on another limiting and contradictoryrntruth—namely that the Marlowe booksrnwere “realistic.” Considering their contrivance,rntheir status as lurid melodramas,rntheir conventional coincidences,rnwe must find it hard to accept them asrnrealistic. But he probably meant two particularrnthings by his use of the categoryrnof realism; first, that his books were hardboiledrnand not cozy; and second, thatrnthey reflected the truth about power inrnurban America. The implications of thatrnsecond thought have never been fullyrnexamined, but they will be.rnI think that today Raymond Chandler’srnwork can be seen most fruitfullyrnas writing, and not as representation.rnThe extent of his ambition can bernglimpsed in his allusions to Shakespeare,rnEliot, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald, but itrncan be seen most fully in his rich languagern—his similes and ironies, his witrnand sense of beauty, his puns, anagrams,rnand etymological teasings. His discoursernrefers to itself continually—his writing isrnabout writing, and it is a celebration ofrnwriting’s power to make us laugh, makernus shudder, make us think, make us wonder,rnand make us turn the page. Thatrnpower of writing was Chandler’s, and hernknew it and said so. That power he calledrn”magic” and “music.” That power is thernultimate reason why Raymond Chandlerrnhas been canonized.rnThat power earned Chandler somethingrngreater than the considerablernamount of money he made by it, andrnsomething even greater than the presentrnrecognition. That something is fame.rnBilly Wilder has declared that when peoplernask him questions about Hollywood,rnthere are two names that are always mentionedrnfirst: Marilvn Monroe and RaymondrnChandler. Monroe’s title as “sexrngoddess” speaks for itself, but Chandler’srncharisma was achieved by performancernon the page. Such a glamour is today arnglobal, not a national, property; and indeedrn”Raymond Chandler” has been arncharacter in at least two novels. He isrntruly a “man of letters” in all the languagesrnand all the media of civilization.rnNo wonder he claimed that he had takenrn”a cheap, shoddy, and utterly lost kind ofrnwriting, and . . . made of it somethingrnthat intellectuals claw each otherrnabout.”rnChandler was a novelist all along, andrnnot a scribbler of detective stories—justrnas he claimed. He gave us every indica-rn5 Can the Racial Problem be Solved? jrn• An American Renaissance CoaftTtnce, May 25-27 ;rn[ Race is still the American dilemma. The “civil rights,” ;rn: integrationist approach has brought none of its promised :rn• rewards. Is it time to rethink the assmnptions of the past 40 :rn: years? Join us in Louisville, Kentucky over Memonal Day :rn: weekend (May 25-27) for a frank, uncensored exchange. ;rn; “rn: Speakers will include: •rn: Dr. Samuel Francis (contributing editor, Chronicles; :rn: “the Qausewitz of the Right.”) •rn: Prof. Philippe Rushton (author of i^flce^fivo/uftbn, and :rn: Behavior, pioneering scholar of racial differences.) :rn: Jared Taylor (author of Paved With Good Intentions; :rn; editor oiAmerican Renaissance.) rn Prof. Michael Levin (author of PPTiyi^aceMarte/s; widely :rn: published commentator on race and pubUc poUc^.) rn: Lawrence Auster (author of 77ieFa//i to JVariona/5Mfd(ie; :rn: leading thiaker on cultural implications of immigration.) ;rn: Rabbi Mayer Schiller (author of The Guilty Conscience rn of a Conservative; authority on Jewish-Gentile relations.) :rn• For information, write or call: American Renaissance ;rn• Box 1674, Louisville, KY 40201 (502)637-3242 :rntion of his detective’s repudiation of hisrnjob. In The Big Sleep, Marlowe “catches”rnthe killer in the beginning, literally. Atrnthe end, he finds futility in having pursuedrna man who was not his case and wasrnalready dead. In Playback (1958), he tellsrnhis client to go kiss a duck and is lost inrndreams of bliss. Chandler called Jvlarlowern”the personification of an attitude,”rnand so he is. That attitude, I think, wasrnone of Protestant individualism and decencyrnstaring in bemused horror at therndepredations of modern mass culture.rnThe illusion of literary “realism” was inrnparallel with the illusion of a new society:rnthe fraud of self-transformation offeredrnby the new mass-cult and exploited byrnthe ruthless. Marlowe showed he wasrnpart of the problem in The Little Sister,rnby which gesture Chandler acknowledgedrnthe same about himself.rnThe Marlowe books, retaining a diagnosticrnand prophetic quality, are no morerndated than literature is. According to thernclassical formula, they delight and instruct.rnMarlowe is more poet than detective,rnand is more interested in pursuingrnthe Other than in earning his fee.rnChandler pushed Marlowe into the ultimaternof literary abysses in his last threernnovels, having him confront the illusionrnof film itself and of reality in Hollywoodrn(The Little Sister), the illusion of writingrnwith a novelist in the novel (The LongrnGoodbye), and the illusion of fictionrnwhen a stand-in for Chandler himselfrnwalks on stage to meet Marlowe (Playback)rn. That is not the stuff of whodunnits,rnbut of a Shakespearean sense of illusionrnwithin illusion—the stuff thatrndreams, and literature, are made of.rnHaving survived their own day for tworngenerations, Chandler’s novels havernearned their status as classics in the simplestrnpossible way. But by the time thatrnRaymond Chandler drank himself torndeath in 1959, his own body (as distinguishedrnfrom his literary corpus) wasrnmisplaced. Because of various confusions,rnthat wealthy and famous man wasrnburied where the indigent are interredrnin San Diego. I would like to think thatrnChandler has received, finally, a properrnsendoff in the Library of America. Inrnthese pages, he is more than ever beforernrecognized as a writer—and his workrnwill continue to live by being read in arncontext far removed from the pulpsrnwhere he began. But that distance is exactlyrnwhat he did imagine—and justify.rnIn that sense, we can say with the poet,rn”Here he lies where he longed to be.”rn32/CHRONICLESrnrnrn