Chandler, Raymond

[A commonplace book and later collection of dialogue notes and ideas]. [London and Los Angeles, 1906 - 1923 and later]



4to (8 1/4 x 6 1/2 in.; 210 x 165 mm). Lined notebook with entries in pen and pencil, 46 pages written; a few corners broken off. Half cloth; joints torn, rubbed.

Raymond T. Chandler (signed and dated 18 February 1906 on front pastedown)

a few corners broken off. Half cloth; joints torn, rubbed.
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The nascent voice of Marlowe, Chandler records street slang, gangster idioms and story ideas

Titled "Notebook of anything & everything likely to be interesting or useful and many things likely to be either"  the present was originally the Dulwich College notebook Chandler kept at school  and begins with his Greek notes. It then becomes a commonplace book with entries of three long Kipling poems and interestingly a lengthy passage from Crane's "The Black Riders." He notes reading Marlowe's "Tamburlane" and records numerous long quotes from Stevenson, Chesterton and Thackeray .

But the young Chandler also begins composing here as well, writing his own attempts at aphorisms which include "Poetry, like a statement in Parliament, should bear some relation to the facts", "Every artist admires himself for the the wrong things" and perhaps more in the style of the adult author, "the man who cannot take his whole revenge is not a complete man."

But it is when the notebook was later recycled in the 1920's,  the Chandler of the pulps and Black Mask begins to have his first voice. Recording a list of street, narcotic  and "Hoofer slang" the very English Chandler begins to study American idioms, "Lip = Mouthpiece", "squibbed off = shot", "kick the joint = break in", "under glass = in jail"  and "jabber = hypodermic" fill up a few pages before we start to see the original turns of phrase that Chandler was later to develop into such a singular style.

 "Shallow as a cafeteria tray" , "meaningless as a smoke ring" and "tough as a hangnail"  are a few of his early efforts towards the  similes that Marlowe was famous for ("She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight"). He also lists a number of possible story titles, among them "Stumblebum", "Some Die in the Morning" and most interestingly, "Playback".

A rare insight into Chandler's transformation from young reader to a pre-eminent writer of American detective fiction