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Literary Smack Talk
Mark Twain on Jane Austen: I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone. [via Flavorwire – The 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults In History] Oh, those drama queens. To counter-balance the negative, Margaret Atwood on Raymond Chandler: An affair with Raymond Chandler, what a joy! Not because…
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The High Window
The High Window by Raymond Chandler Published: 1942 I read The Lady in the Lake and Farewell, My Lovely in university and always meant to read more of Chandler’s work. The High Window was actually assigned reading in that same class, but I wasn’t able to get to it. I really enjoyed the other two books, but that enjoyment mostly came out of the atmosphere and wit and imagery in the writing. The plots felt to me like something you hung on to and let drag you through the prose. They were a little too convoluted to really focus on or care too much about, so you just let it…
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Ian Fleming Interviewing Raymond Chandler
Here’s a cool interview someone dug up from from 1958. It’s Ian Fleming (author of the James Bond novels) interviewing Raymond Chandler (author of the Philip Marlowe novels), and it’s apparently the only recording of Raymond Chandler’s voice. It takes place one year before Chandler’s death and six years before Fleming’s death. It’s fun listening to two friends and authors, who will both still be widely read over fifty years later, discuss their insecurities and disect their protaganists. They mainly praise each other, but Chandler does tease Fleming a bit on a couple decisions he made with Bond. It’s especially interesting to hear them reference future works when we now…