The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler [Paperback]

During a period of twenty years—from his start as a young writer for H. L. Mencken’s classic pulp magazineThe Black Maskin the early 1930s, through the publication of his novelsThe Big SleepandFarewell, My Lovely, to his career as a Hollywood screenwriter in the 1940s—Raymond Chandler kept a series of private notebooks.

Drawn from those journals,The Notebooks of Raymond Chandleroffers an intimate view of the writer at work, revealing early ideas, descriptions, and anecdotes that would later be used inThe Long Goodbye, The Blue Dahlia, and other classics.

Filled with both public and private writings,The Notebooks of Raymond Chandlerincludes “Marlowesque” particulars such as pickpocket lingo, San Quentin jailhouse slang, a “Note on the Tommygun,” and musings on “Craps.” Here, too, are surprising, lesser known essays on Hollywood, the mystery story, British and American writing, and a wicked parody of Hemingway. This sampler—by turns whimsical, provocative, irreverent, and fascinating—also contains a list of possible story titles; “Chandlerisms;” and his short work “English Summer: A Gothic Romance,” which the writer viewed as a turning point in his career.

Over the course of two prolific decades—from his humble beginnings as a pulp writer forThe Black Mask, through the creation of his celebrated noir masterworksThe Big SleepandFarewell, My Lovely, to the Hollywood years of the 1940s—the inimitable Raymond Chandler recorded in a series of private notebooks his thoughts, emotions, anecdotes, and germinating ideas that would later find their way into his classic crime novels. Filled with both public and personal writings,The Notebooks of Raymond Chandlergives us an intimate view of the writer at work. Here, in his own words, is Chandler on such "Marlowesque&l“ä