7/3/2023 0 Comments The high window![]() ![]() I’m partial to Chandler, and under his spell, so perhaps I’m overselling him. Chandler mastered all of them, with a clear compelling flow that he made look easy. The broadest foundations of writing are Plotting, Character, and Style. ![]() I’m an Angeleno today, and I’m beguiled by the half-familiar, half-jarring journey, back into Chandler’s expressionist LA of seventy years ago. At least, the ambience of his stories is haunted by that dangerous twilight even when he paints fine details in color, and brings each instant vividly to life. His mysteries take place in an exaggerated Los Angeles of the 1940s, which in the reader’s mind is black and white, more black than white, just like the film noirs that Chandler’s mysteries inspired. ![]() ![]() Raymond Chandler is my new favorite writer. He’ll startle you with instants of beauty, and occasionally his poetic soul shines through “ like the justice we dream of but don't find.” But he’s a craftsman with no time for showing off - he’s too busy tightening his plot, sharpening his characters, and building his tangled world of looming shadows and glaring Californian sun. It’s easy to barrel through the whole mystery, barely remarking that Chandler is a great writer. When you read a Raymond Chandler thriller, you hang on tight while your knuckles turn white on his rollercoaster ride. ![]()
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