Raymond Chandler

It is inevitable that RAYMOND CHANDLER,who has written pungently for the Atlantic on many subjects, would have some lively opinions on the function of the literary agent. Journalist, screen writer, and novelist, Mr. Chandler speaks from long professional experience. He is widely known as the creator of Philip Marlowe, the indestructible hero of The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, and countless radio programs, and he is one of the most accomplished dialogue writers of the films.

“Show business has always been a little overnoisy, overdressed, overbrash. Actors are threatened people. Before films came along to make them rich they often had need of a desperate gaiety.”

“Pictures cost a great deal of money—true. The studio spends the money; all the writer spends is his time (and incidentally his life, his hopes, and all the varied experiences, most of them painful, which finally made him into a writer)—this also is true.”

“Hemingway says somewhere that the good writer competes only with the dead. The good detective story writer … competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the living as well.”