A mysterious something in the light : the life of Raymond Chandler / Tom Williams.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Williams, Tom.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Authors, American--20th century--Biography.

Authors, American.

Chandler, Raymond, 1888-1959.

Chandler, Raymond.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (396 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : Chicago Review Press, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"The life of Raymond Chandler has long been obscured by secrets and half-truths as deceptive as anything in his novel The Long Goodbye. Now, drawing on new interviews, previously unpublished letters, and archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Tom Williams casts a new light on this most mysterious of writers. Raymond is a man troubled by loneliness and desertion from an early age. Born in Chicago in 1888, his childhood was overshadowed by the collapse of his parents' marriage, his father's alcohol-fuelled violence eventually forcing the boy and his doting mother to leave for Ireland and later London. but class-bound England proved stifling, and Chandler, in his twenties and eager to forge a new life, returned to the US where--in corruption-ridden LA--he met his one great love, Cissy Pascal, a married woman eighteen years his senior. It was only during middle age, later his alcoholism wrecked a lucrative career an oilman, that Chandler seriously turned to crime fiction. And Philip Marlowe endures."--From publisher's description.

Contents:

"My father was an alcoholic"

"I was raised on Latin and Greek"

"A man without a country"

Welcome to Los Angeles

Raymio

Making a start

A pulp writer

Writing The big sleep

"A few drops of Tabasco on the oyster"

Hollywood

"No job for amateurs"

"The limitations of a popular art"

"Subdued magic"

"Sit with me while I dream".

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-61374-841-8

OCLC:

857070786