The Writer's Almanac from American Public Media: "It's the birthday of crime novelist Raymond Chandler (books by this author), born in Chicago, Illinois (1888). He's known for his novels about the private detective Philip Marlowe such as The Big Sleep (1939) and The Long Goodbye (1954). He started out writing second-rate poetry and essays, but couldn't get much published, so he gave up and took a bookkeeping class, got a job at a bank, and went on to become a wealthy oil company executive.
He lost his job when the stock market crashed in 1929. So at the age of 45 he began writing for pulp fiction magazines, which paid about a penny a word.
Chandler was one of the first detective novelists to become known for the quality of his prose, and he became famous for his metaphors. In one novel he wrote, 'She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looked by moonlight.' In another he wrote, 'She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.'"
6 comments:
Love his work.
Me, too. One of my heroes.
I've even read all the Marlowe pastiches except Hiber Conteris' Ten Percent Of Life. I do have it and it's in the reading stack.
I read that one. Can't remember much about it, though.
"She was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window."
Crider or Chandler?
Not Crider, unfortunately.
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