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Read "Gone and Also ... A Work in Progress" | Claude Hall
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Most strangest thing was the way some people came and went. I once looked inside Jana's trailer and, nope, there wasn't any broomstick there. None in Judith Carney's place either. As for Wolfie, I'd seen him trot into the bush back of where he lived and he wouldn't be there when I looked. Once, I saw the old man...you know the one...swim out and disappear in the bay. He didn't come back. I was worried about him. Thought maybe he'd drown. But later he showed up fine and fit. I asked him where he'd been and he said, "Nowhere." I sort of figured that he was telling the truth about that. And I found out an evening or so later precisely where nowhere was. I'd been working on "Malibu" and got up to stretch out some kinks in my shoulders. That's when I noticed out the window that a fog had rolled in from the ocean. I walked to the window, a very short step or two, and looked out. Night had fallen. With that heavy mist, I couldn't see anything. I mean, nada! I couldn't even see the streetlight on the corner where the lane from the highway joined the lane that ran from one end of The Coogan on around the curve of the bay. Just out of curiosity, I walked into the other room and walked out onto the narrow verandah across the front of the hut. There was nothing there! I guess I leaped back inside out of shock. Another peek out the door revealed nothing. Not a light. Grey mist. Like a wall. Nothing beyond it. I poked out my hand and I couldn't see it either. That's when I went to the refrigerator and took out a beer and returned to my laptop. I couldn't work on my story, but I did manage to write a couple of old college buddies about The Coogan. They lived in west Texas around Lubbock. One was a high school teacher. I knew they wouldn't understand anything I'd written, but that was okay with me. At least I got it off my chest. Then I went to bed. Come morning, The Coogan had returned. And I never got around to mailing those letters. Those guys would just take it for granted I'd gone nuts. And I wasn't quite sure about it either! However, for good reason I didn't take The Coogan for granted after that. And I kept waiting for the world to disappear again on me. Didn't happen, though. The next morning, sunshine peaked through the pines. Children sang in a circle down by the oak. Just like in a Stephen King novel. And I could see the water in the bay. First time that had happened. Just a few palm trees between here and the water. Absolutely a beautiful picture! I felt, for a few minutes, quite special to be able to live in a place such as The Coogan and have a wonderful view like that from my verandah. By the way, the verandah had grown. Three or four feet wide now. And it turned the corner on the right side of my rock home and went down a ways. The flower beds were constructed of rock along that side of the house. What had once been a hut now took on the appearance of a small castle except there were funny-looking flowers instead of a moat. The flower lady could be found occasionally tending these plants just as if nothing had happened. I realized that I was, indeed, grateful I had been lured from New York City and it's hustle and smog to live in a place like this. Even if I didn't yet understand a place like this. "You do a good job," I told the flower lady. "I'm thinking about planting some avocados." "I love guacamole," I said. "Takes five years to grow an avocado," she said. "Not for you," I assured her. "You're right," she said. "Probably about five months, though." "I can wait that long, I guess," I said. "Would you like some coffee?" "You're kidding, of course." "Pardon me," I said. I should have known that she didn't drink coffee. Maybe tea, but I didn't have any tea. I went inside, heated some water and made myself a cup of instant coffee. Black. Then returned to the verandah. I sat down in the recliner just as Jana came walking up the lane. She appeared tired. "I assume you've been up to considerable mischief," I said by way of a greeting. "Naturally," she said. She sat down beside me. "There's really not enough room for two people in this recliner," I pointed out. "There certainly is," she said and wriggled closer. Actually, she was mostly sitting in my lap. "Right. Plenty of room," I said. "I almost made a serious mistake." "I'm glad you're aware of that," she said. "Hey, I even like your green hair." "It is not green," she said. "It's brown." "Looked green to me just a moment ago. Now it looks brown. Who taught you how to do that?" "Your aunt." "A very talent lady, my aunt. So, what have you been up to? Or should I ask? That is, I think I ought to know, but I'm willing not to know if you don't want me to know." "I don't care," she said. "I'm pretty tired. Me and Judith tried to place The Coogan somewhere else, but it came back here. Guess your aunt Artie wanted it right here. We gave it a good try. Just couldn't change it." "Where were you going to put it?" "Down below Newport Beach." "I can see why you failed. Too classy. The Coogan lacks class. It may have character. Even atmosphere. But no class. I wouldn't want to live in Newport Beach anyway." "You're joking, of course. Anyway, we were going to put it on the side, so to speak." "I don't think I'd move this place if I were you. It seems to be growing. You noticed about my verandah?" "Yes." "I would assume The Coogan is satisfied with being right where it is." "I guess," she said. She crawled out of my lap. "I think I'll go for a swim. Want to come?" "Why not," I said. "As long as you don't swim crazy." "Wasn't me." "I saw you zipping through the water like a fish. Don't lie, little Martian girl." "It was you. Wasn't me." "Was not." "Was, too," she insisted. "I used to think you were an imagemaker. Then I thought you were a painter. Now, golly dang it, I don't know what you are. But you're something else. You accuse me of having green hair. Well, your hair is sometimes a very, very funny red, I'll tell you that right now." "Let me grab a towel," I said. I stopped at the doorway of my rock castle. "And, by the way, I'm a writer." "Sure," she said. "Hurry up. I really do need a good swim. Might work off some of this frustration." I slipped into a bathing suit and slung a towel over my shoulder and came out and followed her down the sandy path to the beach. Sand? I think the path had been hard earth last time I walked down to the beach. The Coogan was, indeed, crazy. No need to move it in anywhere. But, yes, we needed some way to protect it from outsiders. The question was how? Of course, The Coogan seemed to be doing fairly good on its own. The sand felt good beneath my feet. And the sound of the waterfall that fell off a slope to my right was pleasant. Pretty little waterfall. Good water, too. I'd tried it out yesterday. "Thanks," I said. "What?" asked Jana who was just ahead of me on the path. "Nothing," I said. She swam nude, as usual. I'm afraid that, in spite of The Coogan's rather unique atmosphere...motif, if you will...I preferred a bathing suit. Modest...that's me. Oh, I'd swam without a bathing suit once or twice. But most of the time I wore a bathing suit. The water felt good. Just the right temperature. Out there beyond the bay in the open water of the ocean, it was chilly. Surfers up and down the coast wore wetsuits to protect themselves. Here in the bay, it was as if the water was just a little bit thermal. Some beaches along the shores of New Zealand, I'd heard, had thermal activity like that...sometimes the water over there was even hot and people would just scoop out a place in the sand for their own hot tub. Not here. Just nice. Perfect. No wonder the pirates had loved this place. And no wonder someone wanted to take it away from us. I stood on the beach watching as Jana, nude as the day she was born, splashed in the water. She even tried to splash me. But she'd tried that once before and this time I had remained several yards from the water. "You coming in?" "I'm busy," I said. "You're absolutely no fun." "I knew that already," I said. "I'm going to have to get me another boyfriend." "Good," I said. "Scratch that. I'm a one-man woman." "You Martian girls are all alike," I told her. Several weeks ago, shortly after I first arrived at The Coogan, I'd wondered about a waterfall...sort of thought how much like an island in the South Seas this place would look like if it just had a waterfall. Now, there was a waterfall. And one evening, while sitting on the verandah, I'd thought about my hut...how much better it would look with a wider verandah and maybe some flower beds along to serve as sort of a railing. And one evening when it rained, I'd wondered why Artie hadn't constructed another room...sort of a living room or game room...on her hut. Me! Thinking about those things. Perhaps...just perhaps, Jana was right. Maybe it was me. I walked down the beach a short distance so I wouldn't have to think about Jana out there in the bay nude. It had become increasingly difficult to think things out with her around. I realized that I was getting strongly attached to her and one day soon would more than likely make a mistake and ask her to marry me. Then, pow, kids. Probably all of them with green hair. Why green? I do not know. For a brief instant, I wondered if my aunt Artie was still alive. That's what had worried Sam Borwick several weeks ago. He'd been rather relieved to hear that she was, indeed, dead. But was she? Everything I saw could have been an illusion. Her ghosts, an illusion. Certainly one of them was an illusion. But what was a ghost? Really? Then, a night ago when The Coogan had vanished on me...why had that happened? My mind had been focused on my story. Too focused, perhaps. I walked over to the edge of the water. "Don't splash water on me," I ordered. "I've got a serious question to ask you." "I don't like serious questions," she said. "And I don't like orders. I'll splash when and if I wish and I'll splash whatever direction I wish. If you're in that direction, tough luck on you." I merely smiled. The kid looked pretty cute when she was mad. And even more cute when she was naked and mad. "I want to know if you're real," I said. "Try me," she said. "You marry up with me and I'll show you what reality is all about." "Okay," I said. That surprised her. But I'd sort of planned on her being surprised. She'd been after me for more than a year now and I'd used just about every excuse possible to avoid saying yes. An okay was just about the same thing, I suppose. "When?" she asked, standing up in the water as nude as a statute. She seemed rather skeptical that I'd finally given in to this marriage thing. "Tomorrow, if you wish." She let out a small scream. "Good," she said. And splashed water at me. But, of course, the wedding was not for several days. Jana had to do this and needed that. A wedding dress. Flowers. Invitations. "Just tell everyone. There's not that many people here in the glen." "What about Mars?" "Whups. Forgot about them." You wouldn't believe that wedding. It was held on the beach, all of us barefoot, including the people with green hair and quite a few of them had made the trip from Winters. Not very many of those that I know paid them much attention, except to say "hello" to the usual "howdies" and "how do you dos" that prevail as greetings back in that part of the country. Friendly, though. I've got to say this, my bride was pretty. And after the wedding, everyone danced on the sand, including the old man who lived in the brambles. He danced a jig and all of the children joined in. A couple of the people from Winters were soon dancing with them. We all had a good time. Even Black Beard, who refused to leave his ship in the bay, but was content to dance a jig on deck and flourish his sword as he yelled and scream a South Sea war chant. One of the men, his beard green and his mop of hair green, green eyes flashing, yelled and screamed back at Black Beard. They just had a whole heap of fun. Including Jake Coogan who sat on the sand with Judith Carney. They sipped at a bottle of wine they'd taken from my house. He seemed a bit nervous. I don't know why. Kept glancing about. First here, then there. I'd warned Jake about that stuff. He didn't seem to care. As long as he stayed away from Black Beard, I guess it was okay. Sam Borwick read the wedding ceremony from a very ancient Bible. "Yes. A minister was one of my callings," he said and smiled. My best man was Wolfie. He only barked two or three times. Strictly from joy. And, of course, there was that howl. But no one seemed to mind. In fact, one lady from Winters laughed as if it were a big joke. Then she went over and patted him on the head, leaned close and said something to him which caused him to smile. "Those your relatives?" I asked Jana. She shook her head. "Not me. I never met any of them in my life. Not that I know of anyway." "Seem like pleasant people," I said. "You've got to be kidding," she said. "Wonder if my aunt Artie ever met any of them." She stared at me for a moment. As if reading my mind. "I know what you're thinking. Do you think that's wise?" "Why not?" "Well, this is my wedding, I would like to point out." "You're right," I said. "No aunt Artie at the moment. Though she's probably going to be pissed that she wasn't invited to the wedding." "She was invited," said Jana. "Oh?" "Said she had grown too fond of weddings and she thought she would avoid this one. She did say, however, she was giving us a wedding present." "My aunt? A wedding present? Wonder what kind of present one gets from a ghost. Scratch that. I think I know. Or can make a good guess. It's probably very weird. That's because I'm beginning to believe my aunt was pretty weird and more than likely is one pretty weird ghost." "Said we'd know it when we got it." "A puzzle? That's my aunt Artie, okay. Did she know about the guests from Winters?" "Not hardly. I didn't even know about them myself." "I thought you were going to invite Mars." "Those people aren't from Mars," she said. "Well, well," I said. "Uh oh," said Jana. "I'm perfectly aware of what usually happens when you say something like that." "A very fair, apt, appropriate statement that may says heaps, but means nothing," I said. "However, my congratulations on your current observation. The question is what we're going to do about these wedding crashers." "Nothing," she said. "I recommend that we do absolutely nothing." "Okay," I told her. "As you mentioned, this is your wedding." (continued next week)
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com |
Commentary
You’ve probably had enough by now of the Michael Jackson death. Big news! Among those interviewed on TV early was Ron Alexenburg. Then, a flood. Missed, however, by the major media was the passing of Sky Saxon, lead singer of the Seeds, circa 60s. He died this past Thursday of an undisclosed illness in an Austin, TX hospital. Timmy Manocheo sent me and a few others the bit. I caught the Seeds at the Circus, a new club in Manhattan that was pretty weird. It didn’t hang around long. Barbara and I took my niece Donna Kay, then a young girl along. Sky was nice to her. That was important to a young pre-teen girl. I was grateful. It sort of made her trip to the big city. Sky didn’t exactly have a great life. Pity. Thanks for letting me know about his death, Timmy. I never got into the music of Michael Jackson, while, on the other hand, I probably have that first Seeds LP around somewhere. OBAMA’S MATTERS Foreword: Last week, I discussed communication corridors across America. This, week, my views on medicine. Yes, we need medical insurance for everyone. Logic. But we also need a major hospital in every city…something else for Barack Obama to tackle. I’ve often thought that Puerto Rico would make a good home for the aged and the very ill. A vacation site as well. It’s a beautiful island in many areas and could be in all. It’s natural beauties should be put to use in healing. The spirit as well as the body. Vacations galore and health galore. These two industries could provide work for everyone on the island. The island would prosper. And medicine would prosper because the hospital facility would be connected to a university specializing in medicine. Both hospital and university would be the best in the world. Few people would recognize the hospital. It would look more like a luxury spa. The rooms would have verandahs that overlooked fountains with meandering streams that flowed amidst the palms and in the distance would be the ocean. And there would be Turkish baths and steam baths and Jacuzzis and lounges with wide screen television sets. And restaurants and snack bars. I’ve long thought that most hospitals in America resembled morgues. The hospital on Puerto Rico would be lavish, inspiring, restful. Sickness should not be a pain in the ass! For the elderly, upon recovery they would be moved to rehabilitation centers of virtually the same motif. And similar hospitals would be constructed in every major city in America. Just one of the grandest places you can imagine. Doctors and nurses should have private lounges, personal offices, exercise rooms, and the very latest to the second in equipment for the practice of their skills. Computers, etc. The training to become a doctor or nurse should be free. The pay should be graded, like the civil service, and doctors and nurses should be well compensated and benefits should include considerable time off so that “doctoring” would never become a grind. Instead, a pleasant and rewarding occupation. Patients would have soft music, wide-screen television, lounges, restaurants, parks with fountains and flowers and distant views. And prompt service. All employees would have to meet certain psychological tests on a fairly regular basis so that inefficient or uncaring practitioners would be eliminated. If these were government facilities, the cost of medicine would be greatly reduced. And, because the facilities would be spacious, it wouldn’t be so necessary to kick patients out who can barely stand. And some who can’t. The patients in the Puerto Rican facility would be via referral from hospitals across the United States. Transportation to and from Puerto Rico would be free. In some cases, families would travel with the patient and be housed nearby free. I would like to see a national committee established immediately to tackle America’s medical problems. And sub-committees would address the science of medicine, including equipment, drugs, training of doctors and nurses, and pandemic potentials. Being ill should not be a punishment. Not in America! (continued next week) WRITING MATTERS Quality in Writing (continued) From the lecture notes of Claude Hall Black Mask is conceded to be the best of the pulps that specialized in the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. It was founded in 1920 by H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan to help make money to support Smart Set, the magazine they cared about. Mencken had little use for Black Mask, calling it a "louse" because it published only detective stories. Nevertheless, with two other "louse magazines" they owned, it gave the editors sufficient income to conduct their more serious literary venture. Mencken was pleased with its success and conceded that "the readers included many judges, Statesmen, and other Eminentisimos." He understood that even "Woodrow" (Wilson) was among them. After six months, Mencken and Nathan sold their interest in Black Mask to Eugene Crowe, a paper magnate, and Eltinge "Pop" Warner, the head of Warner Publishing Co., 25 W. 45th St. These two, with the help of their circulation manager Phil Cody, continued the magazine much as before until 1925 when Cody was named editor. Although he was primarily a businessman, Cody brought Erle Stanley Gardner to the magazine as well as Carroll John Daly, Raoul Whitfield, Frederick Nebel, and, above all, Dashiell Hammett. After two years Cody was named vice president of Warners and a new editor, Joseph T. Shaw, was appointed. Building on what Cody achieved, he gave the magazine a clear editorial position and made it the best-known magazine of its type. (43-45) WHEN HE BEGAN WRITING...believing that he had no natural talent for it, he said that he "just had to learn it like anything else." Having no faith in outside agencies, he believed that "any writer who cannot teach himself cannot be taught by others." The advice he gave to others, he followed himself. "Analyze and imitate; no other school is necessary." (47) Dashiell Hammett ("The Maltese Falcon") was an early writer of Black Mask and, in fact, it is believe that through correspondence with Hammett that Joseph T. "Cap" Shaw developed an idea for what he wanted the magazine to be. (46) He naturally studied his predecessors – above all, Dashiell Hammett. In citing Hammett as the main influence on his own work, he placed himself implicitly in the central tradition of contemporary American letters, for he also thought of Hemingway, Dreiser, Ring Lardner, Carl Sandburg, and Sherwood Anderson as his antecedents. He even went back to Walt Whitman for the basic inspiration for what he and Hammett were trying to do. Chandler's admiration for Hammett was based on two related features of his work – his subject matter and his language. "Hammett," he wrote, "took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it in the alley." (47) What also impressed Chandler was Hammett's attention to detail and his ability to transform a physical observation into something that reveals character. He admired Hammett's narrative ability and said that he'd gladly read one of his novels even if the last chapter were torn out. "It would be interesting enough without the solution," he wrote. "It would stand up by itself as a story. That's the acid test." Yet, Hammett lacked Chandler's verbal facility and the vision that illuminated a scene. Here, Chandler exceeds him in a fundamental way. Chandler realized that the American language, which belonged to both of them, was capable of saying things that Hammett "did not know how to say, or feel the need of saying. In his hands it had no overtones, left no echo, evoked no image beyond a distant hill." In the meantime, Chandler had to master the fundamentals. Specifically, he went to school with other writers in the Black Mask tradition. One he imitated was Earl Stanley Gardner, to whom he later wrote: "I forgot to tell you that I learned how to write a novelette on one of yours about a man named Rex Kane, who was an alter ego of Ed Jenkins and who was running an anti-blackmail organization. You wouldn't remember. It's probably in your file No. 54276-88. I simply made an extremely detailed synopsis of your story and from that rewrote it and compared what I had with yours, and then went back and rewrote it some more, and so on. In the end I was a bit sore because I couldn't try to sell it. It looked pretty good." Here, Chandler's training at Kulwich deserves some credit, for the work was done in the same spirit as translating Cicero into English and then back into Latin. Chandler realized that it took slow, patient work to become a writer. He always rewrote the story he was working on. "Then I compared it with professional work and saw whether I had failed to make an effect, or had the pace wrong, or some other mistake. Then I did it over and over again." His main problem as a writer came in trying to master his own language, since until then he had always written in British English. "I had to learn American just like a foreign language," he later wrote. At the age of 45 he had enough experience to write simply. "Thank heaven," he wrote to Charles Morton of the Atlantic Monthly, " that when I tried to write fiction I had the sense to do it in a language that was not all steamed up with rhetoric." Finally, after spending five months on his first story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot," he sent it in to Black Mask. Upon receiving it, Shaw sent it to another of his writer, W.T. Ballard, with a note saying that Chandler was either a genius or crazy. What Chandler had done was to try to justify the right-hand margin so that his typescript would look as though it had been set in linotype. Despite this naiveté, Shaw recognized Chandler's quality, although he paid him only $180 for the story, the basic rate of one cent a word. (48-49) As an editor, Shaw was much admired and appreciated by his contributors. Lester Dent has described his surprise when, after having written a great many pulp stories, he finally approached Shaw in the hope of being accepted by Black Mask. He was impressed by Shaw's culture and education and by his seriousness of purpose, for "here was a man who could breathe this pride of his into a writer. Capt didn't think I was a pulp hack. Joe felt I was a writer in step with the future. He thought that of all his writers. He had a way, with this device or some other device, of breathing power into his writers." When Dent visited Shaw on that first day, he was shown a letter Chandler had written Shaw, which was "so delicate and sensitive and perceptive that it forever moulded my view of Chandler, whom I have never met." Shaw's point in showing the letter was to impress Dent with "the idea that I was not to sit and do a hack hard-boiled piece of pulp for Black Mask. I was to believe and feel I was doing a great piece." Shaw was also an instructive editor: "He would start discussing his writers, their skill, and before you knew it you would find some Hammett or Chandler in your hands along with a blue pencil and Cap would be asking, 'Would you cut that somewhere? Just cut a few words'. The idea, of course, was that there was no wordage fat. You could not cut. Every word had to be there." (49-50) When he received a story that was too full of action, he would say, "To accomplish action it's not necessary to stage a gun battle from start to finish, with a murder and killing in every other paragraph. You can keep it alive through dialogue." (50) In an interview some years afterward, Chandler told Irving Wallace that his earnings averaged $2,750 a year – but this was after he had begun to write novels. In the l930s, he earned far less, even though he was no longer paid the minimum rate for his stories but probably about five cents a word. As late as l938, when he sold three stories to Dime Detective magazine, whose payment records have survived, he earned only $l,275, about one-tenth of what he earned as an oil executive. The Depression was hard on the Chandlers. They lived always in furnished rooms, having put their furniture in storage to save money. "I never slept in the park," he later wrote, "but I came damn close to it. I went five days without anything to eat but soup once, and I had just been sick at that. It didn't kill me, but neither did it increase my love of humanity. The best way to find out if you have any friends is to go broke. The ones that hang on longest are your friends." The psychological strain was also great and he had nothing to rely on but himself, having given up drinking entirely after losing his job with the oil company. Then with the first publication came the cruel realization that at his age he could not produce the thousands of words a day he would need to survive as a writer. Yet, with his back to the Pacific, he dug in his heels and endured a lustrum of physical discomfort and isolation. The miracle is that during these five years his work steadily improved. Every year he became a sharper craftsman and a more vivid stylist. But perhaps it is no miracle: perhaps Chandler needed the misfortunes of this period to force himself to greater efforts. Yet how many moments of doubt there must have been. In a short story about a failed playwright and a failed novelist called "A Couple of Writers," Chandler describes the emptiness that afflicts anyone who takes up creative work. "Jesus, we're the most useless people in the world," muses one of his characters. "There must be a hell of a lot of us, too, all lonely, all empty, all poor, all gritted with small mean worries that have no dignity. All trying like men caught in a bog to get some firm ground under our feet and knowing all the time it doesn't make a damn bit of difference whether we do or not." (59-60) After writing short stories for five years, Chandler began to plan a full-length book in l938. Instinctively, he knew that the life of a pulp writer was limited. The decision was made partly because Joseph Shaw had resigned as editor of Black Mask. Chandler switched his allegiance to Dime Detective, but did not have the same intimate relationship with Ken White, the editor, or with the publisher of Popular Publications, Harry Steeger. (61) As Chandler began to write longer fiction, he faced a real challenge. The compression of the short story allowed him to rely on action, but in the novel he had to portray his characters fully and give an authentic sense of their world. Unlike Hammett, who had been a Pinkerton detective, Chandler knew little about crime. He did little direct research with the police, because, as he told an interviewer, "cops are pretty dumb people." Mainly, he relied on reading. He owned Major J. S. Hatcher's "Textbook of Firearms" and a pamphlet called "1,000 Police Questions Answered for the California Peace Officer" by Judge Charles W. Fricke. Also on his desk were books on forensic medicine, cross examination, and toxology. He also relied on his memory. If he wanted to portray a seedy hotel and didn't have it quite right, he would go and sit in the lobby of one of them for half a day, listening and watching. He would notice what the desk clerk wore, what he said; he would observe the walls, the pictures or calendar hanging by the desk, the furniture, the hotel guests. But generally he made no special effort at research. Like most novelists, he was alert and aware of his surroundings, and he would use whatever came to hand. A newspaper article about a secret purveyor of pornographic books would set him off, and his imagination would transform this person into A.G. Geiger of "The Big Sleep." (63-64) When Chandler began to write "The Big Sleep" in the spring of l938, he decided to use some of the stories that had already appeared in pulp magazines as the basic for his novel. "I had a bunch of old novelettes full of material–and it looked like pretty good material to me–and they were, so far as I could then see, as extinct as a dodo." Chandler called his custom of rescuing earlier work "cannibalizing," and it bears some examining because of its peculiarities. Ordinarily, a novelist would avoid the tedious method of combining two or three short stories to make a longer work. Most novelists could not bear the analysis required and would find it far easier to start again with new characters and situations. But Chandler did not have the narrative abundance. He found it hard to tell a story and therefore used a method similar to that of a playwright who has in mind a number of scenes he wants to string together. "When I started out to write fiction I had the great disadvantage of having absolutely no talent for it," he later wrote. "I couldn't get characters in and out of rooms. They lost their hats and so did I. If more than two people were on a scene I couldn't keep one of them alive. This failing is still with me, of course, to some extent. Give me two people snotting each other across a desk and I am happy. A crowded canvas just bewilders me." In using the earlier stories, Chandler did not tinker with them, fitting one scene beside another or revising in the ordinary sense of adding or eliminating phrases. He worked out more or less what he wanted to say in his head, and then he began all over again, being careful not to be tied down by his preconceptions and remaining open to chance. Chandler believed strongly in spontaneity and in being relaxed. "All good writing takes skill and devotion," he wrote. "Sometimes it comes hard and is no good. Sometimes it just floats in and says, 'Here I am'." In cannibalizing his stories, he tried to combine his analytical gifts, which were purely intellectual, with the organic or physical ingredient that determines the emotional quality and value of a book. "I do my plotting in my head as I go along," he wrote, "and usually I do it wrong and have to do it again." Chandler's dislike of deductive detective stories made him disparage plots: "The plot thickens and the people become mere names." But he also had a special attitude toward his own plots, which is simply a part of his attitude toward writing generally: "With me a plot, if you could it that, is an organic thing. It grows and often it overgrows. I am continually finding myself with scenes that I won't discard and that don't want to fit in. So that my plot problem invariably ends up as a desperate attempt to justify a lot of material that, for me at least, has come alive and insists on staying alive. It's probably a silly way to write, but I seem to know no other way. The mere idea of being committed in advance to a certain pattern appalls me." "The Big Sleep," written in a short spurt of three months, is derived from two stories: "Killer in the Rain," which was published in l935, and "The Curtain," which appeared the following year. (67-68) The book was published by Alfred A. Knopf Inc. American sales of "The Big Sleep" justified Knopf's faith in Chandler, and he offered him a contract for his next book with a 20 percent royalty for the first 5,000 copies sold and 25 percent afterward–all based on wholesale prices. Comparing his English and American sales, Chandler often noted that Hamish Hamilton (his publisher in England) invariably did better by him than his American counterpart. The answer lies in the reader habits of the two countries. The English library system ensures considerably larger hardcover sales than normally occur in the United States. By contract, American paperback sales are almost always several times greater than those in England. "The Big Sleep," which sold more than 10,000 copies in the original Knopf edition, did remarkably well for a first novel. According to Frank Gruber, an expert on the subject, "the average mystery novel sells in America less than 2,500 copies; between 15 and 20 of every year's offerings sell from 5,000 to l0,000 copies and a meager six or eight, more than 10,000. These figures pertain to the regular $2 editions only, but the better-selling authors are also published in larger, cheaper editions." Chandler was one of these, for Grosset and Dunlap, then the chief publisher of reprints made from the original plates, brought out a one-dollar edition that sold nearly 3,500 copies. (73-74) "The Big Sleep" was cannibalized from these stories: "Killer in the Rain," "The Curtain," "Finger Man" (small bit), and "Mandarin's Jade" (small bit). Durham, Philip (1963) "Down These Mean Streets a Man Must Go." Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North Carolina Press. In an introduction written in l950 from his La Jolla, CA, home to "Trouble Is My Business" published by Ballentine Books, l972 (the book was earlier copyrighted by Curtis Publishing in l939 from materials printed in l934, 35, 36, 38, 39, 44, and 1950), Chandler said: As I look back on my own stories it would be absurd if I did not wish they had been better. But if they had been much better they would not have been published. If the formula had been a little less rigid, more of the writing of that time might have survived. Some of us tried pretty hard to break out of the formula, but we usually got caught and set back. To exceed the limits of a formula without destroying it is the dream of every magazine writer who is not a hopeless hack. There are things in my stories which I might like to change or leave out altogether. To do this may look simple, but if you try, you find you cannot do it at all. You will only destroy what is good without having any noticeable effect on what is bad. You cannot recapture the mood, the state of innocence, much less the animal gusto you had when you had very little else. Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say. (ix-x) He concluded with: The mystery story is a kind of writing that need not dwell in the shadow of the past and owes little if any allegiance to the cult of the classics. It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than "Henry Esmond," a better tale of children than "The Golden Age," a sharper social vignette than "Madame Bovary," a more graceful and elegant evocation than "The Spoils of Poyton," a wider and richer canvas than "War and Peace" or "The Brothers Karamazov." But to devise a more plausible mystery than "The Hound of the Baskervilles" or "The Purloined Letter" should not be too difficult. Nowadays it would be rather more difficult not to. There are no "classics" of crime and detection. Not one. Within its frame of reference, which is the only way it should be judged, a classic is a piece of writing which exhausts the possibilities of its form and can hardly be surpassed. No story or novel of mystery has done that yet. Few have come close. Which is one of the principal reasons why otherwise reasonable people continue to assault the citadel. From Raymond Chandler's "The High Window," Vintage Books, New York, l976 (originally published by A.A. Knopf, New York, l942): He kept his lips pulled back from his teeth and talked through them at me. "She doesn't love me. I know of no particular reason why she should. Things have been strained between us. She was used to a fast-moving sort of life. With us, well, it has been pretty dull. We haven't quarreled. Linda's the cool type. But she hasn't really had a lot of fun being married to me." "You're just too modest," I said. His eyes glinted, but he kept his smooth manner pretty well in place. "Not good, Marlowe. Not even fresh. Look, you have the air of a decent sort of guy. I know my mother is not putting out two hundred and fifty bucks just to be freezy. Maybe it's not Linda. Maybe it's something else. Maybe–" he stopped and then said this very slowly, watching my eyes, "maybe it's Morny." "Maybe it is," I said cheerfully. He picked his gloves up and slapped the desk with them and put them down again. "I'm in a spot there all right," he said. "But I didn't think she know about it. Morny must have called her up. He promised not to." This was easy. I said: "How much are you into him for?" It wasn't so easy. He got suspicious again. "If he called her up, he would have told her. And she would have told you," he said thinly. "Maybe it isn't Morny," I said, beginning to want a drink very badly. "Maybe the cook is with child by the iceman. But if it was Morny, how much?" "Twelve thousand," he said, looking down and flushing. "Threats?" He nodded. "Tell him to go fly a kite," I said. "What kind of lad is he? Tough?" He looked up again, his face being brave. "I suppose he is. I suppose they all are. He used to be a screen heavy. Good looking in a flashy way, a chaser. But don't get any ideas. Linda just worked there, like the waiters and the band. And if you are looking for her, you'll have a hard time finding her." I sneered at him politely. "Why would I have a hard time finding her? She's not buried in the back yard, I hope." (21-22) Frank MacShane, "The Life of Raymond Chandler." New York: Penguin Books, l976. Raymond Chandler's Place in Literature In 1918, Osbert Sitwell took a lease on No. 5, three doors away, and gave literary dinner parties there with his sister, Edith, acting as hostess. George Orwell's widow told Chandler, at just such a dinner party, that Edith Sitwell, still going strong at 68, "sat up in bed and read my stuff with passion." According to Mrs. Orwell, Chandler reported, he was the darling of the British intellectuals and all the poets raved about him. One of the poets was W.H. Auden, who averred that Chandler's books should not be judged as escape literature, but as works of art. Another was Stephen Spender, who with his wife, Natasha, befriended Chandler in London. T.S. Eliot was a fan. "Over here," Chandler wrote in a letter, "I am not regarded as a mystery writer, but as a novelist of some importance." Evelyn Waugh called Chandler the best writer in America. But Chander knew where it came from and it came from Hemingway. Chandler died March 26, 1959, age 70. Stoppard,Tom, "Stalking Raymond Chandler's Spirit." New York Times, July 19, 1998, p. 1, sec. 2. (continued next week)
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