Rather obsessively I keep an eye out for Chandler related stuff on the web and I came across his Atlantic article, Oscar Night in Hollywood. It was published in the March 1948 edition of the magazine and was one of several of Ray’s contributions. Do have a read. It may have been written in a fit of pique – you can tell early on – but that doesn’t make it any less interesting or, indeed, accurate.
This is just a quick post. As I mentioned here I’ve spent the weekend playing LA Noire which is probably the closest thing I am going to get to being Philip Marlowe in this life time. The guys at Rockstar Games have said that there are a few Chandler references in the game and I will post them here when I find them. Here, then, is the first I’ve spotted:
Location of Geiger's Book Store in LA Noire
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Much to my girlfriend’s frustration, I love to play video games. Happy chance then that Rockstar Games and Team Bondi are about to release LA Noire, a game set in 1940s Los Angeles where you get to play an LAPD cop solving crimes throughout the city. Watch the trailer below, it’s pretty awesome:
Occasionally I write for a blog run by The Bookseller called Futurebook and I thought I’d copy my latest post for them here as well. You can see the original here if you want or feel free to comment below.
A few weeks ago Annette Green blogged about how the agency model ran the risk of undermining the legitimate digital publishing market because it could result in ebooks costing more than the physical edition and she used several examples of ebooks costing more than physical books (Stephen Fry’s memoir for one) to make her point. On the surface of it this seems like a clear cut case against the agency model however the recent launch of the Beatles albums on iTunes may show that the model still has something to offer. Continue reading
Sadly, Natasha Spender passed away yesterday. She was a great friend of Ray’s and was a charming woman, full of great stories about him and about the many other interesting people she knew. Here is John Sutherland’s obituary of her. Her essay on Ray, His Own Long Goodbye, collected in The World Of Raymond Chandler, should be compulsory reading for Chandler fans.
The funny thing about records is that the authors of them and their subjects are rarely consistent. I’ve been researching Julian Pascal, Cissy’s first husband, and it’s proven to be complicated stuff. For one thing, Pascal changed his name from Goodridge Bowen to Julian Pascal at some point and he sometimes uses his original surname coupled with his new one, though rarely. Continue reading
James Joyce
Today is the 16th of June, Bloomsday, the day that James Joyce chose to set his great novel Ulysses and also the day that he met his wife, Nora Barnacle, for the first time. It’s worth celebrating if you’re a Joycian. Continue reading
The trouble with research is that it can often take you down blind alleys. Take yesterday, for example, I spent most of the morning reading Civil War records because I thought that Eugene R. Hurlburt – Cissy’s father – had fought for the Yankees in the Civil War. Continue reading
When I’m not working on Chandler I work in publishing and I’ve just written this blog post on google and the ebook for www.futurebook.net which I though I’d share.
‘Pearls Are A Nuisance’ is one of Chandler’s more unusual stories. It appeared in the Dime Detective in 1939 and is narrated by a heavy drinking, 6ft something Anglicized American by the name of Walter Gage who talks ‘the way Jane Austen writes’ despite his size and muscles (he played football in college we are told by his adoring girlfriend, Ellen). Continue reading
