Tag Archives: Chandler

The HW Fisher Best First Biography Prize

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I’m really pleased to say that A Mysterious Something In The Light has been short listed for the HW Fisher Best First Biography Prize. It’s run by The Biographer’s Club and sponsored by HW Fisher. The short listed titles are:

 

Ben Jonson: A Life by Ian Donaldson (OUP)

Amateurs in Eden by Joanna Hodgkin (Virago)

A Fine Brother: The Life of Captain Flora Sandes by Louise Miller (Alma Books)

Winter King by Thomas Penn (Penguin)

Muckraker: The Scandalous Life and Times of W.T. Stead by W. Sydney Robinson (Robson Press)

A Mysterious Something in the Light: Raymond Chandler by Tom Williams (Aurum)

 

More information can be found here: The HW Fisher Best First Biography Prize.

Chandler Locations: Some Photos

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The House from Double IndemnityCahuenga Square, HollywoodThe Cahuenga BuildingIMG_0034A Door Like Philip Marlowe'sThe sign of The Bank of Italy building
The Bank of Italy Building 2The Bank of Italy BuildingChandler's Pension, Paris 3Chandler's Pension, Paris 2Chandler's Pension, Paris 1

Chandler Stuff, a set on Flickr.

For the last couple of years I’ve been trying to collect some shots of Chandler locations in Los Angeles, London and Paris. I am not the best photographer so you will have to bear with me.

Some are more famous than others – Ray’s office at the Bank of Italy building is less well known that the Deitrichson house from Double Indemnity – but I hope you find them interesting all the same. I don’t think anyone lese has taken a picture of Ray’s pension in Paris where he lived in 1905.

Via Flickr:
These are the pictures related to my research in Raymond Chandler

The Simple Art Of Murder

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Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler

The Cover From The Second Edition of The Simple Art of Murder, a collection of Chandler stories published by Houghton Mufflin in 1950 and prefaced by the essay.

Raymond Chandler’s essay The Simple Art of Murder is pretty much  required reading for any Chandler fan and any aspiring crime writer. It is one of those essays that has earned a place in literary history for its title as much as its thesis. Appearing in The Atlantic Monthly in December 1944, it’s a serious examination of the genre and it reveals plenty about Ray and about how he approached writing so to my mind it is interesting in both a biographical sense and a literary one. Continue reading →

Oscar Night in Hollywood by Raymond Chandler

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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.

 

LA Noire and The Big Sleep

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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

Continue reading →

LA Noire and Raymond Chandler (Part 1)

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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:

Continue reading →

Natasha Spender, 18th April 1919 -21st October 2010

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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.