Raymond Chandler is a bit like Jane Austen: he wields a dazzling array of skills, with deep insight behind them; however, he's easy to take for granted. His style is so lucid, and his stories such page-turners, that you can skate through a whole novel of his without ever noticing all the craft and thought behind his work. Also like Austen, he changed literature by crystallizing a genre and style that hundreds of writers copied after him.
The Simple Art of Murder is a book of stories, which opens with Chandler's magnificent essay on detective fiction, literature, and modern culture: The Simple Art of Murder.
Go read the essay! It's several pages of Chandler's crackling prose, revealing more of his insights and feelings than his fiction ever shows. He knew and loved detective fiction; he also opens up the real Chandler here. If you haven't time to immerse yourself right now, bookmark that page for later in the weekend.
Realism in Literature The main theme of The Simple Art of Murder is Realism. What makes any book feel realistic? What special elements do Mysteries require, in order to convince us with the actuality of their worlds, characters, and plot's logic?
Fiction in any form has always intended to be realistic. Old-fashioned novels which now seem stilted and artificial to the point of burlesque did not appear that way to the people who first read them. Writers like Fielding and Smollett could seem realistic in the modern sense because they dealt largely with uninhibited characters, many of whom were about two jumps ahead of the police, but Jane Austen’s chronicles of highly inhibited people against a background of rural gentility seem real enough psychologically. There is plenty of that kind of social and emotional hypocrisy around today. Add to it a liberal dose of intellectual pretentiousness and you get the tone of the book page in your daily paper and the earnest and fatuous atmosphere breathed by discussion groups in little clubs. These are the people who make bestsellers, which are promotional jobs based on a sort of indirect snob-appeal, carefully escorted by the trained seals of the critical fraternity, and lovingly tended and watered by certain much too powerful pressure groups whose business is selling books, although they would like you to think they are fostering culture. Just get a little behind in your payments and you will find out how idealistic they are.
"Fiction in any form has always intended to be realistic." What does "realistic" mean? Fictional Realism isn't photographic, cinematic, or documentary. Books were looking at the world millennia before those other arts were invented. Myths, fables, epic poems and contrived comedies aren't trying to capture what "realistic" brings to mind. Reality is huge, with possibilities and directions our eyes can't see. Books have set out on every path a hungry mind could reach towards and squeeze into words. Through centuries of exploration, writers discovered many aspects of reality that books can grasp: some hold tight, some slippery. Books have proven commodious vessels to hold stories, or to explore human nature.
Many readers in the last two centuries have knocked Jane Austen for writing "drawing-room romances", that almost entirely occur in a cozy middle-class world, revolving around who should marry whom. Even Austen herself did, when she wrote in a letter about "the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour". Luckily for Jane and us, she found the perfect two inches to look at, she paid close attention, and she wrote a cosmos of truth there. Her chronicles both "seem real enough psychologically", and plumb some of what matters most in our lives. She explores: who is truly good; whom should we love; how should we manage family and friends who are partly good and lovable, but also selfish and difficult. If you can grasp those three questions, you can handle much of what's trickiest to resolve in life.
In novels generally, psychological realism is more necessary and dynamic than cinematic realism. Kafka wrote powerful stories by turning inwards. We recognize his world although we don't live there, because he delves into a symbolism of dreams, fears, suspicions and nightmares - that we've seen inside ourselves. While Freud analytically explored unconscious Shadowlands, Kafka was 160 miles to the northwest, charting another way there. Before a writer even looks at the specific rules of Detective Fiction (the puzzles and moral calculus the genre demands), they need enough of this psychological realism to make their story come alive. Lots of mystery writers layer dozens of novels around one detective solving a series of cases. But we readers will only stick with it if our hero/ine has enough charm and flaws, enough depth and development, that we're still fond and curious twelve books later.
Realism in Detective Fiction Which other bricks of Realism does it take to build a well-plotted and written Mystery?
I suppose the principal dilemma of the traditional or classic or straight-deductive or logic—and—deduction novel of detection is that for any approach to perfection it demands a combination of qualities not found in the same mind. The cool-headed constructionist does not also come across with lively characters, sharp dialogue, a sense of pace and an acute use of observed detail. The grim logician has as much atmosphere as a drawing-board. The scientific sleuth has a nice new shiny laboratory, but I’m sorry I can’t remember the face. The fellow who can write you a vivid and colorful prose simply won’t be bothered with the coolie labor of breaking down unbreakable alibis. The master of rare knowledge is living psychologically in the age of the hoop skirt. If you know all you should know about ceramics and Egyptian needlework, you don’t know anything at all about the police. If you know that platinum won’t melt under about 2800 degrees F. by itself, but will melt at the glance of a pair of deep blue eyes when put close to a bar of lead, then you don’t know how men make love in the twentieth century. And if you know enough about the elegant flânerie of the pre-war French Riviera to lay your story in that locale, you don’t know that a couple of capsules of barbital small enough to be swallowed will not only not kill a man—they will not even put him to sleep, if he fights against them.
Every detective story writer makes mistakes, and none will ever know as much as he should. Conan Doyle made mistakes which completely invalidated some of his stories, but he was a pioneer, and Sherlock Holmes after all is mostly an attitude and a few dozen lines of unforgettable dialogue.
I've seen similar dilemmas in other genres: there is a particular formula needed to make a story zing in a given genre, and not sputter; but the mental vision and experience to find that zing are orthogonal to those which make for a great novel. For example, a great novel takes the psychological acumen Austen displayed, which relies on strong empathy and careful attention to the subtleties of how people relate to each other in drawing-rooms or at picnics.
But when you look into the Golden Age of Science Fiction, it was about other worlds entirely: big ideas, impossible ones, and how space-time would twist if we injected it with brave imaginative leaps. Those take a very different mind than Austen's. Have you read Asimov? Huge, shocking ideas - but very few characters that seem fully human. Sterling SF, but second-rate literature.
Today we're living in a richer age for readers than the Golden Ages of SF and Mysteries. Our peers and aunts and uncles grew up reading Chandler, Christie, Asimov, LeGuin and Tolkein, some of them devoured whole libraries of genre. And also read Joyce, Woolf, Hemingway, Baldwin, Garcia Marquez. So genres which were traditionally low-brow are being enriched now by fans-become-writers who also are steeped in all the richness and experiments of 20th century literature. It seems to me that there are a lot more really well-written genre books than ever before, notably in Mysteries, SF, Fantasy and Young Adult genres (and probably also in Western, Romance, Horror et al., which I don't read much).
Skillful mystery writers must bridge this divide Chandler mentions. The "cool-headed constructionist" and the savvy observer of the grit and flow of criminal life are different beasts, from different worlds. Chandler, fortunately, was both at once. In the middle pages of his essay, Chandler examines a very popular ("thirteen editions") and acclaimed ("one of the three best mystery stories of all time") book, A. A. Milne's The Red House Mystery. It was written according to the rules and fashions of the Golden Age of Mysteries. Applying careful thought, experience, and real-world knowledge, Chandler writes a page of analysis, and rips The Red House Mystery into shreds. For dessert, he punctures four more esteemed classics, including a Dorothy Sayers and an Agatha Christie ("This is the type that is guaranteed to knock the keenest mind for a loop. Only a halfwit could guess it."). Chandler shows us where the Golden Age formula rings true, and where to poke to find the hollow parts.
This, the classic detective story, has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. It is the story you will find almost any week in the big shiny magazines, handsomely illustrated, and paying due deference to virginal love and the right kind of luxury goods. Perhaps the tempo has become a trifle faster, and the dialogue a little more glib. There are more frozen daiquiris and stingers ordered, and fewer glasses of crusty old port; more clothes by Vogue, and décors by the House Beautiful, more chic, but not more truth. We spend more time in Miami hotels and Cape Cod summer colonies and go not so often down by the old gray sundial in the Elizabethan garden. But fundamentally it is the same careful grouping of suspects, the same utterly incomprehensible trick of how somebody stabbed Mrs. Pottington Postlethwaite III with the solid platinum poignard just as she flatted on the top note of the Bell Song from Lakmé in the presence of fifteen ill-assorted guests; the same ingenue in fur-trimmed pajamas screaming in the night to make the company pop in and out of doors and ball up the timetable; the same moody silence next day as they sit around sipping Singapore slings and sneering at each other, while the flat-feet crawl to and fro under the Persian rugs, with their derby hats on. Personally I like the English style better. It is not quite so brittle, and the people as a rule, just wear clothes and drink drinks. There is more sense of background, as if Cheesecake Manor really existed all around and not just the part the camera sees; there are more long walks over the Downs and the characters don’t all try to behave as if they had just been tested by MGM. The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.
Realism in Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction Raymond Chandler wrote short stories in the '30s, and then six strong novels between '39 and '53 (including The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; The Little Sister; and The Long Goodbye). He had a huge influence on American popular writing, along with the whole school of hard-boiled fiction. Chandler was probably first among the school. The third was James M. Cain, who wrote The Postman Always Rings Twice; Mildred Pierce; and Double Indemnity, among many others. I'd put Dashiell Hammett second, but he did get a jump of a decade on Chandler, so he was more of a pioneer. He's best known for The Maltese Falcon; The Thin Man; The Glass Key; and Red Harvest. In The Simple Art of Murder Chandler rips at the flaws in The Red House Mystery and other Golden Age classics, until they fall apart. In his career he did the opposite: he helped construct the solution to his dilemma. He married logical rigor to the fizziness of life, building a more robust and grittier kind of Detective Fiction (and a new breed of detective): Hard-Boiled. This style, with its grizzled heroes walking down dark streets, then gave birth to film noir. Here we are, dear reader, nearing the end of my essay. I asked you in the beginning to go read The Simple Art of Murder. And did you? You did not. It's late, you're tired; or it's early, you're not awake yet; or you're busy, or distracted, or whatever. It's OK, you're still my dear reader, I'll do what I can - but I'm no Chandler. They say you should write what you know. They're wrong. You should write what you care most about, what you're most interested in. Did Tolkien "know" Middle Earth? No, he just took everything he cared about, all that fascinated him, and rolled it up into a ball of brightly colored creation. Raymond Chandler knew Detective Fiction, and had a lot of insight into Literature. The Simple Art of Murder is thoughtful, informative and wise. But what makes the essay so rich isn't Chandler's analysis, it's that he has burrowed into his subject and lived there a long time. The final pages of The Simple Art of Murder are the best. Chandler writes how the new wave of hard-boiled fiction kicked Mysteries in the head, and brought them more to life than they'd ever been. He rhapsodizes Dashiell Hammett, and his detectives trying to keep clean enough and good enough in a dirty world dragging them down. Chandler and Hammett are more hard-headed than Austen: she asked what it means to be Good, while they'll settle for what it means to be good enough. What makes a good Mystery, that matters and intrigues and feels thoroughly real? By the end of his essay, Chandler is writing about Detective Fiction, and Literature, Dashiell Hammett, and everything else that burns in his heart. He stares into the rottenness of 20th century America, and finds the crucial mystery his books look to answer: what kind of man can and should survive in this Inferno?
. . . But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is his adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, I think the world would be a very safe place to live in, and yet not too dull to be worth living in.
In the end, Chandler is writing about what keeps his heart ticking even though all around him is rotting or rusting or fading away. He's writing about truth burning in books and good striving in the world. He's telling us about Sam Spade, and Philip Marlowe, and Raymond Chandler.