Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler

Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler
Author :
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Total Pages : 548
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0231050801
ISBN-13 : 9780231050807
Rating : 4/5 (01 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler by : Raymond Chandler

Download or read book Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler written by Raymond Chandler and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I don't know why the hell I write so many letters, Raymond Chandler once mused to a correspondent. "I guess my mind is just to active for its own good." In the seven novels from The Big Sleep (1939) to Playback (1958) and in a handful of short stories, Raymond Chandler recorded a vision of Southern California life sparked by acerbic observations on every level of coast society, from drug dealers and crooked cops to heiresses. But Chandler's gifts of observation and analysis extended well past the streets, alleyways, roadhouses, and stately homes that made up the world of his detective-hero Phillip Marlowe. Brought together in this volume are some of the hundreds of letters Chandler wrote-many of them composed during long, insomniac nights. Chandler commented on all that he saw around him, from his own personal foibles, to the works of his contemporaries Ernest Hemingway and Edmund Wilson, to education, English society, and world events. Acute, sometimes impassioned, often witty, the Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler contains lively anecdotes of Hollywood, critical dissections of his fellow writers of detective fiction, lengthy discussions of the art of writing and of his own fiction, and, above all, amused, sometimes outraged glimpses of the Southern California society that was his inspiration. Chandler once wrote that "in letters I sometimes seem to have been more penetrating than in any other kind of writing." But his letters could also be combative, as when he wrote to an editor at the Atlantic that "when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I intend that it should stay split," or dismissive, as when he said of James M. Cain that "everything he writes smells like a billy goat." He could also be painfully revealing, as when he wrote of his despair over the death of his wife. "It was my great and now useless regret," Chandler confessed, "that I never wrote anything really worthy her attention, no book that I could dedicate to her." Lively, entertaining, and sometimes touching, these letters fully present for the first time the complex sensibilities of a man who was one of America's greatest writers of detective novels, and one of its most astute observers.

Select Letters

Select Letters
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 534
Release :
ISBN-10 : OCLC:221793128
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (28 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Select Letters by : Saint Augustine (Bishop of Hippo.)

Download or read book Select Letters written by Saint Augustine (Bishop of Hippo.) and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison

The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison
Author :
Publisher : Modern Library
Total Pages : 1073
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780593730072
ISBN-13 : 0593730070
Rating : 4/5 (72 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison by : Ralph Ellison

Download or read book The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison written by Ralph Ellison and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2024-02-27 with total page 1073 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A radiant collection of letters from the renowned author of Invisible Man that traces the life and mind of a giant of American literature, with insights into the riddle of identity, the writer’s craft, and the story of a changing nation over six decades These extensive and revealing letters span the life of Ralph Ellison and provide a remarkable window into the great writer’s life and work, his friendships, rivalries, anxieties, and all the questions about identity, art, and the American soul that bedeviled and inspired him until his death. They include early notes to his mother, written as an impoverished college student; lively exchanges with the most distinguished American writers and thinkers of his time, from Romare Bearden to Saul Bellow; and letters to friends and family from his hometown of Oklahoma City, whose influence would always be paramount. These letters are beautifully rendered first-person accounts of Ellison’s life and work and his observations of a changing world, showing his metamorphosis from a wide-eyed student into a towering public intellectual who confronted and articulated America’s complexities.

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott
Author :
Publisher : Applewood Books
Total Pages : 432
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781429044608
ISBN-13 : 1429044608
Rating : 4/5 (08 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Louisa May Alcott by : Ednah Dow Cheney

Download or read book Louisa May Alcott written by Ednah Dow Cheney and published by Applewood Books. This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a portrait of Louisa May Alcott through a collection of personal letters and journal entries, giving insight into her life and her work.

Select Letters

Select Letters
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 730
Release :
ISBN-10 : IOWA:31858006432409
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (09 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Select Letters by : Marcus Tullius Cicero

Download or read book Select Letters written by Marcus Tullius Cicero and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 730 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Cyril of Alexandria, Select Letters

Cyril of Alexandria, Select Letters
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 292
Release :
ISBN-10 : UOM:39015010772260
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (60 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Cyril of Alexandria, Select Letters by : Saint Cyril (Patriarch of Alexandria)

Download or read book Cyril of Alexandria, Select Letters written by Saint Cyril (Patriarch of Alexandria) and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book by Cyril of Alexandria.

Selected Letters

Selected Letters
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages : 356
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0192801848
ISBN-13 : 9780192801845
Rating : 4/5 (48 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Selected Letters by : Jane Austen

Download or read book Selected Letters written by Jane Austen and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In one of her personal letters, Jane Austen wrote "Little Matters they are to be sure, but highly important." In fact, letter-writing was something of an addiction for young women of Jane Austen's time and in her social position, and Austen's letters have a freedom and familiarity that only intimate writing can convey. Wiser than her critics, who were disappointed that her correspondence dwelt on gossip and the minutiae of everyday living, Austen understood the importance of "Little Matters," of the emotional and material details of individual lives shared with friends and family through the medium of the letter. Ironic, acerbic, always entertaining, Jane Austen's letters are a fascinating record not only of her own day-to-day existence, but of the pleasures and frustrations experienced by women of her social class which are so central to her novels. Vivien Jones's selection includes nearly two-thirds of Austen's surviving correspondence, and her lively introduction and notes set the novelist's most private writings in their wider cultural context.