Raymond Chandler Biography

Raymond Thornton Chandler was born on July 23, 1888 in Chicago Illinois. His parents were Maurice Benjamin Chandler of Philadelphia and Florence Thornton of Waterford Ireland. His father was the descendant of Quakers who emigrated from Ireland, so Chandler was more than half Irish. His early years were spent in Plattsmouth Nebraska near his mother’s sister and her family.  His father, a civil engineer, had a problem with alcoholism and eventually abandoned Chandler and his mother. Throughout his life Chandler rarely spoke of his father except to refer to him as “an utter swine” (MacShane 4). The absence of a relationship with his father led to “an extraordinary sense of loyalty to his mother, and a sense of justice that became a central part of his character and gave him the attitudes he was to express later through his character Philip Marlowe” (MacShane 5).

In 1895 at the age of seven his mother moved him to England where they lived with his maternal aunt and grandmother. His home life was not very happy because the presence of Florence and Ray was not welcomed by the family, and his mother was often reminded of her dependence on them for support. Chandler was educated at a middle class public school in Dulwich that was academically very sound. He considered himself literate and intellectual, and attributed his ability to avoid pretentiousness in his writing, which he viewed as a problem with many fiction works, to his classical education.

After graduation instead of attending college he studied foreign languages in France and Germany. He worked a civil service job in England which he detested, and quit after six months because it conflicted with his disposition. He was clearly trying to “discover a personal and literary sense of self” (Marling 7). It was during this time that he tried his hand at writing for the first time in newspapers and journals in England. His literary work there consisted of poetry that was romantic in nature, articles, and reviews. Even though he thought of himself as an anglophile he decided to return to America in 1912 because as he stated, “America seemed to call to me in some mysterious way” (Marling 11).

Over the next four years he moved from place to place and worked different jobs until the start of World War I. Chandler enlisted in the Canadian Army and served until he suffered a concussion during a German bombardment which eventually resulted in his discharge. After he returned from the military he married Cissy Pascal, eighteen years his elder, to whom he would remain devoted until her death in 1954. When the war ended Chandler worked for an oil company where he eventually achieved the office of vice president, but was fired for his problems with alcohol, absenteeism, and womanizing. So at the age of forty-four he began his literary career out of necessity to support himself. He chose the mystery genre after reading pulp magazines and published detective mystery short stories for The Black Mask and Dime Detective.

Raymond Chandler is thought of as one of the foremost authors of the twentieth century. He had an extensive impact on the style of modern American popular literature. According to Miranda Hickman, English Professor at McGill University, “Chandler's style--that enigmatic amalgam of cynicism, lyricism, and streetwise intelligence--had profoundly shaped our culture in many ways, some immediately recognizable, others more subtle” (285). He is considered to be one of the founders of the hard-boiled genre of detective fiction, and his protagonist, Philip Marlowe, is the definitive example of a private detective. He collaborated on three screenplays and wrote seven novels, three of which are considered to be masterpieces. "The Long Goodbye" written in 1953 has been acclaimed as a serious and significant mainstream novel. When asked if he ever read his own writing after publication he admitted that he enjoyed reading it and remarked, “There must be some magic in writing after all, but I take no credit for it. It just happens, like red hair” (MacShane 268).

Chandler was a complex man whose sensitive nature contributed to his success as a writer, but made him a deeply unhappy man. He was unable to accept the fact that he would never find the fulfillment or achievement he was searching for. While he had some sense of his accomplishments he always downplayed his literary contribution. He said of himself two years before his death, “I have lived my life on the edge of nothing” (MacShane 1). Alone and suffering from clinical depression after the death of his wife he turned to alcohol for escape and attempted suicide in 1955. During the next four years he traveled between the United States and Europe and made multiple attempts at sobriety. He died on March 26, 1959 in La Jolla California after a brief illness.

Works Cited

Hickman, Miranda B. "Introduction: the complex history of a 'simple art'." Studies in the Novel

     35.3 (2003): 285+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.

MacShane, Frank. The Life of Raymond Chandler. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.,

     1976. Print.

Marling, William. Raymond Chandler. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986. Print.