Chandler & Gardner or: Getting the hint

Sometimes life has to pitch a notion to you several times for it to sink in. I don’t remember the first time someone recommended that I read Earle Stanley Gardner; the second time, I think, was while home brewing with my friend Dave. Recently, Marianne commented on him, and then I picked up Raymond Chandler Speaking.

I hadn’t read Chandler until the last decade or so, but have come to appreciate him so much I’ve read most of his Marlowe mysteries a couple times, and am now picking up books about him, including this collection of his letters, with a previously unpublished couple of essays.

Among his correspondents was that self-same Gardner, whom he kidded for being prolific (Chandler wasn’t, particularly) calling Gardner “you dynamo” in 1945. In May of 1939 he wrote “I learned to write a novelette on one of yours about a man named Rex Kane … you wouldn’t remember. It’s probably in your file No. 54276-84 …

“I made an extremely detailed synopsis of your story and from that rewrote it and then compared what I had with yours, and then went back and rewrote it some more … the trickiest part of your technique was the ability to put over situations which verged on the implausible but which in the reading seemed quite real. I hope you understand that I mean this as a compliment. I have never come near to doing it myself. … It’s probably the fundamental of all rapid work, because naturally rapid work has a large element of improvisation, and to make an improvised scene seem inevitable is quite a trick. At least I think so.

“And here I am at 2:30 a.m. writing about technique, in spite of a strong conviction that the moment a man begins to talk about technique that’s proof that he is fresh out of ideas.”

The two also discussed whether mysteries might be “significant literature” with Gardner apparently expressing some self-doubt and Chandler bolstering his spirits. On January 29, 1946 Chandler wrote to him “… literature will only be sold to this public by exactly the same methods as are used to sell it toothpaste, cathartics, and automobiles. It is equally obvious that since this public has been taught to read by brute force it will, in between its bouts with the latest ‘significant’ bestseller, want to read books that are fun and excitement. So, like all half-educated publics in all ages, it turns with relief to the man who tells a story and nothing else. To say that what this man writes is not literature is just like saying that a book can’t be any good if it makes you want to read it.

“When a book, of any sort, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball. That is to me what you have more than anything else and more than anyone else … Every page throws the hook for the next. I call this a kind of genius … Perry Mason is the perfect detective because he has the intellectual approach of the juridical mind and at the same time the restless quality of the adventurer who won’t stay put.

“So let’s not have any more of this phooey about ‘as literature my stuff still stinks’. Who says so — William Dean Howells?”

Elsewhere in his letters Chandler returns to the theme of what constitutes literature, and what separates mystery writing from writing held in greater esteem. The categories at that time were even more distinct than at present.

His ideas on what worked and what didn’t are fascinating to me. It’s great fun to read him thinking aloud, as it were, in a confiding tone, as if someone had lifted a curtain so we see the artist at work, and can listen to him fuss over agents, publishers, other writers, and the general public.

Okay, so I can take a hint. It only took four suggestions to get me to realize he needs to be next on my reading list. Can anyone recommend where I ought to begin reading Gardner, or any of his many pseudonyms: A.A. Fair, Kyle Corning, Charles M. Green, Carleton Kendrake, Charles J. Kenny, Les Tillray, or Robert Parr?

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