speaking of Chandler

Speaking of RAYMOND CHANDLER, he has to be one of the patron saints of literary late bloomers. He published his first story at age 45, and his first novel at age 51. By age 70 he had published his seventh and final novel, and made a lot of money despite his writing being of the highest literary quality.

Chandler was always bright and insightful, just couldn’t get it together until his mid-forties. It happens, if somewhat rarely.

They say that every author has a few projects in the back of the mind that they “hope to write someday”. One of those projects in the back of my own mind would be a joint biographical sketch of Chandler and H.P. Lovecraft. What an interesting comparison/contrast.

*both wrote in genres denigrated as “pulp,” though detective fiction is generally viewed as less “nerdy” than science fiction/fantasy

*Chandler born 1888, Lovecraft born 1890

*Lovecraft is often considered a “late bloomer” himself, but did his best writing from around ages 35-45, while Chandler didn’t even get started until 45 (and truth be told, some of his early stories are God awful and nearly unreadable, at least in my opinion)

*Chandler was a suave womanizer, Lovecraft a fearful mama’s boy, but both married stunning divorcées

*Chandler was a brave soldier (for Canada) in the trenches of WWI; Lovecraft made a comical effort to enlist that was denied, probably due to mental health issues raised by his mother

*Chandler’s literary power is centered entirely in the character of a sole first-person narrator: Marlowe. Chandler’s novels are unthinkable without Marlowe. He started writing The Long Goodbye in the third-person but found that he couldn’t do it and had to start from scratch. By contrast, Houellebecq is surely right that Lovecraft’s human characters are literary non-entities, and exist only in order to observe the horrors unfolding around them.

*Lovecraft died sure that his writings would die with him. Chandler lived to become a bestseller and a star Hollywood screenwriter, holding his own in arguments with celebrities of the order of Hitchcock.

Many interesting contrasts between these two as well as similarities. But I’ve often found it eerie that Chandler picked up writing just when Lovecraft left off and prepared to die– as if they shared one muse who promised only half a lifetime for each.