Blogging Chandler

In association with the Windy City’s “One Book, One Chicago” program--which has chosen Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye as its April citywide read--the contributors to the blogging collective The Outfit today begin opining about different aspects of Chandler’s 1953 novel. First up to the plate is Sara Paretsky, who provides a synopsis of the author’s life, along with part of a note Chandler scribbled to his agent, Bernice Baumgarten, after she’d delivered to him some negative feedback on the first draft of his novel:

I knew the character of Marlowe had changed and I thought it had to, because the hardboiled stuff was too much of a pose after all this time. But I did not realize [he] had become Christlike, and sentimental, and that he ought to be deriding his own emotions.

It would be interesting to hear more about that first draft of The Long Goodbye. Let’s hope one of Paretsky’s partners in crime picks up this thread in later posts. According to Marshal Zeringue, The Outfit’s Chandler-related posts will run “through the next two weeks. They’ll have a different blog up almost every weekday.”

Keep up with them here.