Today we will introduce ourselves to the biography and literary career of the American writer Raymond Chandler, one of the representatives of the noir novel in the United States.
Raymond Thornton Chandler was born on July 22, 1988 in Chicago, United States. At the age of eight, he would move with her mother, Florence Dart Thornton, to England, afterseparatingfrom her husband, Benjamin Chandler, as a result of the abuse and alcoholism of this one.
In England he would train at Dulwich College, later enlisting in thearmy, which he would soon leave. During 1905 and 1907, he would make a series of trips that would take him through France and Germany. After returning to England, he would acquire British nationality.
he would start working as ajournalistfor different media such as “London Daily Express”, “The Westminster Gazette”, or “The Spectator”. During this time he would publish poems, essays, reviews, and some short stories such as “The Rose Leaf Romance.”
In 1912 he would return to the United States, where he enlisted in the First Canadian Expeditionary Division to participate in the World War I. On the French front, he would train as apilotin the RAF, but the war would end before he finished his training and she would return to California with his mother.
In California, after going through multipletrades, such as parking cars or farming, he would start working as an economist, after studying this discipline on his own. His mother would die in 1924, the year in which he would marry Pearl Cecily Bowen. Chandler rose professionally to run an oil company, but after thecrack of 29, he would be fired after it went bankrupt.
After losing his job he would begin to suffer from depression, and he would decide to invest all his time in literature to overcome it. He then becomes interested inpolice and mystery novels. He would begin to publish his first police and mystery stories in different black genre magazines of the time. Among these first stories we can highlight some such as "Blackmailers do not kill", "The whistleblower", "Gas de Nevada", "Assassin in the rain", or "Shooting at the Cyrano club" among others.
he would publish his first successful novel, “The Big Sleep”, in 1939, at age 51. In it he tells as detective Philip Marlowe, he has to rescue the daughter of a Los Angeles billionaire. After this novel, he would publish others such as "Goodbye, doll", in 1940, "The Sinister Window", in 1942, "The Little Sister", in 1949, or "The Long Goodbye", in 1953, among others. For the latter he would be awarded theEdgar Award.
In 1943 he would go on to work for Hollywood, writing screenplays such as “Doom,” directed by Billy Wilder, and Alfred Hitchcock's “Strangers on a Train.” But after a while, he would get tired of the industryof the cinema and would settle definitively in La Jolla, California. At this stage he would also publish some of his most importantessayssuch as “The future is ours” and “Writers in Hollywood.”
After the death of his wife in 1954, Chadler would fall into a deep depression, which would lead to severe alcoholismand several suicide attempts. Despite this, he would go on to write plays like the unfinished “Poodle Springs.”
Raymond Chandler passed away at his home in La Jolla, California, on March 26, 1959.
