Raymond Chandler (1888 -1959) used the not-so-simple art of murder to
rise from pulp fiction and become an American icon whose name, like
Ernest Hemingway and Emily Dickinson, evokes a cultural sensibility.
For Chandler, that means sun-splashed noir, a lone wolf
conflicted hero in our treacherous modern world, a properly dressed
cynicism cloaking our darkest and most redeeming desires, love and death
and what that’s all worth. To quote one of today’s leading novelists
Paul Auster: “Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about
America, and America has never looked the same to us since.”
This two-hour class will focus on three of Chandler’s most famous prose works: The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye and Farewell, My Lovely.
Odds are, even if you haven’t read these novels, you’ve seen the
movies. But go back to the prose. As another leading modern American
author Jonathan Lethem says: “His books bear re-reading every few
years.”
As we read these three books, we will get more than just great
entertainment, a simple solution to yet another murder. We can glimpse
the man and the forces he harnessed to shape our culture. Maybe we can
find something to hold on to that will reveal not just how some
fictional character died, but rather how we all live.
Who knows what we’ll find as we walk Raymond Chandler’s mean streets.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Italy awarded its 2004 Raymond Chandler medal to James Grady, honoring
his more than a dozen novels and an equal number of short stories,
including his first novel published when he was 24 that became the
Robert Redford movie Three Days Of The Condor. Grady has
worked as a U.S. Senate aide, an investigative reporter for syndicated
columnist Jack Anderson, and a cultural columnist for AOL’s PoliticsDaily.com. He has freelanced for The New Republic, The Washington Post and Washingtonian Magazine, and has written for film icons like John Woo and Stephen Cannell. France awarded Grady’s career its Grand Prix du Roman Noir and Japan gave his last novel Mad Dogs the Baku Misu award for literature. For Politics & Prose, Grady has previously taught classes on Dashiell Hammett and James Cain.
