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batbones's review against another edition
4.0
A short scrapbook of quotes from Chandler on various topics such as Hollywood and screenwriting, drawn from a variety of materials, not only his novels but his letters, articles and essays. Being what it is, there's very little analysis or independent interpretation, but Chandler speaks clear and for himself in bitterness, humour, self-deprecation and descriptive poetry. Links are left here to be discovered, indexes for greater appreciation, for instance, his thorny relationship writing scripts with Billy Wilder (whose response to Chandler's acrimonious essay on Hollywood was given the last word), or his love for Saki his furry black Persian, facets of his life in anecdotal form, sparkling like tiny diamonds in sand. Interestingly, the format of thematic quotation allows a larger pattern to surface from his material which depicts the author as a person who endeavoured to capture Los Angeles in its colours and contradictions, who reacted against the cosy form of the mystery story, and the inferiority of its writers by throwing it out into the cold of the mean streets, a man who was eventually disappointed and embittered by the transformation of a place he was fond of, a change observed to be refracted in his detective Philip Marlowe. His love for the music of language and his strong belief in writing as a form of magic always comes to the fore, confirming that beloved writer of extended metaphors ("I was as much use as a hummingbird's spare egg would have been." - The High Window) one meets briefly between the pages of his stories.
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