Posts Tagged ‘Raymond Chandler’
“In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns”*…
In which two legendary authors compare notes and plot a contract killing…
The world of mysteries and thrillers has produced some memorable friendship but perhaps none quite so distinguished as the one struck up later in life between between Raymond Chandler, the laureate of American hardboiled fiction, and Ian Fleming, the legendary English author of the James Bond novels. The relationship began when Fleming wrote to Chandler asking for an endorsement that would be used to help market the Bond novels in America. Chandler ultimately reviewed two books from the 007 series—Diamonds Are Forever and Dr. No—for The Sunday Times, and the two authors, both on their way to legendary status, struck up a warm personal relationship. In 1958, celebrating Chandler’s 70th birthday, the BBC asked Fleming to “interview” his eminent friend. The result was a rollicking, far-ranging conversation in which the authors discussed the state of the thriller, heroes and villains, the struggle for literary credibility, and how a murder is planned and executed. It would be the last time the two friends met before Chandler’s death the following year, in 1959. Fortunately, the conversation was recorded and made available by the BBC. It’s a treasure for readers and writers alike…
The recording (in four parts) and highlights from the transcript: “The Time Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming Got Together To Talk About Thrillers,” in @CrimeReads.
* Raymond Chandler
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As we get tough, we might recall that it was on this date in 1964 that Kitty Genovese, returning home from her job as a bartender, was assaulted and murdered as she returned to her apartment in Queens. Six days later, her assailant was apprehended, and confessed to her murder and two others.
Two weeks after the murder, The New York Times published an article erroneously claiming that 38 witnesses saw or heard the attack, and that none of them called the police or came to her aid. The incident prompted inquiries into what became known as the bystander effect, or “Genovese syndrome,” and the murder became a staple of U.S. psychology textbooks for the next four decades. But subsequent investigations suggest that there was “no evidence for the presence of 38 witnesses, or that witnesses observed the murder, or that witnesses remained inactive.” In 2016, the Times called its own reporting “flawed,” confessing that the original story “grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived.”
Still, the murder of Kitty Genovese– and the erroneous story that surrounded it– is credited as one of the factors that pushed the emergency 911 system into place, after New York City officials joined in a national effort involving officials in other cities. It became the national emergency number in 1968.
“There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher”*…
In November, Donald Trump Jr.’s Triggered hit number one on the New York Times bestsellers list—with an asterisk. Or more accurately, a dagger (†). This is the first time many people noticed this dagger and learned that it means the NYT believes the book has made it onto the list with the help of bulk purchases. It is, however, far from the first book to do this.
In fact, his father helped pioneer the practice among business people.
According to former Trump executive Jack O’Donnell in his 1991 book Trumped, the Trump organization purchased tens of thousands of copies of the Art of the Deal upon its release in 1987. They put copies of the book on pillows during turn-down service. He also pressured his executives to buy 4,000 or more copies of the book each.
Though Trump helped to bring the idea mainstream, he was following in some authors’ footsteps from a decade earlier. Some of the first books known to make the list with the help of bulk purchases were Jacqueline Susann’s 1966 Valley of the Dolls and Wayne Dyer’s 1976 Your Erroneous Zones. The list started in 1931, so there are probably authors who used this method we’ll never know about.
For those unaware of how bestseller lists work, here’s a primer…
The business of literature: “A History of Buying Books onto the Best Seller List.”
[Image above: source]
* Flannery O’Connor
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As we rethink rankings, we might recall that it was on this date in 1936 that two masters of classic noir fiction, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, met for the first and only time. The occasion was a Black Mask magazine dinner in Los Angeles, at which the two were among the ten pulp writers (plus an editor) attending. In the event photo below, both are standing: Chandler is smoking a pipe; Hammett, the tallest, is farthest right.
“Every moment of light and dark is a miracle”*…
Long before the lights from Pittsburgh’s PNC Park began illuminating the North Shore every summer, a local corporation gave the city an art show every night on the same grounds.
The Westinghouse Electric Supply Company (a subsidiary of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, or Wesco), based in Pittsburgh, moved into a warehouse facing the Allegheny River in 1948. On its roof, a giant orange and blue sign spelled out the the company’s tag line, “You can be sure … if it’s Westinghouse.”
As modernist design trickled down from the Bauhaus to Madison Avenue, most noticeably in the 1960s, corporate giants like Westinghouse began leaning towards minimalist visual identities. In 1960, Paul Rand gave the company a logo that looked like an electrical socket that also spelled out the letter W.
Six years later, Richard Huppertz, head of Westinghouse’s Corporate Design Center, wanted to emphasize the company’s sleek new identity with text-free signage on top of their North Shore warehouse. Huppertz ran the idea by Rand, who then came up with the country’s first computer-controlled sign…
Read the rest of this illuminating story at “Remembering Pittsburgh’s Most Mesmerizing Sign.”
* Walt Whitman
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As we celebrate bright ideas, we might turn to the noir side and send hard-boiled birthday greetings to Raymond Chandler, novelist (The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, et al.) and screenwriter (Double Indemnity, with Billy Wilder, e.g.), whose Philip Marlowe was (with Hammett’s Sam Spade) synonymous with “private detective,” whose style (with Hammett’s) defined a genre, and who was (unlike Hammett) born on this date in 1888.
Love interest nearly always weakens a mystery because it introduces a type of suspense that is antagonistic to the detective’s struggle to solve the problem. It stacks the cards, and in nine cases out of ten, it eliminates at least two useful suspects. The only effective love interest is that which creates a personal hazard for the detective – but which, at the same time, you instinctively feel to be a mere episode. A really good detective never gets married.
– Raymond Chandler, “Casual Notes on the Mystery Novel” (essay, 1949)
“I know I’m drinking myself to a slow death, but then I’m in no hurry”*…
As the co-founder and chairman of the Boston Beer Company, Jim Koch has appeared in countless Sam Adams commercials over the last thirty years; he drinks the product on camera, and– true lover of his brews that he is– off camera as well. In an Esquire interview with Aaron Goldfarb, Koch explained “How to drink all night without getting drunk.”
“You wanna know my secret? How I can drink beer all night long and never get drunk?”
In fact, I had always wondered that. Though this was the first time I’d ever formally met Koch, I’d “met” him in the past at a few beer festivals. Those sorts of events are always kind of Bacchanalian shit shows, with people imbibing dozens of beer samples in a short period and soon stumbling around large convention halls drunk of their asses. Brewers included. But not Koch, who I’d long noticed was always lucid, always able to hold court, and hold his own with those much younger than him. This billionaire brewing raconteur was doing likewise with me at 4 PM on a Thursday afternoon despite the fact we were both now several beers deep. So what was the secret?
“Yeast!”
“Yeast?”
“Active yeast. Like you get at the grocery store.”
Koch told me that for years he has swallowed your standard Fleischmann’s dry yeast before he drinks, stirring the white powdery substance in with some yogurt to make it more palatable.
“One teaspoon per beer, right before you start drinking.”
He’d learned the trick from his good friend “Dr. Joe,” a craft beer legend in his own right. Educated at Harvard with a troika of degrees (a BA, a JD, and an MBA), Koch is no slouch, but the late-Joseph Owades was a flat-out genius. With a PhD in biochemistry from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and an early job in the fermentation sciences department at Fleischmann’s, Owades probably knew more about fermentation and alcohol metabolism than perhaps any man who has ever lived. Koch calls him, in fact, “The best brewer who’s ever lived.” He used that immense knowledge to eventually become a consultant for most of the progenitors of America’s early craft brewing movement such as Anchor Brewing in San Francisco, New Amsterdam Brewing in New York, and, yes, the Boston Beer Company. There he became good friends with Koch, helped perfect Boston Lager, and passed on to Koch his little yeast secret…
You see, what Owades knew was that active dry yeast has an enzyme in it called alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH). Roughly put, ADH is able to break alcohol molecules down into their constituent parts of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Which is the same thing that happens when your body metabolizes alcohol in its liver. Owades realized if you also have that enzyme in your stomach when the alcohol first hits it, the ADH will begin breaking it down before it gets into your bloodstream and, thus, your brain.
“And it will mitigate – not eliminate – but mitigate the effects of alcohol!” Koch told me…
Does it actually work?
Of course, I had to honor my longtime hero Koch, and a new beer hero I’d just learned about in Owades, and try this trick myself. So the next day I grabbed a six-pack of beer and a packet of Fleischmann’s and went to work. The older I get, the more of a lightweight I surely become, but after shoveling down six teaspoons and tilting back six bottles I felt nothing more than a little buzzed. Koch told me he keeps a breathalyzer around at all times just to assure he’s never too drunk. He never is. And, though I had no tangible “proof,” besides the fact I was still awake, I was pretty sure I wasn’t all that drunk either. Forever more I’d be yet another guy discreetly carrying a white powder around at bars. I’d advise you do likewise.
Read the full story, and see Aaron’s video report of his test (which answers such follow-on questions as “does the yeast make one flatulaent?”) at Esquire.com.
* Robert Benchley
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As we put the butter back into the fridge, we might send gritty birthday greetings to Samuel Dashiell Hammett; he was born on this date in 1894. Hammett worked as an agent of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency from 1915-1922, when– disillusioned by the organization’s role in strike-breaking– he left to become a writer, providing copy in an ad agency until his fiction earned enough to support him. Hammett drew for his fiction on his experiences as a “Pinkerton Man,” and created an extraordinary series of characters– Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), NIck and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), The Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse)– on the way to becoming, as the New York Times called him, “the dean of the… ‘hard-boiled’ school of detective fiction.”
In his book The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler, considered by many to be Hammett’s successor, observed,
Hammett was the ace performer… He is said to have lacked heart; yet the story he himself thought the most of The Glass Key is the record of a man’s devotion to a friend. He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.
For your viewing pleasure…
Your correspondent is amazed at how quickly so many of his friends have exhausted attractive film-going options in this release-packed holiday and Oscar-promotion period. What’s a hungry viewer to do? Well, of course, there’s always television and cable; as Jim Emerson notes, many believe that they are eclipsing cinema.
But for those who crave the authentic big screen deal, there’s also the treasure trove of the past. For example, if one can’t muster the enthusiasm to head out this weekend to see The Guilt Trip or Texas Chainsaw 3D, one might enjoy…
Stanley Donen’s 1956 spellbinder was written by Peter Stone and Marc Behm, and featured Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy, Dominique Minot, Ned Glass, and Jacques Marin. Its score, by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini, was nominated for an Academy Award…
Witty, smart, and altogether satisfying, it’s here in its entirety:
(Email readers, click here)
And it’s available as a free download at The Internet Archive— as are many, many other worthies.
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As we salt our popcorn, we might recall that it was on this date in 1936 that the two greatest creators of hard-boiled private eyes, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, met for the first (and as far as anyone can tell, the only) time– at a dinner hosted by Black Mask, a magazine to which both Nabobs of Noir contributed stories.
Raymond Chandler (with his customary pipe) and Dashiell Hammett
This extremely rare photo of the first west coast Black Mask get-together on January 11, 1936 captures possibly the only meeting of several of these authors.
Pictured in the back row, from left to right, are Raymond J. Moffatt, Raymond Chandler, Herbert Stinson, Dwight Babcock, Eric Taylor and Dashiell Hammett. In the front row, again from left to right, are Arthur Barnes (?), John K. Butler, W. T. Ballard, Horace McCoy and Norbert Davis.
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