Posted on

Raymond Chandler on Plot

Raymond Chandler was one of the greatest detective story writers of the twentieth century. Chandler himself said that Dashiell Hammett invented the hard-boiled style, but Chandler was at least Hammett’s equal as a practitioner. Many film critics acknowledge that Chandler was responsible for bringing hard-guy detectives on dark streets and seedy alleys into movie theaters.

We all know that the essence of the detective novel is the murder plot. Chandler’s stories transformed murder from the intellectual puzzles of his predecessors into the quest for truth and honor in a deceptive and transient world. Chandler’s Los Angeles language, characters, and settings ushered classic drama into the popular detective story.

Chandler did not much care for who-dunits. He maintained that a mystery that depended on the final reveal of the murderer for its appeal was a failure. Famously, when a filmmaker working on a movie version of The Big Sleep sent Chandler a telegram asking who killed the chauffeur who drowned off the Lido dock, he wired back “Damned if I know.” Exactly who sent the telegram is unclear, but Chandler acknowledged writing the reply.

Chandler had his own way of composing a mystery plot. He said in various letters that he did not plan plots, he let them grow on their own. This runs counter to conventional writing advice and Chandler admitted that his method was inefficient. In a letter to an aspiring writer, Chandler explains the inefficiency of his method: “I do my plotting in my head as I go along and usually I do it wrong and have to do it over again. I know there are writers who plot their stories in great detail before they begin to write them, but I’m not one of that group.” (2 July 1951, in Selected Letters.)

Chandler wrote to his friend, mystery critic James Sandoe: “…my plot problem invariably ends up as a desperate attempt to justify a lot of material that, for me at least, has come alive. It’s probably a silly way to write, but I seem to know no other way.” ( 23 September 1948, in Selected Letters.)

When a scene went wrong for Chandler, he did not try fix the flaws with piecemeal editing; he could only start over. He tailored his method of typing his manuscripts for ease in rewriting. He typed in portrait mode on letter-size sheets cut in half. It appears from his manuscripts that he revised by underlining the words on a page that he wanted to keep and used only the underlined words as he rewrote the entire page. By keeping his pages small, revising by rewriting was more manageable in those pre-computer word processing days. (See “Chandler’s Writing Process” in Writing The Long Goodbye.)

Constrained to this torturous process, Chandler was not prolific. He wrote only seven novels, a couple dozen short stories, a few screen plays, a handful of essays, and a sprinkling of poems. He started writing mysteries in middle age after alcoholism destroyed a successful career as an oil company executive. Inefficient or not, Chandler’s process lead to his success as an virtuoso stylist and creator of characters.

Posted on

Reading Trollope On Line

When I mention that Anthony Trollope is one of my favorite authors, I get eye rolls, even among Downton Abbey fans, a series that I don’t care for because I think it is the Gone With The Wind of the British aristocracy.

I won’t get into why I prefer Trollope— any Trollope, even The Fixed Period— to Downton Abbey, but I have many reasons, which I might get into in another post, but not now.

Anthony Trollope was a mid-nineteenth century British Victorian novelist, roughly contemporary with Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, the Brontë’s, and George Elliot. He was somewhat older than Thomas Hardy who wrote well into the twentieth century. Jane Austen preceded Trollope, straddling the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Although Trollope is by far my favorite among the Victorians, I notice that he is not listed among Victorian novelists in the Wikipedia article on Victorian Literature, not even in in the subsection on other Victorian writers. Why is that? I am not an expert, but in his own time, Trollope’s contemporaries accused him of being too prolific and too commercial. He was not ashamed to fret over payment for his books.

Trollope was a bureaucrat in the British postal system and he often wrote while traveling on official business. He kept to a strict schedule, rising early to get in his daily quota of words and said that if he finished one book during a writing session, he started his next without pausing. He kept meticulous records of his number of words per day.

In other words, Anthony Trollope was a novel writing machine. He wrote forty-seven novels in addition to short stories, travel books, a history of the English clergy, an autobiography, and other writings on miscellaneous subjects. Contemporary critics roundly condemned him for being overly prolific. Today, he might be accused of being a hack, of substituting quantity for quality.

Myself, I am profoundly grateful that Trollope wrote every day and turned out books one after another. I have been reading Trollope regularly for thirty years now, and there are still books I am looking forward to reading for the first time and there are others that seem completely new because it has been so long since I read them.

Some things make it easy to become a Trollope enthusiast. Project Gutenberg has made most of his books free in electronic editions. Amazon also has many of Trollope’s works available electronically at nominal price or free. These electronic versions are not perfect— the transcription process introduces a few errors and they are often the product of enthusiasts rather than experts, but they are still very readable. Cheap used paper copies are also easy to find on-line.

For me, however, the gem is the Group Reading of Anthony Trollope , which I call the “Trollope list.” The Trollope list reads a book by Trollope together every two or three months. I think they are unique in that a volunteer member of the group summarizes each week’s chapters. This is startlingly effective. The summaries spark discussion, and busy people who have trouble keeping up with their reading, can keep up with the discussion based on the summaries even when they have slipped behind. I admit to occasionally reading only the summaries during a busy week and skipping a few chapters in my own reading. This makes group reading so much less onerous. You can relax and enjoy Trollope instead of worrying about finishing a reading assignment each week.

I cannot say enough about the group members. Some are academics, some are dilettantes like me, others are just enthusiastic readers. The discussions are wide ranging—some go into Victorian arcana, others apply Trollope’s insights into contemporary society, some revel in the Trollope’s romance and dramatic tension. Anyone who enjoys Dickens or Jane Austen should dip into Trollope. He touches many of the same topics, but with a different style and perspective that I find fascinating.

The Group Reading of Anthony Trollope is an excellent starting point for getting to know Trollope. The group is well into Phineas Finn at this writing, but do drop in, you may find that starting in the middle, “in medea res,” works for you. You must join to participate or read the discussion, but it’s all free. Civility and absence of politics are the rule. There are no trolls on the Trollope list.

If you don’t care for the daily and hourly emails of an active group, opt for “no email” and go to the group website, Group Reading of Anthony Trollope when you feel like it. You only get one email a day if you go for a “daily summary.” My choice is to enjoy the continual conversation of “individual messages.” You can subscribe below.


Posted on

The Dying of the Light

Dylan Thomas said “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Ben Frerichs did not rage, he kept the light burning.

Ben died Thursday, February 8, 2018. Ben was the third friend who died during the past twelve months. Reach an age and these events get more frequent. The scramble to stay connected intensifies and life goes on.

Our last conversation was less than a week before he died. Ben’s voice was weaker than it was a few weeks before, he slumped more in his wheel chair, and his face was paler. We talked for two hours. His color improved and his voice became stronger as we talked, but he tired, his nurses became impatient, the afternoon rush on I-5 began, and the conversation ended.

Ben talked about Raymond Chandler and Michael Connelly and a piece of mine that he had read for me. He was thankful that someone had given him an assignment to finish. His world was constricting around him. His sprawling body got visibly smaller, he could do less and less for himself, but inside the shrinking perimeter, Ben did not decline, his thoughts were not frail. He talked about community and corporate discussions. How often people with good intention don’t understand the simple mechanics of coming together to accomplish a goal.

Dying men fight against their chains. And chains, Ben had. A plastic connector protruding from his chest, a bed pan to be changed, well he should have roared, scratched, and bit. Ben said he needed less help than most of his fellows in the nursing center and therefore the attendants were not prepared for him. Ben conceived of a course to certify caregivers. The only examination would be oral. The questions would be easy, but the candidate’s mouths would be gently sealed with duct tape.

I met Ben in a writing class. A few students formed a writing group to carry on when the class ended. That was close to ten years ago. Ben was the guiding spirit of the group, finding a meeting place, making sure that everyone knew of the next meeting, and who was up for critique. Over the years the group became less formal, but it still exists, although Ben has not been a participant since he was hospitalized over a year ago.

Until he suddenly collapsed, he was vital. Many friends, offering rides, conducting a session on writing groups at the Chuckanut Writer’s Conference, active in the Bellingham writing community, and talking, discussing, curious, out-going. His life changed dramatically when his respiratory system gave way and he was permanently attached to medical equipment, but Ben himself did not change, and now, he is beyond change.