Favorite Dead People
I have been reading "Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler," edited by Frank MacShane, and I feel compelled to write something about the man here. First of all, what a hell it must be to have one's letters published posthumously. There's one here where he corresponds politely with James M. Cain, author of works like "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "Double Indemnity," and another one later to someone else where he states that everything that Cain writes "smells like a billy goat."
It is often, if not always impolitic, to state one's full and honest opinion about someone to that that person's face; it also doesn't serve any useful purpose. Stating one's opinion to a third party, though, often does and as long as the two receiving parties don't cross, nobody gets hurt. We all do this and it is part of life. Most of us are just never exposed. Thank god e-mails are ephemeral where letters get stashed in shoe boxes.
This is mildly interesting but not what I find very compelling. Chandler's view on writing and writers are honest, insightful, and sharp as a razor. And like Harlan Ellison, his voice comes through in his writing as if he were speaking directly to you, with no filters, fuzzy edges, or ambiguities obscuring the intended message or sentiment. He was clearly a very intelligent man, something of a curmudgeon, and through his letters comes off as a supremely honest thinker, the kind of man I truly respect.
On encouraging new writers: "...any writer who cannot teach himself cannot be taught by others, and apart from the extension courses of reputable universities, I take a very dim view of writing instruction in general, above all the sort that is advertised in the so-called writers' magazines. They will teach you nothing that you cannot find out by studying and analyzing the published work of other writers. Analyze and imitate; no other school is necessary. I admit that criticism from others is helpful and sometimes even necessary, but when you have to pay for it, it is usually suspect."
On John Dickson Carr's apparent sentiment of "hating the actual writing": "This explains to me in a flash why I can't read the man, because a writer who hates the actual writing is as impossible as a lawyer who hates the law, or a doctor who hates medicine. Plotting may be a bore even if you are good at it. At least it is something that has to be done so that you can get on with the real business. But a writer who hates the actual writing, who gets no joy out of the creation of magic by words, to me is simply not a writer at all. The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point. How can you hate the actual writing? You might as well say that a man likes to chop wood or clean house and hates the sunshine or the night breeze or the nodding of flowers or the dew on the grass or the songs of birds. How can you hate the magic which makes of a paragraph or a sentence or a line of dialogue or a description something in the nature of a new creation? Well, apparently you can and be successful in spite of it. But it certainly depresses me to feel that this is possible."
On reviewers: "Let's face it. One of the penalties of any kind of success is to have the jackals snapping at your heels. They don't hate you because you're bad. They say you're bad because they want to hate you."
On Ernest Hemingway and Cyril Connolly: "The kind of thing Hemingway writes cannot be written by an emotional corpse. The kind of thing Connolly writes can and is. It has its points. Some of it is very good, but you don't have to be alive to write it."
After coming to the conclusion that he has to start on a book "all over again": "That's the hell of being the kind of writer who cannot plan anything, but has to make it up as he goes along and then try to make sense out of it. If you gave me the best plot in the world all worked out I could not write it. It would be dead for me."
These selections should give you an idea of his voice, as well as parts of his philosophy. There is much more in the book (and in "Raymond Chandler Speaking") and I will be reading them over and over and over. I'll leave off with the end of a letter where Chandler goes off, tongue firmly in cheek, in response to something that appeared in a magazine:
"I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes. I get my material in various ways, but my favorite procedure...consists of going through the desks of other writers after hours. I am thirty-eight years old and have been for the last twenty years. I do not regard myself as a dead shot, but I am a pretty dangerous man with a wet towel. But all in all I think my favorite weapon is a twenty dollar bill. In my spare time I collect elephants."
And the letter closes. What a voice.
It is often, if not always impolitic, to state one's full and honest opinion about someone to that that person's face; it also doesn't serve any useful purpose. Stating one's opinion to a third party, though, often does and as long as the two receiving parties don't cross, nobody gets hurt. We all do this and it is part of life. Most of us are just never exposed. Thank god e-mails are ephemeral where letters get stashed in shoe boxes.
This is mildly interesting but not what I find very compelling. Chandler's view on writing and writers are honest, insightful, and sharp as a razor. And like Harlan Ellison, his voice comes through in his writing as if he were speaking directly to you, with no filters, fuzzy edges, or ambiguities obscuring the intended message or sentiment. He was clearly a very intelligent man, something of a curmudgeon, and through his letters comes off as a supremely honest thinker, the kind of man I truly respect.
On encouraging new writers: "...any writer who cannot teach himself cannot be taught by others, and apart from the extension courses of reputable universities, I take a very dim view of writing instruction in general, above all the sort that is advertised in the so-called writers' magazines. They will teach you nothing that you cannot find out by studying and analyzing the published work of other writers. Analyze and imitate; no other school is necessary. I admit that criticism from others is helpful and sometimes even necessary, but when you have to pay for it, it is usually suspect."
On John Dickson Carr's apparent sentiment of "hating the actual writing": "This explains to me in a flash why I can't read the man, because a writer who hates the actual writing is as impossible as a lawyer who hates the law, or a doctor who hates medicine. Plotting may be a bore even if you are good at it. At least it is something that has to be done so that you can get on with the real business. But a writer who hates the actual writing, who gets no joy out of the creation of magic by words, to me is simply not a writer at all. The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point. How can you hate the actual writing? You might as well say that a man likes to chop wood or clean house and hates the sunshine or the night breeze or the nodding of flowers or the dew on the grass or the songs of birds. How can you hate the magic which makes of a paragraph or a sentence or a line of dialogue or a description something in the nature of a new creation? Well, apparently you can and be successful in spite of it. But it certainly depresses me to feel that this is possible."
On reviewers: "Let's face it. One of the penalties of any kind of success is to have the jackals snapping at your heels. They don't hate you because you're bad. They say you're bad because they want to hate you."
On Ernest Hemingway and Cyril Connolly: "The kind of thing Hemingway writes cannot be written by an emotional corpse. The kind of thing Connolly writes can and is. It has its points. Some of it is very good, but you don't have to be alive to write it."
After coming to the conclusion that he has to start on a book "all over again": "That's the hell of being the kind of writer who cannot plan anything, but has to make it up as he goes along and then try to make sense out of it. If you gave me the best plot in the world all worked out I could not write it. It would be dead for me."
These selections should give you an idea of his voice, as well as parts of his philosophy. There is much more in the book (and in "Raymond Chandler Speaking") and I will be reading them over and over and over. I'll leave off with the end of a letter where Chandler goes off, tongue firmly in cheek, in response to something that appeared in a magazine:
"I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes. I get my material in various ways, but my favorite procedure...consists of going through the desks of other writers after hours. I am thirty-eight years old and have been for the last twenty years. I do not regard myself as a dead shot, but I am a pretty dangerous man with a wet towel. But all in all I think my favorite weapon is a twenty dollar bill. In my spare time I collect elephants."
And the letter closes. What a voice.
posted by Rick Ollerman at 11:07 AM
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