Cheats at work Book

The most substantial to date of Chandler's biographies, MacShane's book nonetheless is also the most forgiving of his subject.

While Hiney's biography draws so heavily on this book that it is hard to recommend it as an alternative, Hiney's biography has the advantage of being leavened with at least a trace of skepticism towards Chandler's often self-aggrandizing letters. MacShane compiled Chandler's letters in a fairly comprehensive way in his "Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler" following the publication of this biography, which takes most of its material from the letters.

MacShane was still able to do at least some research of his own, including a few all-too-briefly excerpted interviews, which is a definite advantage over Hiney, who seems to have limited his personal involvement to visiting Los Angeles. Both make the rather perilous mistake of relying almost entirely on the man's letters, which, written (at least in later life) by an emotionally unstable sociopathic alcoholic, probably reflect very little of Chandler's reality. Of course, they might have been treated as such by another writer, but MacShane takes them at surface value for the most part, his objections coming at the variances with "fact" rather than the dissimulation constantly at work.

I claim no special knowledge of the man or of his life, but to anyone who would say that these biographies are definitive, I would answer by referring them to Natasha Spender's memoir of Chandler found in "The World of Raymond Chandler," which is, by comparison, a much more complete picture of the man than is found in either MacShane or Hiney. In Spender's memoir, short though it is, we have a picture of a man by a woman who spent a great deal of time with him, yet was not too close to have developed an overly romanticized view of him. Warts and all, and Chandler had warts, most definitely. He is presented as a man, rather than as an analogue to Marlowe (though both MacShane and Hiney try to assure the reader that they are doing no such thing, their rather idealized view of the man in fact does exactly that, notwithstanding their reliance on the written record, thereby almost guaranteeing that they will absolutely analogize).

MacShane does the superior job of contextualizing Chandler's fiction, which is why I think that his is the superior biography. The fact that neither MacShane nor Hiney seem to think that that is what their biographies are doing is beside the point. They do not give us a picture of the man so much as the mind that created Marlowe, and some of what was going on around it.

Misguided, but still interesting, when taken with a rather generous pinch of salt.