Today would have been the 121st birthday of Raymond Thornton Chandler (if modern technology allowed for longer human lifespans, as may soon be the case). Fortunately, Chandler's work and legacy lives on well after his death in 1959.
Five of Chandler's classic novels featuring private eye Philip Marlowe were reissued in April of this year by Hamish Hamilton in hardcover, with forwards by contemporary crime fiction authors: The High Window with an intro by Mark Billingham; The Long Goodbye introduced by Jeffery Deaver; Farewell, My Lovely, intro by Colin Dexter; The Lady in the Lake, intro by Jonathan Kellerman; The Little Sister with an intro by Val McDermid, and The Big Sleep, introduced by Ian Rankin.
You can celebrate Chandler's birthday by reading these or any one of the tributes that have been penned through the years, such as 2007's The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman or Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe - Centennial Celebration, a collection of new Philip Marlowe storied crafted by several modern authors, issued on the 100th anniversary of Chandler's birth in 1988. There's also a new hardcover biography coming out in September by John Anderson, to be published by Penguin.
There have been many film, radio and TV adaptations of Chandler work, most recently in TV series format with Powers Booth as Marlowe on HBO in 1983 and 1986, and on BBC Radio/Audiobooks with Ed Bishop in the title role beginning in 1999 (the latest of which was released after Bishop's death in June of this year).
If you happen to be in California, you can check out one of the Raymond Chandler tours mentioned in Janet Rudolph's blog recently, if not today, then later this year: October 17th for the Raymond Chandler's Bay City tour or October 24th for Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles.
You might prefer to remember Chandler in his own words, as several works have done: Raymond Chandler Speaking (University of California Press, 1997); The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (HarperPerennial reprint edition 2007); or Philip Marlow's Guide to Life, edited by Marty Asher (Knopf 2005). A couple of tidbits from the first book above:
"At school I displayed no marked literary ability. My first poem was composed at the age of nineteen, on a Sunday, in the bathroom, and was published in Chambers' Journal. I am fortunate in not possessing a copy. I had, to be frank, the qualifications to become a pretty good second-rate poet, but that means nothing because I have the mind to become a pretty second-rate anything and without much effort."
"When I was eighteen years old, my mother and my rich but dominating Irish uncle decided that I should take a Civil Service examination. . .I wanted to be a writer, but I knew my Irish uncle would not stand for that, so I thought perhaps that the easy hours in the Civil Service might let me do that on the side. I passed third in a group of about six hundred. I went to the Admiralty, but I found the atmosphere to stultifying that after six months I resigned. This was a bombshell; perhaps no one had ever done it before. My Irish uncle was livid with rage. So I holed up in Bloomsbury, lived on next to nothing, and wrote for a highbrow weekly review and also for the Westminster Gazette, perhaps the best evening newspaper the world ever saw. But at the best I made only a very bare living."
For a good summary and bibliography of Chandler and his work, check out the Thrilling Detective site.
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