A Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of Raymond Chandler

by Tom Williams

Overview

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 Now, drawing on new interviews, previously unpublished letters, and archives, Tom Williams casts a new light on this mysterious writer, a man troubled by loneliness and desertion. It was only during middle age, after his alcoholism wrecked a lucrative career as an oilman, that Chandler seriously turned to crime fiction. And his legacy—the lonely, ambiguous world of Philip Marlowe—endures, compelling generations of crime writers. In this long-awaited biography, Tom Williams shadows one of the true literary giants of the twentieth century and considers how crime writing was raised to the level of art.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613736784
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/01/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Tom Williams is a writer who spent six years investigating the life and times of Raymond Chandler.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Preface xiii

1 "My Father Was an Alcoholic" 1

2 "I Was Raised on Latin and Greek" 17

3 "A Man Without a Country" 29

4 Welcome to Los Angeles 51

5 Raymio 69

6 Making a Start 99

7 A Pulp Writer 111

8 Writing The Big Sleep 125

9 "A Few Drops of Tabasco on the Oyster" 139

10 Hollywood 173

11 "No Job for Amateurs" 197

12 "The Limitations of a Popular Art" 225

13 "Subdued Magic" 257

14 "Sit with Me While I Dream" 293

Afterword 331

Notes 337

Select Bibliography 357

Index 361

Editorial Reviews

In this immersive biography of novelist Raymond Chandler, who helped define the detective fiction genre, first-time author Williams pieces together numerous interviews, letters, and articles to offer a remarkably detailed portrait of the famously hard-boiled writer. Chandler’s father was abusive and an alcoholic, two qualities that had a lasting impact on the writer. Philip Marlowe, Chandler’s iconic character, was a drinker (as was Chandler himself), and the abuse his mother suffered at the hands of his father inspired a chivalrous streak displayed in fiction as well as real life. Williams spends the most time on Chandler’s early writing, sharing passages from stories and poems, as well as insight into the writer’s process that yielded classics like The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Chandler fans will find discussions of the minutiae of these novels to be illuminating; those with a more casual interest will likely skip ahead to read about the writer’s tumultuous relationship with Hollywood, including spats with directors Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock. Meticulously annotated and researched, and written with a tangible fondness, it’s hard not to appreciate Williams’s efforts. Still, the book may be too myopic for most fans of crime writing. 25 b&w photos. Agent: Grainne Fox, Fletcher & Co. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Outstanding. . . . Williams writes sensitively about the Cissy relationship and delves illuminatingly into the composition of Chandler's masterpieces. . . . Thanks to his biography Chandler himself is a less mysterious something than he was." —Sunday Times


"Precise, kindly, and necessary." —Scotland on Sunday

"A clear-eyed, compassionate biography." —Kirkus Reviews


"Meticulously annotated and researched, and written with a tangible fondness, it’s hard not to appreciate Williams’s efforts." —Publishers Weekly


"A fresh and entertaining recounting." —Mystery Scene


"[An] excellent new biography...A Mysterious Something in the Light argues Chandler’s case beautifully. It is well researched, but because it is so well written it should be of interest to scholars and mystery fans alike." —Washington Independent Review of Books


"Williams provides details about Chandler's family background, education, business efforts, and friendships, and shows us how elements of each are expressed in his stories." —Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

"Strongly researched and highly readable." —Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher

The peripatetic, disordered life of the creator of private eye Philip Marlowe. First-time author Williams structures his text fairly conventionally. It begins in 1913, when 25-year-old Chandler arrived in Los Angeles, where he would later set loose Marlowe to roam as a knight errant; then it retreats to Chandler's birth in Chicago and proceeds steadily forward from there to his death from pneumonia and alcohol-related issues in 1959. Williams spent six years doing in-depth research; among the valuable material on Chandler's early history is a revealing account of his years in Ireland and England with his mother. This realistic, at times unflattering portrait shows the conflicted Chandler often drinking too much and sometimes seeking sex outside his marriage (wife Cissy was 18 years his senior). Williams, to his credit, neither defends nor excuses Chandler for these failings, nor for the uncomfortable words he wrote about gays, women and African-Americans. Using Chandler's correspondence and papers, the biographer describes his generally successful career in Hollywood (including a dust-up with Hitchcock) and takes us through the creation and reception of his major stories and novels, from The Big Sleep in 1939 to The Long Goodbye in 1953. He disintegrated when Cissy died in 1954, drinking ever more heavily and pursuing women ever more recklessly. His behavior, Williams suggests, stemmed from the fear that he would never break free from Marlowe and become the writer he'd hoped to be. There are some minor omissions: A brief afterword lists the films made from Chandler's works (Williams thinks Robert Altman's take on The Long Goodbye will endure) but does not mention that Robert B. Parker completed Chandler's unfinished Poodle Springs (1989) and wrote yet another Marlowe novel (Perchance to Dream, 1991), nor does it note Chandler's two volumes in the Library of America series. Nonetheless, this is a thorough assessment of a talented, troubled writer whose obsessions fed his work and confounded his life. A cleareyed, compassionate biography.

Kirkus Reviews