Raymond Chandler

Rating:
Summary: One can't help but wonder
Review: Hiney's biography, while illuminating in a number of ways, has one severe problem that undercuts its quality. He makes mistakes, obvious factual ones. When recounting the plot to "Farewell, My Lovely," he is wrong. Other synopses of stories and novels are not quite right, as though he read them in a hurry or not at all.

This doesn't mean that Hiney wrote a bad book, but I can't help but wonder. When such easily verifiable facts are incorrect, what can one make of his conclusions based off of other, now suspect, facts?

This is a good book and a useful window into Chandler's life, but when the most elemental literary analysis of the man's work is off, and badly, one can't hold it in too high esteem.

One can only hope that a better biography of Chandler comes along.

Rating:
Summary: Should have been far better
Review: I thoroughly agree with the last reviewer Mr Reed. Hiney's biography contains a significant number of very basic errors in describing the plots of Raymond Chandler's novels and short stories. These are elementary details, and a serious biographer has no excuse for making obvious factual mistakes.

I don't think this is a bad book either, but I do question conclusions of anyone who cannot check source material thoroughly.

Frank MacShane wrote a biography of Raymond Chandler which I believe is far better than Mr Hiney's work.

Rating:
Summary: Good read with baffling errors
Review: This biography reads very well, but it's almost impossible to understand, as other reviewers have noted, how Mr. Hiney could have made such egregious errors recounting the plot of Farewell, My Lovely. It calls into question the possible accuracy of his research into biographical details. On pages 116-117 of the paperback edition, there are three key errors. First, Hiney indicates Marriott was killed by his cronies, but it was Velma/Mrs. Grayle who killed him. Next Hiney claims Jules Amthor was a pyschiatrist, but Amthor was a psychic consultant. Hiney then uses Marlowe's sarcastic portrayal of the people who call on Amthor as a veiled reference to Chandler's views on psychiatrists, whom Chandler had consulted during his bouts with alcoholism during his oil industry days. The leap taken by here by Hiney on wrong information is just mind-boggling. On a far less egregious error he quotes Anne Riordan as saying to Marlowe "Do you have to say things like that?" because, according to Mr. Hiney, "Anne is fond of Marlowe, but doesn't like the swear words he uses." But Anne's response isn't to a swear word, instead it comes after this line from Marlowe: "The Mayor is doing all this, changing his pants hourly while the crisis lasts." This error is minor compared to confusing who killed Marriott and the psychiatrist/psychic consultant problem, but as a third mistake within justs two pages, any reader who's familiar with Marlowe's books may be ready to throw Hiney's biography out the window. And that's a shame because it's a very readable bio.

Rating:
Summary: He Made A Bad Ending
Review: Tom Hiney brings no new material to this biography and no startling new approach to the previous and very enjoyable biography by Frank MacShane. This is however a more contemporary book, written with a breezy journalistic style which makes it hard to put down, indeed compulsive. Not least in its charms is the snap and crackle of nearly everything Chandler himself wrote, not least the letters, which Hiney is wise enough to quote from liberally.

My main complaint is that I came away from this book with a sense of the author's disgust at his subject's decline into chaotic behaviour and helplessness after the death of his wife. My recollection of the MacShane book is of a certain tragic sympathy in the treatment of Chandler's last, disasterous years. Here one feels Hiney is disappointed with Chandler, that somehow the hero he has been peddling let him down. It is somehow the reader of the biography who is let down, suddenly finding the author whose wit he has grown rather fond of, dismissed as a sad old drunk. A readable book, but skip the ending if you like your Chandler, and go to the letters - which do not fail to show this sad, witty man at his droll best.

Rating:
Summary: Hiney's Detective Work Yields All The Clues
Review: While other reviewers apparently fault the author for daring to depict the rather ordinary demise of the "great man", Chandler's life was more devoted to his isolation and misogyny than it was to his novels. Hiney's triumph is showing what an interesting life it was, nonetheless. Chandler was just a writer who loved words more than he loved people, who loaded up his cynicism in neat little rounds and fired at humanity with some precision. That same cynicism drove him to view life through the bottom of a shot glass, at no little cost to his art (or I suppose as some might argue to enhance his art). Mostly he wanted to get it right - mostly he did, especially in "The Long Goodbye". I like that Hiney doesn't let the extraordinary Mr. Marlowe overshadow the strains of ordinariness in Chandler's character. I certainly enjoy Chandler's fiction the greater for this very good life.