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Indlæser... A Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of Raymond Chandleraf Tom Williams
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Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. Well done bio in which i found out just how much sadder Raymond Chandler was compared to his most famous character, Phillip Marlowe. Fascinating read on a writer and what drove him to fame and ruin both. ( ) Raymond Chandler - July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959 Though the subject of Raymond Chandler was an exciting one to my mind, I often found this book to be a little repetitive. However, the complexity of this man was quite fascinating and I did learn a lot from this biographical history. Unfortunately, many of his formative early years seem to be based more on supposition than researched facts, but perhaps there were few facts available to research. On the other hand, he was a prolific letter-writer even while young and much of the biography is based on quoted snippets from those letters. Born the son of an alcoholic, it is not surprising that though he abhorred alcoholism, he would fall into the same trap, regardless of how he felt about it. Chandler appears to have been a lonely boy who never really completely grew up. The need to be important and powerful, the need to have close friends and a wife who loves him wholeheartedly plays as a theme throughout the book. I felt for him, a tribute to Tom Williams, who obviously 'got' him. Raymond Chandler, a world-famous author whose work lives on decades after his death, is definitely an enigma, but I feel at his core he is a little boy lost who often has no idea of his impact and yet irrationally thinks he does. The author is not just giving nod to a list of Chandler's books, but looks at them, takes them apart and puts them back together again, using his own comments. In fact, that is exactly how Chandler himself looked and learned how to write a book. He lived in Chicago and in Los Angeles in what might be called their heyday, but was at the time gangster-ruled. Chicago had nothing on Los Angeles for corruption. Here we are not talking about Hollywood but the fast rise to wealth from oil, the collapse of morals from the Depression and the resulting city corruption. He was a product of his time, yet in his mind he lived in an earlier time. Here, then, is the root of Ray Chandler's books and his association in writing of his character, Philip Marlowe, and later to his screenplays. I think it is honest to say his personal life revolved around three main themes: His deep love for his older wife to whom he was married until her death; his commitment to literary writing rather than grinding out corruption and murder, but with a similar theme; his alcoholism. A brilliant man, but complicated and driven. ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
"The life of Raymond Chandler has long been obscured by secrets and half-truths as deceptive as anything in his novel The Long Goodbye. Now, drawing on new interviews, previously unpublished letters, and archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Tom Williams casts a new light on this most mysterious of writers. Raymond is a man troubled by loneliness and desertion from an early age. Born in Chicago in 1888, his childhood was overshadowed by the collapse of his parents' marriage, his father's alcohol-fuelled violence eventually forcing the boy and his doting mother to leave for Ireland and later London. but class-bound England proved stifling, and Chandler, in his twenties and eager to forge a new life, returned to the US where--in corruption-ridden LA--he met his one great love, Cissy Pascal, a married woman eighteen years his senior. It was only during middle age, later his alcoholism wrecked a lucrative career an oilman, that Chandler seriously turned to crime fiction. And Philip Marlowe endures."--From publisher's description. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.52Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1900-1944LC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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