Unmasking Chandler: What “Nightmare” Reveals In regards to the Author Behind Marlowe
by Tom Williams
“Nightmare,” by Raymond Chandler, might not have the vitality of his greatest fiction, but it surely stays an enchanting piece that sheds new gentle on his early profession. It surfaced as a part of the Jean Vounder-Davis Assortment of Raymond Chandler, bought at public sale in late 2024, and consists of materials that biographers had not beforehand accessed. Chandler employed Vounder-Davis in January 1957 at a troublesome level in her life: dwelling beneath her married identify, Jean Fracasse, she was within the midst of a messy divorce. Chandler himself was nonetheless mourning his beloved spouse, Cissy, who had died simply over two years earlier. He grew near Fracasse and her kids; her daughter Sybil later recalled reducing down the yellow sheets of paper to the scale Chandler most well-liked as a result of it compelled him to place “a bit meat on every.”
Relationship “Nightmare” is difficult. Cissy—who reportedly discovered the piece “very humorous”—was alive when it was written, so it should predate her loss of life in December 1954. Her response is attribute of their relationship: Cissy typically shared her opinions. When Chandler outlined three potential novels shortly after The Massive Sleep, she added her personal dry annotation: “Pricey Raymio, you’ll have enjoyable this perhaps, and seeing what ineffective desires you had. Or maybe it won’t be enjoyable.”
Probably the most revealing line in “Nightmare” is Chandler’s apart: “It would remind me of the times once I used to get returned manuscripts.” Chandler loved mythologizing his personal life. In 1933 he informed his buddy William Lever, “I bought the very first story I despatched out.” That was “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot,” revealed in Black Masks in December of that 12 months. But “Nightmare” complicates this account. Did he submit tales to Black Masks earlier than “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot” that had been turned down? Or was he pondering again to his early literary ambitions in London, or to the years after the battle when he labored within the oil business?
Chandler had all the time wished to write down. Earlier than emigrating to America in 1912, he revealed poetry and journalism in Britain and later admitted to Lever that writing was the one factor he ever wished “with all my coronary heart to get.” He continued to write down poetry and even a libretto after transferring to the USA, although little of it circulated past his pals. It’s solely doable he made unsuccessful makes an attempt to publish literary work properly earlier than turning to the pulps. Solely later, in 1931, after shedding his oil business job, did he declare to have severely thought-about crime fiction.
No matter its exact context, “Nightmare” unsettles the neat origin story Chandler preferred to inform. It hints at a special, much less linear literary trajectory. For all his efforts to craft the legend of a self-invented author, Chandler remained, even to himself, his biggest thriller.
Tom Williams is a author and critic primarily based in Washington, D.C. He’s the writer of A Mysterious One thing within the Gentle: The Lifetime of Raymond Chandler, revealed within the UK, US, Brazil, and China. His evaluations and essays have appeared in The Occasions Literary Complement, The Observer, The Irish Occasions, and The Spectator.
