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Title: Raymond Chandler : Later Novels and Other Writings : The Lady in the Lake / The Little Sister / The Long Goodbye / Playback /Double Indemnity / Selected Essays and Letters (Library of America) by Raymond Chandler, Frank Macshane, Frank McShane ISBN: 1-883011-08-6 Publisher: Library of America Pub. Date: October, 1995 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: "The Simple Art of Editing" Part 1: The Best Value
Comment: This volume is bursting at the seams with Chandler's writings and it is an astonishing value even at the retail price. It even comes wrapped in plastic!!! Alas I do have one complaint, you can buy Double Indemnity on it's own in a seperate volume that is very much in print. The editors at LOA must be aware of this. If so, they must also be aware that "The Blue Dahlia" is no longer in print and has not been since 1976. Wouldn't it have made more since to eliminate "Double Indemnity" since it is readily available in another volume and replace it with "Blue Dahlia"? Couldn't an argument be made that in addition to it's scarcity "The Blue Dahlia" is also a better representation of Chandler's screenwriting talent because it his only produced solo effort and the fact that it garnered him an Oscar nomination?
Bottom line: LOA has redeemed itself for it's blatant lies on the Dust Jacket of "Stories and Early Novels" (see my review "Incomplete and Misleading")By the way, no one has ever explained why they neglected to include Chandler's last complete Marlowe story, "The Pencil".
I will be writing other reviews of Chandler collections undwe the clever title of "The Simple Art of Editing" and let me assure you that they do not hold up as well as this LOA masterpiece.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent binding, excellent content
Comment: Contained in this volume are the last four (of seven) Marlowe novels, the Double Indemnity script co-written with Billy Wilder (including lines that were cut), his famous essay on "The Simple Art of Murder", one on "Writers in Hollywood", another titled "Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story", and finally "Notes (very brief, please) on English and American Style". Couple these with thoroughly entertaining and sometimes revealing letters to friends and fans, and you can't miss.
In one of these letters he even discusses fellow hardboiled writer Ross Macdonald's (here called John, as he hadn't changed his name yet) The Moving Target, which cribbed some ideas from The Big Sleep and Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man.
The novels themselves? Classic Chandler - enough said. If you'd like to know why you should expect the best in hardboiled detective fiction, well, read 'em all, or at least one. (If you're planning on that course of action, try the first in the series, The Big Sleep, included in a similar volume called Stories and Early Novels: Pulp Stories/The Big Sleep/Farewell, My Lovely/The High Window.)
Bottom line, this is required reading for anyone who won't read just anything but at the same time doesn't limit themself to Anna Karenina.
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