of the earliest genre stuff that they would publish.

[00:04:54]They published Dashiell Hammett, and they published Raymond Chandler.

[00:04:57]Eventually, they published a bunch of other crime writers.

[00:05:01]Uh had uh created some anthologies of different crime writing. So, you know, Library of America, they liked crime. Somebody there did anyway.

[00:05:14]And certainly, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler both deserve to be in the Library of America. Two tremendously influential writers.

[00:05:24]Chandler, possibly even more than Dashiell Hammett as far as just influence, as far as Chandler's style, certainly.

[00:05:36]Philip Marlowe's Philip Marlowe's voice in these books, it kind of became what we think of as, you know, the style of a private detective novel.

[00:05:50]And Library of America, you know, they publish these two fantastic volumes. And I was just so happy to get them. I think these two volumes uh have to be some some of the favorites, you know, some of the best-loved volumes that Library of America has published.

[00:06:09]But what's in them? Okay, so these there's two volumes.

[00:06:13]And this first volume has is stories and early novels. And this we find pulp stories.

[00:06:20]And then the novel The Big Sleep, then Farewell, My Lovely, and The High Window. So the pulp stories, this is interesting. So these are pulp stories that were published in different pulp magazines. Not just Black Mask, but I think Dime Detective and maybe a couple others.

[00:06:36]And uh there's a there's a lot of pulp stories in here. At least they take up a lot of space.

[00:06:45]Uh let's see. How how far do they go? So there's 585 pages of pulp stories in here.

[00:06:53]But even with all of the space devoted to the short stories in this volume, there are still short stories that are not included.

[00:07:01]I believe, if I'm remembering correctly, there are eight short stories that were not included in this volume.

[00:07:09]The reason for that is that those stories were used as the basis for some of these novels.

[00:07:16]He he engaged in a practice that in the pulps was called cannibalizing, which is where you would take some of your short stories and use elements from those short stories to make a novel.

[00:07:33]And that's what Raymond Chandler did. He took those stories, originally published in the pulp magazines, and turned them into novels, basically.

[00:07:42]And Chandler was very adamant during his lifetime that those stories were would not be reprinted. You know, all the stories in this volume, he let those be reprinted, but those those ones that he used as the basis for novels, he didn't want those reprinted at all.

[00:08:00]And he was quite serious about that.

[00:08:03]But of course, once he passed away, you know, they have since been reprinted.

[00:08:07]But Library of America honored his wish for those not to be reprinted. So they print pretty much, I believe, everything else except those particular stories.

[00:08:18]Now, if you want to read those stories, like I said, they have been reprinted. I think there's an Everyman's Library volume that's pretty large. It's a very large volume that prints everything, like all of his short stories. So that is available if you're really really interested.

[00:08:34]This is a great selection of pulp stories, though.

[00:08:38]Included in this in those stories are the stories about Marlowe, the detective that eventually becomes Marlowe. And I believe that when those stories were originally reprinted in books, that Raymond Chandler went back and changed some stuff. He altered some things, and I believe one of the things he altered, if I'm remembering right, is he he changed the name from Marlowe to Marlowe.

[00:09:03]Another thing he did, like I said, is he did change some other things, and sometimes that led to inconsistencies.

[00:09:10]So what Library of America did when it reprinted those pulp stories, they would just went with the original magazine versions. So what you find in this volume are the original magazine magazine versions of all those stories.

[00:09:23]Uh which is great, and there are some fantastic stories.

[00:09:28]And they really have more of a pulp feel than the novels do.

[00:09:33]Although the novels, of course, are fantastic.

[00:09:36]Uh especially in this volume, my favorite being the first one, The Big Sleep, which is kind of incomprehensible. I think it was even kind of incomprehensible to Raymond Chandler a little bit.

[00:09:47]But still, great book. And what an ending. Great ending to that one.

[00:09:51]Uh Big Sleep, fantastic.

[00:09:56]Fantastic novel. One of my favorite novels of all.

[00:09:59]And that's followed in this volume by Farewell, My Lovely, and then The High Window. The High Window is really good.

[00:10:05]It's probably read less often than the first two. But The High Window is an excellent novel as well.

[00:10:11]So, everything in this particular volume from Library of America is just dynamite. This is great stuff.

[00:10:18]But then, we got a second volume, which completes the Philip Marlowe novels. So, in this one, we have The Lady in the Lake, another great novel.

[00:10:28]Then The Little Sister, which was, you know, really good as well.

[00:10:32]Then we have The Long Goodbye, which is just fantastic. That is probably my personal favorite as far as the Philip Marlowe novels are concerned. Not everybody feels that way. I'm not sure everybody really loves The Long Goodbye as much as some of the other books, but uh I think The Long Goodbye is just exceptional.

[00:10:54]Uh so, that is my personal favorite uh from this particular volume. That is followed by a novel called Playback, which is the only Philip novel Philip Marlowe novel I think just wasn't that good.

[00:11:09]Um and if I'm remembering the story right, Playback was originally supposed to be a screenplay for a film that was never made. And then, Chandler turned it into a Philip Marlowe novel. I think that's how it went.

[00:11:26]But as it goes, uh it just doesn't hold up with the other uh Philip Marlowe novels. And it was the last Philip Marlowe novel, which is It's kind of unfortunate when it went out with that, but the other novels are so great, maybe it doesn't matter. But that's not all that's in here. We also have Double Indemnity, which is uh based on a James Cain novel.

[00:11:53]And this is the screenplay for one of the greatest noir films of all time. Double Indemnity is just a fantastic film.

[00:12:04]And uh we get the whole screenplay in the back here.

[00:12:12]Yeah, and it's It says here, "Screenplay by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler from the novel by James M. Cain." And I have to say, it's re- You know, reading screenplays isn't always the best, but reading this one is actually really good. You know, Raymond Chandler had that snappy dialogue, which he became famous. And uh he used that to great effect in Double Indemnity the screenplay. Uh it's just it's just fantastic. Certainly, if you've never seen the movie, you should see the movie. Raymond Chandler worked on some other stuff uh in Hollywood, but I don't remember what any of that stuff is. I I saw at least one other film that he wrote or worked on the screenplay for, and man, off the top of my head, I can't remember what it was called.

[00:12:56]It's been like 30 or 40 years since I've seen it.

[00:13:00]But he did work on some other stuff, but that's the only screenplay you find in this collection. But then we have selected essays at the end.

[00:13:10]And in the essays, he wrote a few. He wrote The Simple Art of Murder, which is a pretty famous essay.

[00:13:16]Um and then he wrote Writers in Hollywood, 12 notes on the mystery story, notes, very brief, please, on English and American style, and the introduction to the book The Simple Art of Murder, which was a short story collection, which had some of the stories you'll find in this particular volume.

[00:13:40]Um so, yeah, you get some other stuff in here, and you also get, at the very, very end, selected letters. So, we have not a ton of letters in here, but we get some letters.

[00:13:55]Like the first one is to Dale Warren, uh written January 7th, 1945. And so, it's just a little selection of letters at the back, but it's pretty cool to have that. So, this has some extra bonus material, Roger, which is really cool.

[00:14:10]And if you're interested in this writer, and why wouldn't you be? Raymond Chandler is just fantastic. And if you're interested in crime writing, it's essential reading. I mean, essential.

[00:14:23]You can't really do better, in my mind, than getting these, because you get all the novels, most of the short stories, and some extra stuff. Uh the it's just a tremendous set. Raymond Chandler, of course, is available in a bunch of different ways. Read him any way you can read him, of course, cuz he's great. But this particular set is just wonderful.

[00:14:45]And I've had this since it was published, which was what? In the '90s?

[00:14:50]I can't remember when this set was originally published.

[00:14:53]'95, it looks like. Published in '95.

[00:14:56]And I've had it since then. And I tell you, these books hold up, Library of America books.

[00:15:02]They hold up. So, there you go. Library of America book tour. We'll do another one of these soon. I will catch you next time.