Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles

Hello Everyone:

Raymond Chandler Cartoon
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I know I said we'd talk again on Monday but I was just thinking about the cover article I read yesterday in the current issue of the LA Weekly (http://www.laweekly.com).  The story is about an NCAA-type tournament the editors held to determine the best book written about Los Angeles. There were many fine entries and the winner was a dark horse selection, If He Hollers Let Him Go, by Chester Hime.  You can read why in the article.  The article did get me thinking about a paper I wrote for a class on Southern California architecture two years ago as a first year grad at USC.  The topic I chose was on Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles.  I was inspired to write about it because I was reading his books at the time.  If you've never read or heard of Raymond Chandler, you don't know what you're missing.  Raymond Chandler is by far one of the best detective fiction novelist  of all time.  I believe he ranks up there with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe
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What makes Chandler so good is that his iconic alter ego Philip Marlowe was so enmeshed with the city.  Also, like Chandler, Philip Marlowe was an urban nomad in a city of urban nomads.

One recurring theme of the of detective fiction genre is constant movement.  The flawed hero of Chandler's stories was constantly on the move: the mean streets, cocktails, seedy waterfronts, and opulent mansions.  This restless quality in Marlowe mirrored the restlessness of the city and his creator.  Where did all this come from?  In the thirties and forties, Los Angeles was a region of rapid growth and by 1940, the car culture was in full swing heralding the way the rest of nation would live in the post-World War II years.  Los Angeles was a city of immigrants from the East Coast and Midwest who came to reinvent themselves.  The irony of this is that attempt at reinvention, this 'new society' was still rooted in the past which shaped its public manifestation as were its inhabitants free to make themselves over.  Raymond Chandler and his beloved wife Cissy were part this nomadic tribe.  The Chandlers were constantly moving around Southern California in search of some sense of connection.

Hollywood
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When it comes to reinvention, Hollywood is the solar system for the those looking for a make over.  Hollywood is this rather strange invention.  As a place, Hollywood is 503 square miles (1,214 square kilometers).  Most of the housing consists of apartments with high turnover rates, attesting to the mobile nature of Los Angeles.  The majority of the population is engaged in, some form, in the motion picture/television industry.  These "workers" can be divided into three parts: the elite-the boldfaced executives, actors, directors, et cetera, the junior elite-i.e the executives, and the lesser elite-the administrative staff, skilled and, unskilled workers.  At the bottom feeder levels are the hangers on such as the extras and sycophants who move about looking for their big break.  Horace McCoy and Nathaniel West, contemporaries of Raymond Chandler, capture this stratified society within a a society in their equally terrific novels They Shoot Horses Don't They (McCoy, 1935) and Day of The Locust (West).  This Hollywood is the place that sucks the very soul of its dwellers right out of their bodies and tosses the carcasses out to rot in the street.

Aerial View of Los Angeles, c. 1940s
videogamesblogger.com

The relationship between Raymond Chandler and his fictional alter ego is complicated.  One the one hand, Los Angeles is a city that's devoured them, keeping on the edge of nothing.  Conversely, without the city, they're like the disembodied ghosts, nameless, faceless spirits that wander the streets of Tinsel Town in search of the big break.  Los Angeles was a city that fired Chandler's imagination and vice versa.  Without the crime, corruption, seedy locations, femme fatals, and shady characters what else what he have written about?  How else would the fictional detective made a living?  Like Chandler, Philip Marlowe knew the raw underside of the city that could destroy people by giving them false hope.  Where else could Philip Marlowe have existed?  Pain and bad behavior his passion and obsession.

One thing that the LA Weekly article made quite clear is that Los Angeles, the real Los Angeles, is not a glamourous place.  It's certainly not the place you see on television.  It's a hard place to live.  Yet it is a place where people do come every year looking for a fresh start.  I believe that if you're honest about yourself and dreams, you can thrive in the city where dreams die hard and fast.  Life isn't easy anywhere.  A city like Los Angeles does fire the imagination with thoughts of glitter and glamour but get rid of them.  It's a city like anywhere else.

For books about or by Raymond Chandler please go to Amazon or you local public library
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