Raymond Chandler: A Literary Reference

Rating:
Summary: The complex art of Chandler
Review: An excellent, accessible and profusely illustrated bedside companion to Raymond Chandler and his writings.

More scrapbook than standard-issue biography, RAYMOND CHANDLER: A LITERARY REFERENCE will delight both Chandler scholars as well as newcomers trying to better negotiate the author's haunted and dog-legged literary mean streets. Chandler veterans and novices alike will find something to enjoy - and often things they never knew - on almost every page.

Moss draws on Chandler's own fiction, notebooks and letters as well as contempory reviews, newspaper and magazine articles and published interviews with such colleagues as John Houseman and Billy Wilder to illuminate both the author and his most renowned literary creation, the deadpan knight errant Philip Marlowe. Moss also cites from the posthumous appreciations and essays that began to appear in the 1960s and '70s when the incalculable value of Chandler's literary legacy began to be more widely appreciated in the United States.

Despite the multiple sources he employs, the result of Moss' efforts is a seamless and beautifully limned pen-portrait of one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.

The book will serve as a handy *aide memoire* to the initiated, a point of departure for further research to those just beginning to explore the beauty and power of Chandler's writing and the loneliness of his life. Very highly recommended.