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The Life of Raymond Chandler
Book by MacShane, Frank
306 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1976
3 people are currently reading
111 people want to read
About the author
Frank MacShane
27 booksFrank MacShane, a literary biographer who specialized in applying the highest standards of criticism to popular novelists like Raymond Chandler and John O'Hara who had been ignored by other academic critics, died on Monday at a nursing home in Gloucester, Mass. He was 72.
Dr. MacShane, a former professor of writing at Columbia University, moved to Massachusetts seven years ago after the onset of Alzheimer's disease, said his son, Nicholas.
As recently as the 1960's and 70's, despite occasional efforts by Edmund Wilson, W. H. Auden and others, academic literary critics largely dismissed Chandler as a mere mystery writer, O'Hara as an undisciplined hack and Ford Madox Ford as a purveyor of glossy junk, none of them worth the time of serious students of literature.
Dr. MacShane's biography ''The Life of Raymond Chandler'' (1976), in which he identified Chandler as one of the originators of the hard-boiled detective story and compared him to Joyce, Tolstoy, Chaucer, Twain and Conrad, helped change all that.
Reviewing the book on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, Leonard Michaels said that Chandler ''emerges from the book as a very powerful and psychologically interesting figure.''
Newsweek called the book ''an exemplary biography,'' and Richard R. Lingeman, in a review in The New York Times, said it was ''valuable and fascinating.'' John Simon, on the other hand, wrote in Book Week that the biography lacked ''critical acuity.''
The case that Dr. MacShane made for Chandler is that he was not just a mystery writer but a major literary stylist, a novelist and a keen observer of American life.
The Chandler biography was followed by studies of O'Hara and James Jones. Previously, Dr. MacShane had written a biography of Ford Madox Ford.
Discussing his career in 1981, Dr. MacShane told an interviewer for Columbia Library Columns that he had concentrated on the study of writers who had ''substantial followings and many enthusiastic champions'' but who were not ''automatically accepted into the highest literary rank.''
Editors’ Picks
Dr. MacShane was also a dedicated teacher who focused his attention on nonfiction and translation. He taught at the Hotchkiss School, Vassar College, the University of California at Berkeley and Williams College before founding the graduate writing division in the School of the Arts at Columbia in 1967.
In 1973, he founded the translation center as part of the writing division; the center produced an academic journal called Translation Magazine.
From 1972 to 1973, Dr. MacShane served as dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia, but then he returned to teaching in the writing division.
He was born on Oct. 19, 1927, in Pittsburgh, the only son of a newspaperman who became publisher of The New York Journal-American, the Hearst flagship.
He graduated from Harvard in 1949, and received a master's degree from Yale in 1951 and a doctorate from Oxford in 1955.
In addition to his son, Nicholas, of Wellesley, Mass., Dr. MacShane is survived by a sister, Jean Fraser-Harris of Bristol, England, and two grandchildren.
New York Times, Nov 17, 1999
Dr. MacShane, a former professor of writing at Columbia University, moved to Massachusetts seven years ago after the onset of Alzheimer's disease, said his son, Nicholas.
As recently as the 1960's and 70's, despite occasional efforts by Edmund Wilson, W. H. Auden and others, academic literary critics largely dismissed Chandler as a mere mystery writer, O'Hara as an undisciplined hack and Ford Madox Ford as a purveyor of glossy junk, none of them worth the time of serious students of literature.
Dr. MacShane's biography ''The Life of Raymond Chandler'' (1976), in which he identified Chandler as one of the originators of the hard-boiled detective story and compared him to Joyce, Tolstoy, Chaucer, Twain and Conrad, helped change all that.
Reviewing the book on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, Leonard Michaels said that Chandler ''emerges from the book as a very powerful and psychologically interesting figure.''
Newsweek called the book ''an exemplary biography,'' and Richard R. Lingeman, in a review in The New York Times, said it was ''valuable and fascinating.'' John Simon, on the other hand, wrote in Book Week that the biography lacked ''critical acuity.''
The case that Dr. MacShane made for Chandler is that he was not just a mystery writer but a major literary stylist, a novelist and a keen observer of American life.
The Chandler biography was followed by studies of O'Hara and James Jones. Previously, Dr. MacShane had written a biography of Ford Madox Ford.
Discussing his career in 1981, Dr. MacShane told an interviewer for Columbia Library Columns that he had concentrated on the study of writers who had ''substantial followings and many enthusiastic champions'' but who were not ''automatically accepted into the highest literary rank.''
Editors’ Picks
Dr. MacShane was also a dedicated teacher who focused his attention on nonfiction and translation. He taught at the Hotchkiss School, Vassar College, the University of California at Berkeley and Williams College before founding the graduate writing division in the School of the Arts at Columbia in 1967.
In 1973, he founded the translation center as part of the writing division; the center produced an academic journal called Translation Magazine.
From 1972 to 1973, Dr. MacShane served as dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia, but then he returned to teaching in the writing division.
He was born on Oct. 19, 1927, in Pittsburgh, the only son of a newspaperman who became publisher of The New York Journal-American, the Hearst flagship.
He graduated from Harvard in 1949, and received a master's degree from Yale in 1951 and a doctorate from Oxford in 1955.
In addition to his son, Nicholas, of Wellesley, Mass., Dr. MacShane is survived by a sister, Jean Fraser-Harris of Bristol, England, and two grandchildren.
New York Times, Nov 17, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 16, 2008
The first major biography on Raymond Chandler. He was fascinating to me because he was such an uptight man. British, yet American, and in a marriage where he had to take care of his much older wife's health problems, and basically a very lonely guy. It comes through his writings - especially 'The Long Goodbye," which I think his is masterpiece.
I discovered Chandler's work as a teenager, and his work really spoke to me - and maybe because I am a life-long Los Angeles citizen. I know the places that he wrote about. He made my hometown very glamourous!
I remember taking a family trip - actually a train ride to Taos, New Mexico - and I had a very old edtion of his short stories in a paperback published in the 1950's. While I was seeing this incredible amount of beautiful nature outside my window, I was much more impressed with the book than New Mexico.
I discovered Chandler's work as a teenager, and his work really spoke to me - and maybe because I am a life-long Los Angeles citizen. I know the places that he wrote about. He made my hometown very glamourous!
I remember taking a family trip - actually a train ride to Taos, New Mexico - and I had a very old edtion of his short stories in a paperback published in the 1950's. While I was seeing this incredible amount of beautiful nature outside my window, I was much more impressed with the book than New Mexico.
June 21, 2008
The most substantial to date of Chandler's biographies, MacShane's book nonetheless is also the most forgiving of his subject.
While Hiney's biography draws so heavily on this book that it is hard to recommend it as an alternative, Hiney's biography has the advantage of being leavened with at least a trace of skepticism towards Chandler's often self-aggrandizing letters. MacShane compiled Chandler's letters in a fairly comprehensive way in his "Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler" following the publication of this biography, which takes most of its material from the letters.
MacShane was still able to do at least some research of his own, including a few all-too-briefly excerpted interviews, which is a definite advantage over Hiney, who seems to have limited his personal involvement to visiting Los Angeles. Both make the rather perilous mistake of relying almost entirely on the man's letters, which, written (at least in later life) by an emotionally unstable sociopathic alcoholic, probably reflect very little of Chandler's reality. Of course, they might have been treated as such by another writer, but MacShane takes them at surface value for the most part, his objections coming at the variances with "fact" rather than the dissimulation constantly at work.
I claim no special knowledge of the man or of his life, but to anyone who would say that these biographies are definitive, I would answer by referring them to Natasha Spender's memoir of Chandler found in "The World of Raymond Chandler," which is, by comparison, a much more complete picture of the man than is found in either MacShane or Hiney. In Spender's memoir, short though it is, we have a picture of a man by a woman who spent a great deal of time with him, yet was not too close to have developed an overly romanticized view of him. Warts and all, and Chandler had warts, most definitely. He is presented as a man, rather than as an analogue to Marlowe (though both MacShane and Hiney try to assure the reader that they are doing no such thing, their rather idealized view of the man in fact does exactly that, notwithstanding their reliance on the written record, thereby almost guaranteeing that they will absolutely analogize).
MacShane does the superior job of contextualizing Chandler's fiction, which is why I think that his is the superior biography. The fact that neither MacShane nor Hiney seem to think that that is what their biographies are doing is beside the point. They do not give us a picture of the man so much as the mind that created Marlowe, and some of what was going on around it.
Misguided, but still interesting, when taken with a rather generous pinch of salt.
While Hiney's biography draws so heavily on this book that it is hard to recommend it as an alternative, Hiney's biography has the advantage of being leavened with at least a trace of skepticism towards Chandler's often self-aggrandizing letters. MacShane compiled Chandler's letters in a fairly comprehensive way in his "Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler" following the publication of this biography, which takes most of its material from the letters.
MacShane was still able to do at least some research of his own, including a few all-too-briefly excerpted interviews, which is a definite advantage over Hiney, who seems to have limited his personal involvement to visiting Los Angeles. Both make the rather perilous mistake of relying almost entirely on the man's letters, which, written (at least in later life) by an emotionally unstable sociopathic alcoholic, probably reflect very little of Chandler's reality. Of course, they might have been treated as such by another writer, but MacShane takes them at surface value for the most part, his objections coming at the variances with "fact" rather than the dissimulation constantly at work.
I claim no special knowledge of the man or of his life, but to anyone who would say that these biographies are definitive, I would answer by referring them to Natasha Spender's memoir of Chandler found in "The World of Raymond Chandler," which is, by comparison, a much more complete picture of the man than is found in either MacShane or Hiney. In Spender's memoir, short though it is, we have a picture of a man by a woman who spent a great deal of time with him, yet was not too close to have developed an overly romanticized view of him. Warts and all, and Chandler had warts, most definitely. He is presented as a man, rather than as an analogue to Marlowe (though both MacShane and Hiney try to assure the reader that they are doing no such thing, their rather idealized view of the man in fact does exactly that, notwithstanding their reliance on the written record, thereby almost guaranteeing that they will absolutely analogize).
MacShane does the superior job of contextualizing Chandler's fiction, which is why I think that his is the superior biography. The fact that neither MacShane nor Hiney seem to think that that is what their biographies are doing is beside the point. They do not give us a picture of the man so much as the mind that created Marlowe, and some of what was going on around it.
Misguided, but still interesting, when taken with a rather generous pinch of salt.
May 7, 2020
Me ha gustado. Es interesante descubrir a la persona que hay detrás del nombre, con todos sus problemas, controversias y adicciones. Me pregunto qué habría pasado si llega a ser capaz de publicar sus textos siendo más joven. Una lectura recomendada para todos los amantes del autor, de la novela negra clásica o de la literatura en general.
August 5, 2017
I came to this after a period of watching Noir films and reading The Big Sleep. I'm not a big fan of Chandler's books or pulp detective stories in general. If I were, I'd probably find the tone of this biography more compelling.
Raymond Chandler's motivation for writing and his unyielding respect for art sustained him through a hard career in the seedy Hollywood business of pulp mystery books, but it also and ground him down into a bitter alcoholic.
As a non-native in Southern California, I empathize with Chandler's cultural perspective and feelings of alienation at home (I, too, would like to scream profanities from the middle of an antiseptic, crotchless intersection in La Jolla) but that's about all I got from reading the book. I felt the writing was drier, more hard-boiled than it had to be.
Raymond Chandler's motivation for writing and his unyielding respect for art sustained him through a hard career in the seedy Hollywood business of pulp mystery books, but it also and ground him down into a bitter alcoholic.
As a non-native in Southern California, I empathize with Chandler's cultural perspective and feelings of alienation at home (I, too, would like to scream profanities from the middle of an antiseptic, crotchless intersection in La Jolla) but that's about all I got from reading the book. I felt the writing was drier, more hard-boiled than it had to be.
December 10, 2017
"Unlike James, Joyce, or Conrad, who were all in exile from worlds they detested, Chandler was in exile from a world he thought he loved. Instead of his adored England, he lived in a place where values seemed to shift with the tides."
Seven weeks ago I reviewed here the biography of Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar). Since Macdonald has often been compared to Raymond Chandler it seems worthwhile to compare their biographies. I do not find Frank MacShane's The Life of Raymond Chandler equally brilliant work, but it is a solid, informative, and interesting book, and I recommend it without any hesitation. I also need to provide a disclaimer of sorts: I consider Ross Macdonald to be a better writer than Mr. Chandler and I hope that subjective judgment does not color my comparison between the biographies.
The author depicts Mr. Chandler's life trajectory chronologically, in a conventional manner of a biography, from the writer's birth in 1888 in Chicago, childhood in Nebraska, then his youth in England (and Ireland), brief time spent in the British civil service as an Admiralty clerk, and equally brief stint on a newspaper job. Next, Mr. Chandler returns to the U.S., settles in California, marries Cissy, and lands a well paying job as an auditor in an oil company. Continual struggle with drinking and self-doubt plague him until his death in la Jolla in 1959.
Mr. Chandler's literary career is presented in detail, from his early "cloy and saccharine" poetry, through several years of writing crime stories for pulp magazines, to his novels, beginning with The Big Sleep, peaking with The Long Good-Bye and ending in an unremarkable Playback.
Mr. MacShane has selected the motif of Chandler's lack of sense of nationality as the main conceptual axis of the biography. Much of Chandler's worldview must have been affected by the shock resulting from his encounter with the loose concept of culture in California after having grown up in a rigid class structure of England.
The other leading motif in this biography is Mr. Chandler's struggle to escape the categorization as just a mystery writer. Chandler detested the basic premise of classic, deductive detective stories and was more interested in people than in the plots. I agree with the author that Chandler managed to escape the genre-writer niche only in his masterpiece: the Time reviewer observed that The Long Good-Bye
I find it rather surprising that to me Chandler's novels feel so much more dated than Macdonald's even though their most productive years are less than 25 years apart (1939-1953 vs. 1949-1976).
And finally a personal connection: La Jolla, California, the place where Raymond Chandler spent the longest period of his life. I know all streets where he rented houses: my family and I used to live just a mile or two away, albeit some 25 years later.
Three and a quarter stars.
Seven weeks ago I reviewed here the biography of Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar). Since Macdonald has often been compared to Raymond Chandler it seems worthwhile to compare their biographies. I do not find Frank MacShane's The Life of Raymond Chandler equally brilliant work, but it is a solid, informative, and interesting book, and I recommend it without any hesitation. I also need to provide a disclaimer of sorts: I consider Ross Macdonald to be a better writer than Mr. Chandler and I hope that subjective judgment does not color my comparison between the biographies.
The author depicts Mr. Chandler's life trajectory chronologically, in a conventional manner of a biography, from the writer's birth in 1888 in Chicago, childhood in Nebraska, then his youth in England (and Ireland), brief time spent in the British civil service as an Admiralty clerk, and equally brief stint on a newspaper job. Next, Mr. Chandler returns to the U.S., settles in California, marries Cissy, and lands a well paying job as an auditor in an oil company. Continual struggle with drinking and self-doubt plague him until his death in la Jolla in 1959.
Mr. Chandler's literary career is presented in detail, from his early "cloy and saccharine" poetry, through several years of writing crime stories for pulp magazines, to his novels, beginning with The Big Sleep, peaking with The Long Good-Bye and ending in an unremarkable Playback.
Mr. MacShane has selected the motif of Chandler's lack of sense of nationality as the main conceptual axis of the biography. Much of Chandler's worldview must have been affected by the shock resulting from his encounter with the loose concept of culture in California after having grown up in a rigid class structure of England.
The other leading motif in this biography is Mr. Chandler's struggle to escape the categorization as just a mystery writer. Chandler detested the basic premise of classic, deductive detective stories and was more interested in people than in the plots. I agree with the author that Chandler managed to escape the genre-writer niche only in his masterpiece: the Time reviewer observed that The Long Good-Bye
"crossed the boundary between good mystery and good novel"Mr. MacShane contrasts the formulaic character of Hammett's Sam Spade, who "is not a person at all" with Chandler's Philip Marlowe, tough and clever yet human. Well, I tend to disagree: even in the outstanding Good-Bye Marlowe is at most half a person. It was finally Ross Macdonald who created a believable PI character in his Lew Archer.
I find it rather surprising that to me Chandler's novels feel so much more dated than Macdonald's even though their most productive years are less than 25 years apart (1939-1953 vs. 1949-1976).
And finally a personal connection: La Jolla, California, the place where Raymond Chandler spent the longest period of his life. I know all streets where he rented houses: my family and I used to live just a mile or two away, albeit some 25 years later.
Three and a quarter stars.
January 15, 2023
“On the other hand, I sure did run the similes into the ground.” Raymond Chandler, letter to Alfred Knopf 1943 p. 104
We should all be so self aware.
Chandler was an interesting (complicated?) man, a hopeless snob, and rabidly contemptuous of the film industry. The film industry provided the funds with which he purchased a house overlooking the sea in La Jolla. He liked the house very much. He loved that house although, inevitably, he found much to distress him in La Jolla. Discuss, and reconsider the self awareness displayed above. Author MacShane notes that Chandler paid $40,000 for the house and that it’d be worth “three times that today” (1978). Yeah. Easy.
So, Mr Chandler was a touchy, arrogant, shy and generous man. One hesitates to say someone was an “unhappy person.” If the goal of human existence is “happiness” then to be “unhappy” marks one as being an unsuccessful human being in an unfathomably basic way. That seems a touch strong. So, perhaps we should say Mr. Chandler struggled. A lot.
He must have been extremely bright. (Yeah, I know, “duh.”) He was a whiz in the oil company until his drinking came home to roost. He was a completely self taught writer who ended up staking a claim in American letters. He wasn’t a journalist, like Mark Twain or Jim Thompson who eventually morphed into a novelist. HE RAN AN OIL COMPANY, and ran it very well until alcohol abuse and sleeping with subordinate employees caught up with him. (MacShane describes his business letters as extremely clear and quite funny. Apparently he didn’t start ruminating about the human condition until he started writing detective novels. He certainly didn’t do it while writing for “Black Mask. They weren’t going to pay you a penny a word to wax philosophical). After he got booted out the Dabney Oil Syndicate he began to fool around writing detective stories-not as a hobby, but became he and Cissy needed the money. He got no advice or instructions on how to write anything except from his editors at Black Mask and whatever happened while he was in the film industry. Learning -and complaining about it and getting generously paid for it-on the job. He is now generally considered one of the great American writers. So, yeah, I’m gonna hazard he was a pretty bright cat.
We should all be so self aware.
Chandler was an interesting (complicated?) man, a hopeless snob, and rabidly contemptuous of the film industry. The film industry provided the funds with which he purchased a house overlooking the sea in La Jolla. He liked the house very much. He loved that house although, inevitably, he found much to distress him in La Jolla. Discuss, and reconsider the self awareness displayed above. Author MacShane notes that Chandler paid $40,000 for the house and that it’d be worth “three times that today” (1978). Yeah. Easy.
So, Mr Chandler was a touchy, arrogant, shy and generous man. One hesitates to say someone was an “unhappy person.” If the goal of human existence is “happiness” then to be “unhappy” marks one as being an unsuccessful human being in an unfathomably basic way. That seems a touch strong. So, perhaps we should say Mr. Chandler struggled. A lot.
He must have been extremely bright. (Yeah, I know, “duh.”) He was a whiz in the oil company until his drinking came home to roost. He was a completely self taught writer who ended up staking a claim in American letters. He wasn’t a journalist, like Mark Twain or Jim Thompson who eventually morphed into a novelist. HE RAN AN OIL COMPANY, and ran it very well until alcohol abuse and sleeping with subordinate employees caught up with him. (MacShane describes his business letters as extremely clear and quite funny. Apparently he didn’t start ruminating about the human condition until he started writing detective novels. He certainly didn’t do it while writing for “Black Mask. They weren’t going to pay you a penny a word to wax philosophical). After he got booted out the Dabney Oil Syndicate he began to fool around writing detective stories-not as a hobby, but became he and Cissy needed the money. He got no advice or instructions on how to write anything except from his editors at Black Mask and whatever happened while he was in the film industry. Learning -and complaining about it and getting generously paid for it-on the job. He is now generally considered one of the great American writers. So, yeah, I’m gonna hazard he was a pretty bright cat.
September 15, 2011
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), English-American writer, was the creator of Phillip Marlowe, the iconic hard-boiled Los Angeles private detective.
Chandler was born in Chicago and after his father abandoned the family when he was seven, his mother moved to England to live with her mother and sisters. He went to public school, the equivalent of our private schools, where he was trained in the classics, including Latin and Greek. Some of Marlowe's code of honor is a translation of public school attitudes. After graduation, he traveled in France and Germany, returned to England to take the civil service examination and got a job at the Admiralty in 1907. After six months he quit the job because he was bored and he objected to “being pushed around by suburban nobodies.” His snobbery was already in full bloom.
Chandler wanted to be a writer and was already publishing poetry, cloying, saccharine, and romantic. He worked for a newspaper and a magazine, mostly writing anonymous articles. In 1912, dissatisfied with his progress, he borrowed 500 pounds from his uncle and went to America. On the ship, he met the Lloyd family, who would be very helpful to him later. He worked his way to California, along the way expressing his contempt for a relative who worked in a hardware store because he worked in “trade.” That wasn't unusual, he said he had a contempt for the residents of California that never left him.
Warren Lloyd got him a job as a bookkeeper for a creamery and he joined the social life of the Lloyds, who were modestly wealthy and had aspirations to culture. Chandler brought his mother over from England to live with him.
After the United States entered World War I, he enlisted in the Canadian army in 1917, feeling more British than American (apologies to the Canadians, who are also Americans). He was concussed in an artillery attack that killed everyone else in his unit, was shipped back to England and joined the Air Corps. The war ended before they made him an officer and sent him back to France.
He returned to the United States, he took up again with the Lloyds and their friends, the Pascals, taking various jobs. The Pascals were close to Chandler, so close that Cissie Pascal divorced her husband and married him in 1920. Chandler joined an oil company and successfully managed it until 1922, when he drank himself out of a job.
Cissie Chandler played a major part in Chandler's life for the rest of her life. She was eighteen years older than he was, very attractive and young-seeming, and was known to do her housework in the nude. Chandler kept a nude photograph of her in his wallet that was taken when 'she was a girl.' The book leaves her at that and she remains no more than a pencil sketch, an outline, supportive of Chandler without, it seems, any life or personality outside of the marriage. Chandler was very protective of her and defensive as she got progressively sicker over time.
With a stipend of $100 a month from the Lloyds, Chandler turned to writing again. Working hard at his craft and learning from Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, Hemingway and others, he began submitting to 'Black Mask,' the premier detective story pulp magazine. He wrote quality work but it was a poor living. He was making about 10% of what he made as an oil executive. In 1938, he began writing “The Big Sleep.”
From there, his career began a steady rise and he acquired money (if not wealth) and critical acclaim, particularly in England. Marlowe, his detective, made it into movies, radio and later television. Chandler wrote screenplays for the movies, unhappily but with some success, and worked with some of the best in the business, including Alfred Hitchcock on “Strangers on a Train”, and Billy Wilder on “Double Indemnity.” He wasn't comfortable with collaborative work. At one point, he stalked off the studio lot because Wilder asked him to close a window. Imagine the insult!
Chandler's drinking became epic following the death of his wife in 1954, he was in and out of hospitals in the US and England for the rest of his life. His grief didn't prevent him from taking full advantage of his celebrity status among the young women of both countries. He died in 1959.
MacShane tries to paint Raymond Chandler as unhappy, lonely, and shy, a romantic and charming in the right circumstances. I don't think he succeeds, there's too much bad behavior on his part. There were positive elements in his character: he was devoted to his wife, except when he was cheating on her. He was very patient with new writers and took the time to visit the workers who shipped his books. Even those traits are suspect: one must be tolerant of one's inferiors, mustn't one? He was contemptuous of detective stories and most 'serious' fiction, and the literati who critiqued his books. He was easily insulted and overreacted to insults.
A doctor who worked with alcoholics said the only thing alcoholics had in common was that they were childish, sensitive and grandiose. That covers a lot of Chandler's behavior. The writer moved frequently, often more than once a year. There was always something wrong with where he was living. It's more likely that the problem was with Chandler, that he was uncomfortable wherever he was and projected the discomfort onto his surroundings.
Chandler's relationships with women were a major theme in his life. It's interesting (and not mentioned in the book) that in his novels, most of the major murders are committed by women.
It's also interesting that one of the premier practitioners of detective fiction thought so little of the genre. Does a writer have to approve of what he creates to produce good work?
In my opinion, MacShane cuts Chandler too much slack and seems to share his distaste for detective fiction and approval of 'serious' novels. I didn't find much in this book that made me appreciate or understand Chandler's work more. Read Chandler's writings and skip this.
Chandler was born in Chicago and after his father abandoned the family when he was seven, his mother moved to England to live with her mother and sisters. He went to public school, the equivalent of our private schools, where he was trained in the classics, including Latin and Greek. Some of Marlowe's code of honor is a translation of public school attitudes. After graduation, he traveled in France and Germany, returned to England to take the civil service examination and got a job at the Admiralty in 1907. After six months he quit the job because he was bored and he objected to “being pushed around by suburban nobodies.” His snobbery was already in full bloom.
Chandler wanted to be a writer and was already publishing poetry, cloying, saccharine, and romantic. He worked for a newspaper and a magazine, mostly writing anonymous articles. In 1912, dissatisfied with his progress, he borrowed 500 pounds from his uncle and went to America. On the ship, he met the Lloyd family, who would be very helpful to him later. He worked his way to California, along the way expressing his contempt for a relative who worked in a hardware store because he worked in “trade.” That wasn't unusual, he said he had a contempt for the residents of California that never left him.
Warren Lloyd got him a job as a bookkeeper for a creamery and he joined the social life of the Lloyds, who were modestly wealthy and had aspirations to culture. Chandler brought his mother over from England to live with him.
After the United States entered World War I, he enlisted in the Canadian army in 1917, feeling more British than American (apologies to the Canadians, who are also Americans). He was concussed in an artillery attack that killed everyone else in his unit, was shipped back to England and joined the Air Corps. The war ended before they made him an officer and sent him back to France.
He returned to the United States, he took up again with the Lloyds and their friends, the Pascals, taking various jobs. The Pascals were close to Chandler, so close that Cissie Pascal divorced her husband and married him in 1920. Chandler joined an oil company and successfully managed it until 1922, when he drank himself out of a job.
Cissie Chandler played a major part in Chandler's life for the rest of her life. She was eighteen years older than he was, very attractive and young-seeming, and was known to do her housework in the nude. Chandler kept a nude photograph of her in his wallet that was taken when 'she was a girl.' The book leaves her at that and she remains no more than a pencil sketch, an outline, supportive of Chandler without, it seems, any life or personality outside of the marriage. Chandler was very protective of her and defensive as she got progressively sicker over time.
With a stipend of $100 a month from the Lloyds, Chandler turned to writing again. Working hard at his craft and learning from Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, Hemingway and others, he began submitting to 'Black Mask,' the premier detective story pulp magazine. He wrote quality work but it was a poor living. He was making about 10% of what he made as an oil executive. In 1938, he began writing “The Big Sleep.”
From there, his career began a steady rise and he acquired money (if not wealth) and critical acclaim, particularly in England. Marlowe, his detective, made it into movies, radio and later television. Chandler wrote screenplays for the movies, unhappily but with some success, and worked with some of the best in the business, including Alfred Hitchcock on “Strangers on a Train”, and Billy Wilder on “Double Indemnity.” He wasn't comfortable with collaborative work. At one point, he stalked off the studio lot because Wilder asked him to close a window. Imagine the insult!
Chandler's drinking became epic following the death of his wife in 1954, he was in and out of hospitals in the US and England for the rest of his life. His grief didn't prevent him from taking full advantage of his celebrity status among the young women of both countries. He died in 1959.
MacShane tries to paint Raymond Chandler as unhappy, lonely, and shy, a romantic and charming in the right circumstances. I don't think he succeeds, there's too much bad behavior on his part. There were positive elements in his character: he was devoted to his wife, except when he was cheating on her. He was very patient with new writers and took the time to visit the workers who shipped his books. Even those traits are suspect: one must be tolerant of one's inferiors, mustn't one? He was contemptuous of detective stories and most 'serious' fiction, and the literati who critiqued his books. He was easily insulted and overreacted to insults.
A doctor who worked with alcoholics said the only thing alcoholics had in common was that they were childish, sensitive and grandiose. That covers a lot of Chandler's behavior. The writer moved frequently, often more than once a year. There was always something wrong with where he was living. It's more likely that the problem was with Chandler, that he was uncomfortable wherever he was and projected the discomfort onto his surroundings.
Chandler's relationships with women were a major theme in his life. It's interesting (and not mentioned in the book) that in his novels, most of the major murders are committed by women.
It's also interesting that one of the premier practitioners of detective fiction thought so little of the genre. Does a writer have to approve of what he creates to produce good work?
In my opinion, MacShane cuts Chandler too much slack and seems to share his distaste for detective fiction and approval of 'serious' novels. I didn't find much in this book that made me appreciate or understand Chandler's work more. Read Chandler's writings and skip this.
May 26, 2024
I have been a bit befuddled by Chandler, finding his novels underwhelming. Reading his biography I am still befuddled by him; the biography hits home that he a literary genius and the best thing that ever happened to the mystery genre, making me feel like I should respect his work more but I still can't make the leap. But the biography brings to life a somewhat interesting person who created a larger-than-life detective, but for much of his life he was a miserable bastard and really bottomed out when his wife died, becoming infatuated with a string of women and eventually getting involved with a divorced Australian woman and paying her bills while he couldn't stand her. I suppose it is possible to be a literary genius with arch, penetrating takes on American life and also a dimwit in one's personal life, but it also makes me think if maybe his literary reputation is a bit overblown.
January 28, 2025
Undoubtedly the classic authorised biography which later biographies have added very little.
September 24, 2025
Interesing biography of Raymond Chandler.
April 5, 2018
Imprescindible para cualquier fan de Chandler junto a las cartas de "A mis mejores amigos nunca los he visto". Me ha gustado especialmente toda la primera parte de su vida, llena de detalles que desconocía. Muy buena, aunque breve y algo superficial, la conclusión final de Lorenzo Silva.
January 9, 2009
More like "The Work Of Raymond Chandler." McShane, a university lit professor, is more at home discussing Chandler's fiction than Chandler's life.
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