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—— ON THIS DAY ——
JULY 23, 1888
Chicago, Illinois, USA
137 years ago
Raymond Chandler — the American novelist who, beginning in his fifties, created the modern hard-boiled detective novel and the figure of Philip Marlowe, the cynical, principled private investigator who became the template for the genre.
Raymond Thornton Chandler was born on July 23, 1888, in Chicago, but spent much of his youth in England, where he was educated at Dulwich College. He served in the Canadian Army during the First World War, returned to America, and built a career as a senior executive in the oil industry in Los Angeles — a career he lost during the Depression after years of alcoholism and absenteeism. At forty-four, unemployed and broke, he decided to try writing for the pulp magazines.
His first published short story appeared in 1933. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939, when he was fifty-one — an age at which most novelists have already completed their major work. Over the next two decades, he produced seven novels (one unfinished), a handful of short stories, and one of the most influential bodies of work in twentieth-century American literature. His detective Philip Marlowe became one of the most imitated characters in fiction.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
Philip Marlowe — Chandler's iconic private detective, whose voice and ethical code defined the hard-boiled tradition and have been imitated by countless writers and filmmakers since.
Chandler took the hard-boiled detective story that Dashiell Hammett had pioneered in the 1920s and gave it a distinctive new voice: lyrical, sardonic, melancholic, and acutely aware of the corruption beneath the surface of Southern California's beautiful weather. His similes became legendary — 'as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food,' 'he had a face that looked like a wet football,' 'she gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.' The voice was instantly recognizable and endlessly imitated, though never quite equalled.
Philip Marlowe — Chandler's detective in seven novels — became the archetype of a particular kind of American hero: the lone investigator with a personal code of honor in a corrupt world, the man who 'must go down these mean streets' but is 'not himself mean.' Chandler's 1944 essay 'The Simple Art of Murder' articulated this ethical vision as much as it defended the literary value of detective fiction. The figure Marlowe represents has been replicated, with variations, in literally thousands of novels, films, and television series.
Chandler's influence on film was almost as great as on fiction. The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, and The Long Goodbye were all adapted into now-canonical films, and Chandler himself worked on the screenplays for Double Indemnity (with Billy Wilder, 1944) and Strangers on a Train (with Patricia Highsmith and Alfred Hitchcock, 1951). His prose style and Marlowe's voice shaped the genre of film noir, which in turn shaped much of subsequent crime cinema. He died in 1959, at seventy, alcoholic and increasingly isolated after the death of his wife Cissy. His reputation has only grown since.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
Chandler elevated the detective novel to serious literature. Before him, crime fiction was largely dismissed as commercial entertainment, the literary equivalent of pulp paperbacks. His combination of distinctive prose, complex characterization, and moral seriousness demonstrated that the genre could produce work of permanent literary value — opening the way for the entire subsequent tradition of serious crime writing.
Philip Marlowe became a template for moral heroism in popular fiction. The figure of the principled outsider navigating institutional corruption has been replicated in countless detectives, lawyers, journalists, and cops in the eight decades since. Chandler's articulation of this archetype is one of the most influential character creations in American popular culture.
His late-career success is one of the most encouraging examples in literary history. Chandler did not publish his first novel until fifty-one and completed his major work in his sixties and seventies. His career stands as a refutation of the assumption that significant literary achievement requires youthful prodigy, and as evidence that some writers need decades of failure before they find their voice.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On July 23, 1888, a man was born who would spend his first fifty years failing — at school, in the army, in the oil business, in his marriage — before finally writing the books that invented the modern American detective novel. Raymond Chandler created Philip Marlowe in middle age and changed American crime fiction forever. The lesson, for late bloomers, is that it is never too late.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid."
— Raymond Chandler, 'The Simple Art of Murder' (1944)
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about Raymond Chandler, the development of his late-career writing voice, Philip Marlowe, his influence on film noir, and the difference between hard-boiled crime fiction and what came before?
