Raymond Chandler: Biography review

 Raymond Chandler in the late 1930s, has been the one to use the ever rising POP music genre culture to evade and setup very interesting stories about murder mystery which went on to become not only best sellers but also epitomise the cynicism and world-weariness of a generation that had to survive two world wars.

Chandler himself was quite a colourful character in his own way, it is due these reason only that his biography by the British journalist Tom Hiney offers one a detailed portrait of his life.
The book devotes a third of itself to Chandler’s childhood and youth. Born to an Irish immigrant mother and an alcoholic father in Chicago during 1888, Chandler and his mother were  abandoned and made their way back to his native  country Ireland.

There he lived under the charity of his graceful uncle who continually reminded him  of their obligations and shortcomings.
Nonetheless, his uncle did not deny Chandler a good education and he joined  Dulwich College in 1900, the year that P G Wodehouse left the same school. Here he received an excellent grounding in Classical literature, a factor that was to raise his stories of street crime far above the writing of the average pulp hack writer.

He tried a  variety of professions, including journalist, poet and oil company executive, in both England and the United States, before he finally settled down to writing as a full-time profession. During his days as an amatuer writer his mother became ill and had to give his job away to take care of her.

Chandler actually taught himself to write, in a systematic way.
He read hundreds of pulp magazines, drew upon his own knowledge of the back streets of Los Angeles and the corruption within its police force,  his hand at analysing the source of Chandler’s writing and the factors that influenced it, and indeed, this biography is packed with detail, of the period as well as of the man in question, but the book might have benefited from a closer attention to the factual details of Chandler’s stories.

If you want to find out more make sure you the grab soon.

Rendezvous with rain

Devaki Ghose adores the heavenly drops for they create an ambience of dreaminess

where the real world blends seamlessly into the imaginary

Maybe this is not the right time to pen a paean to rains, since we’ve had to face

so many deluges in rapid succession. While you are probably crying like Little

Tommy of the nursery rhyme “Rain, rain go away”, I’m at my window, ready to

welcome a real good shower that the skies are promising. I reach out and catch

the raindrops in my palms, cool and refreshing.
I love these beautiful heavenly drops, not only because they are cool and

pleasing but also because the rains create a mood, an atmosphere, an ambience of

dreaminess where the real world blends seamlessly into the imaginary, the present

becomes one with the past and you make a wonderful rendezvous with all the rains

you have seen, at all places and times. The very sight of rain from my tiny

window wells up within me all the memories of feeling the rain at different times

and places.
Have you been to Santiniketan, famed for its red soil, during the rains? Those

special times conjure up a mélange of beautiful scenes before my eyes — the

snow-white Kash flowers swaying in the rain, the red undulating Khowais and the

vast paddy fields brimming over with water, the upturned bottle-shaped nests of

poor weaver birds perilously shaking in the wind.
Imagine yourself riding a boat in the tempestuous waters of the Kopai. All of a

sudden you hear the sound of thunder, echoing and resounding through the open

fields. The rain sets in, your boat swings, first rhythmically and then wildly,

the river swells and its banks are washed. The red soil sticks to your feet as

you try to walk. But the magic of red soil is that the water does not collect for

long hours, but drains away quickly. That’s why I enjoy rains in this place so

much!
I remember a jeep ride through the Saranda forests in the hills of Kiriburu, a

mine-area in Singbhum, Jharkhand. It was an uphill journey when the rains set in

heavily, giving birth to a myriad of merry streams snaking through the hills and

crisscrossing our path every now and then. I will never forget the shocking red

colour of the waters, resembling in every way the proverbial streams of blood,

thanks to the rich endowment of iron-ore in the soil!
The rain intensifies as I write this article. Suddenly the pen falters from my

hand as I hear the deafening crash of a thunder. It reminds me of an

unforgettable experience of rains in Digha. We had gone for a walk on the

sea-beach not knowing that there had been a warning of tidal waves. As we sat

sipping tea on the beach we saw pitch-dark clouds advancing like a wall from the

eastern corner of the sky.
The waves, as if on cue, came alive, rolling over and over, crashing against the

beaches. Gradually the dusky light melted into absolute, pitch darkness and the

roar of thunder combined with the over-powering sound of the waves to create a

doomsday-like effect. There were no people around us, only the resounding,

aggressive roar, an approaching sea occasionally lit up by lightning and massive

clouds towering above us.
Streaks of lightning lit up the sky like a hundred fireworks spreading purple

fans of light across the sea, giving instantaneous illusions of sunrise. We took

to running, quick and breathless, driven on by a strong sea breeze that buffeted

us from behind. For the first time I realised how winds could blow away people,

cattle and huts; how tidal waves, tall as towers, drown vast tracts of land.
A few years after this rendezvous with rain in the seaside we once again

encountered the monsoon, in its fiercest and wildest form, in the wilderness of

the high Himalayas. We were on our way from Khati to Dowali, some 16 kms

distance, on the trek route to Pindari and suddenly the sky broke down on us,

catching us unawares in the midst of a dense forest, with no human habitat

nearby.
The cascading, merry springs gave way to a torrent of new springs suddenly

stirred into life by the catastrophic rain. At one side were the proud Himalayas

towering above us all and on the other side was the deep, voracious gorge waiting

to swallow us below. I still don’t know how our good ol’ feet carried us to

Dowali where the chowkidar had prepared a beautiful, warm fire for us.
The rains outside my window have ceased now. But the skies are yet to clear up.

My pen stops now as the musical sound of rain comes to an end. The magic spell is

broken… the mosaic of remembered sights and sounds is gone. The rendezvous with

rain has ended for now, but not forever —
“Rain, rain, come again
And again and again…”

Paulo Coelho, Roll Call Again: Book Review

Paulo Coelho’s latest offering to be a piece of art, demonstrating the magic he is capable of creating with simple, ordinary language. “Zahir, in Arabic, means visible, present, incapable of going unnoticed. It is someone or something which, once we have come into contact with them or it, gradually occupies our every thought, until we can think of nothing else.” (From the foreword of the book.)
heartbroken novels about the presumably corrupt world of today and the jaded cynicism of most intellectual writers, The Zahir is like a fresh ray of hope, because it is essentially a very positive book. The concept of The Zahir is very important here, because it puts the entire plot into perspective, which is necessary to grasp the meta-plot of this multi-layered and wonderfully complex story. It is easy to relate to the narrator and protagonist, because it is just not about a rich writer who is obsessed with his disappeared wife, it is about the human experience of learning to follow dreams, realising them, and unleashing the powerful force of truth.
The book is about facing who you are and what you are afraid of, and erasing past histories in order to create more and more love every day. It is easy to sense that the protagonist is a broad-minded individual, who is brighter than the average person. As the book goes on to describe his journey it is easy to see how he grows more spiritually aware with every chapter.
The narrative is alive and vibrant and so insightful that it is sometimes overwhelming. The narrator’s view of life and society is very difficult from the conventional and commonsensical, and hence it provides new interpretations of even the most mundane things. The symbolism is very significant in the book once the reader has grasped the basic plot; within that outline the story progresses to reveal new dimensions into the writer’s search for his wife and his initially inadvertent stumbling into the truth about his own life.
As pointed out that school stories always have been and will be cherished by generations of students. Enid Blyton’s St Clare’s and Malory Towers stories will always find readers. What they have in common is that usually they are only representative of the students’ views. But in a school there is another body of important people, the teachers.