Raymond Chandler är en sån där författare som jag hört om så mycket att jag tycker att jag nästan inte behöver läsa honom. Hans Philip Marlowe är sinnesbilden för de hårdkokta privatdetektiverna, ibland nidbilden av tuffa, snygga, lätt alkoholiserade privatdetektiver där välsvarvade blondiner glider in på det slitna kontoret med trubbel i kölvattnet.

Han är också uppfostrad på brittiska internatskolor, med en klassisk bildning,en fantastisk brevskrivare. Han var gift och förälskad i sin fru genom hela sitt liv och en av de sakerna han ångrade i livet var att han aldrig skrev en bok som han tyckte var bra nog att dedikera till henne. De senaste åren har hans böcker också alltmer fått det litterära erkännande de förtjänar – inte längre bara nidbilden av hårdkokta dussindeckare och kiosklitteratur, utan att en spännande skildring av Los Angeles övre och undre liv.

The Long Good-Bye, Farewell, My Lovely och Trouble Is My Business
Det är böckerna av honom som jag ska läsa (okej, jag har redan läst två igår, men det är okej att tjuvstarta med läsningen). Titlarna! Cocktailsen som dricks, whiskyn (blandad kvalité; bra när han lyckas stjäla den från kunder) som sveps, husen, kläderna, dammet, de varma vindarna. Fantastisk litteratur att koppla av till.

The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the woman he loved
Ett dubbelt porträtt av Raymond Chandler och den äldre kvinnan, redan skiljd två gånger när de träffades, som han älskade. Boken beskrivs som ”a revelation of a marriage that was a wellspring of need, illusion and creativity.”Eller som han själv beskriver sin fru i brevet nedan: ”she was the music heard faintly at the edge of sound”

Det här är t.ex. ett av de brev han skrev efter hennes död:

Dear Leonard:

Your letter of December 15th has just reached me, the mails being what they are around Christmas time. I have received much sympathy and kindness and many letters, but yours is somehow unique in that it speaks of the beauty that is lost rather than condoling with the comparatively useless life that continues on. She was everything you say, and more. She was the beat of my heart for thirty years. She was the music heard faintly at the edge of sound. It was my great and now useless regret that I never wrote anything really worth her attention, no book that I could dedicate to her. I planned it. I thought of it, but I never wrote it. Perhaps I couldn’t have written it.

She died hard. Her body fought a hundred lost battles, any one of which would have been enough to finish most of us. Twice I brought her home from the hospital because she hated hospitals, and had her in her own room with nurses around the clock. But she had to go back. And I suppose she never quite forgave me for that. But when at the end I closed her eyes she looked very young. Perhaps by now she realizes that I tried, and that I regarded the sacrifice of several years of a rather insignificant literary career as a small price to pay, if I could make her smile a few times more.

No doubt you realize that this was no sudden thing, that it had been going on for a long time, and that I have said goodbye to my Cissy in the middle of the night in the dark cold hours many, many times. She admired and liked you very much. I’m not sure that she liked Dilys as much as I did, because possibly she suspected that I liked her too much. And it is just possible that I thought she liked you a little too much.

I hope that you are both well and prosperous and that I may have the privilege of seeing you again in the not too distant future, with or without the butler from the Ritz. And I hope I am not being too sentimental if I sign myself,

Yours affectionately,

Raymond Chandler – A Life
Och jag behövde förstås en helt vanlig biografi om honom

… och förstås en brevsamling
Det var så det började. Den ska jag läsa i när jag bara vill bläddra i något några minuter.