Raymond Chandler Speaking

From the Publisher:
Tough-minded and typically idiosyncratic, here is Chandler on Chandler, the mystery novel, writing, Hollywood, TV, publishing, cats, and famous crimes. This skillfully edited selection of letters, articles, and notes also includes the short story "A Couple of Writers" and the first chapters of Chandler's last Philip Marlowe novel, The Poodle Springs Story, left unfinished at his death. Paul Skenazy has provided a new introduction for this edition as well as a new selected bibliography.

"The man who emerges from this book may come as a surprise to the millions of readers of the adventures of Philip Marlowe. This second great creator (after Hammett) in the realistic 'hardboiled' American detective story had a formal classical education in England and felt, in many respects, closer ties with that country than with his own. This embittered depictor of lust and lechery was also one of the great monogamists in the history of love."--Anthony Boucher, The New York Times Book Review

"Raymond Chandler Speaking offers us various unpublished pieces... and a large number of letters written to his publishers, agents, fellow writers and various friends... Chandler's many admirers will find it a good value. Young writers chiefly concerned with the novel of action and violence should not miss it, for Chandler, at his best a master of this kind of fiction, has much to say that deserves their attention." -- J. B. Priestley, New Statesman

Raymond Chandler Speaking. Edited by Dorothy Gardiner and Katherine Sorley Walker. Introduction by Paul Skenazy. University of California Press, ISBN: 0520208358 (April, 1997), 286 p., £10.95