The Long Embrace
Description:
A critical study of the life of Raymond Chandler focuses on his marriage to Cissy Pascal, the older, twice-divorced woman he wed in 1924, discussing her key role in helping transform Chandler from a shy oil company accountant into a literary master and creator of Philip Marlowe. 17,500 first printing.
Publisher's Weekly Review ...
Novelist Freeman (Red Water) turns her obsession with Chandler and his beautiful wife, Cissy, into a kind of voyeuristic exploration of their unusual but symbiotic marriage. The creator of Philip Marlowe and author of such classics as The Long Goodbye and Farewell, My Lovely, remains an enigma and his much older wife (she lied to him about her age) is even more of a cipher. Freeman describes researching Chandler archives at both UCLA and the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and her pilgrimages to the extraordinary number of homes and apartments (more than 30) where the peripatetic Chandlers lived in California. She also consulted printed resources and interviewed some who knew the Chandlers late in their lives. She effectively uses passages from Chandler's fiction and letters to illustrate his battles with alcoholism, boredom, manuscripts and screenplays. Less effective are the many passages where Freeman tries to read too much from scanty clues (for instance, trying to guess which woman in a photograph is the one Chandler had an affair with). The result is an uneven account, part author's journal, part biography, of an unusual couple whose marriage survived against all odds and may have been the key factor that allowed Chandler to create his tarnished knight, Marlowe. Photos. (Nov. 6)
Reviews...
Rayner, Richard
"Frank MacShane published the standard Chandler biography more than 30 years ago, and until now, no other book has made us view this great American writer afresh. THE LONG EMBRACE does...[It`s] a beautiful and original book... lovely, a haunting homage to a man whose own end was bleak."
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