Great Writers on the Art of Fiction by James Daley

Author:James Daley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486122045
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

RAYMOND CHANDLER (1888–1959)

“THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDER”

Born in Chicago in 1888, Raymond Chandler moved with his mother to Great Britain in 1895 shortly after his parents’ divorce. It was there, while a student at Dulwich College, that Chandler acquired his love of language and literature, publishing his first poem “The Unknown Love” in 1908. It wasn’t until 1933—after many years of working odd jobs in California—that Chandler’s first pulp fiction story “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot,” published in Black Mask magazine, kicked off his career as a preeminent crime writer. However, it was the 1939 publication of The Big Sleep that earned Chandler his place as a writer not only of pulp fiction, but of great literature as well. His razor-sharp prose and hardboiled style was admired and emulated by writers of the stature of Ian Fleming and Evelyn Waugh.

Like Conrad’s preface, “The Simple Art of Murder” is as much a manifesto as it is an essay on writing. Unflinching in the demands he makes on fiction to be realistic and believable, Chandler analyzes detective fiction from Christie to Hammett, eschewing anything that does not achieve the standards he has set for literature as a whole. More importantly, Chandler offers a set of criteria and a method of assessment which any writer can apply both to what they read and to what they write.

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