Today is the anniversary of Raymond Chandler's death, March 26, 1959, which brings up the fact that next year will be the 50th year since his passing — a tailor-made opportunity for a retrospective, and no doubt, there will be several.
I came across an article from the LA Times recently (actually written in December of last year), which makes me almost want to go to Los Angeles and take the "Chandler tour," as did the author, although it's now more an exercise in frustration and futility. Judith Freeman (The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved) set out to track down every place where Chandler had lived in L.A., in hopes ofdiscovering "how L.A. had changed, if the city of his fiction still existed, and how he had lived here."
Although there is no preserved Chandler home (like there is for Dickens in London and Balzac in France, among many other writers' homes around the world), Freeman realizes that
"The city itself is Chandlerland. You can drive through many neighborhoods and feel yourself moving through the landscapes of his stories. He captured this city — the wasted light of gas stations, the dark banked canyons, neon signs glaring across rain-slicked boulevards, windows glowing on hillsides, gray mornings with high fog, shadowed mansions, the drift of wind from the sea — he made it all his own."
Freeman goes on to point out that Chandler had a love-hate relationship with L.A., and up to the end of his life remained lonely and rootless. To write about a place," he said, "you have to love it or hate it or both, like a woman."
Of course, if you want the commercial experience, you can always try "Raymond Chandler's Bay City Bus Tour." Wonder if Chandler would be amused or appalled?
