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.

Flickr of candles

When the candle flame flickers on the wall during a spell of load-shedding, it may actually evoke your creative side,

It’s a much-awaited Saturday evening. You look forward to a nice, cozy curl-up on the sofa, with a racy book or a tingling detective video film to keep you company. But all of a sudden the lights go off. You grit your teeth hard for you know what’s in store - total darkness and no fan, no AC, sweating it out in a dark room in front of the forlorn glow of a candle. Watching a film is out and so is browsing. So think of what good you can do… think of something cheerful…
You see your shadow dancing on the wall, massive and dark, and you change postures to see how it varies. A whole lot of shadowy figures appear out of nowhere pervading your house - your mother, father, sister, brother all lost in that mystic world. Just at a time when you are beginning to feel bored, you discover a whole new world unfolding before your eyes.
Just one candlestick in a dark room can do wonders. Do you know that in the faint glow of a candle you can take some of the best black-and-white photographs of your loved ones? I know a couple who spent the dreadful hours of load shedding taking each other’s photos in candlelight. Sometimes darkness makes you feel more comfortable.
Remember how the couple confessed their guilt to each other, each time the current went off in Jhumpa Lahiri’s story “A Temporary Matter”? The white nights bathed in neon-tubes are too blatant, too insensitive to nuances - not only of light and shade but also of human feelings. The guilt and wrongdoings we are apt to hide in the blinding exposure of electricity, come out easily in darkness. Imagine yourself facing your mother, confessing about all the classes you bunked to hang out with your friends, all the bucks you spent on telephone calls. Isn’t it so much easier in the faint warm glow of a candle than when you are placed under the blaze of a harsh electric light?
A burning candle, flickering in the wind, attracting insects in hordes to jump into its intoxicating flame is in itself sufficient stuff to keep the philosopher in you thought-filled. Oh those delicate bodies poised on flimsy, transparent wings, circling round and round the flames, creating an odd, whirring noise in the absolute silence!
In load shedding you also take a refuge from noise, from the constant sounds of electric fan that are so inextricably linked with our urban life. We hear our neighbour’s voices, perhaps a child’s laughter or a baby’s cry or the melody of a sweet voice - not on the CD-player but from the next door house. In the sound of silence we feel the warmth of human company. We open the door of our house and stroll outside to catch some fresh air and suddenly we run into our next door neighbour. A conversation which begins with “How are you” that lasts almost a couple of hours or at least until the electricity comes back to throw us back into the fold of our busy urban life… Ma rushes into the kitchen to cook the dinner in haste, father once again becomes the bespectacled academician immersed in his studies, Didi starts completing her half-done homework.
I suddenly remember that it was also during another spell of load-shedding when we last had a conversation with this neighbour…
“For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles” (Tennessee Williams in The Glass Menagerie)

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…”