AirTalk | December 29th, 2014, 10:43am

“All us tough guys are hopeless sentimentalists at heart,” author Raymond Chandler once wrote. The statement applies to Chandler as well as to his literary alter ego Phillip Marlowe. Readers have come to know about what Chandler thought about Los Angeles and a number of other subjects through his novels and short stories, but there’s one topic he had stayed largely mum on: His own life.

Chandler never wrote a memoir or an autobiography. In “The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words,” writer Barry Day culled from Chandler’s writing and interviews he did over the years to give voice to what Chandler thought of his life, his craft, his success.

Guests:
Barry Day, edited the new book, “The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words” (Knopf, 2014). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Trustee of the Noël Coward Foundation

Denise Hamilton, crime novelist, journalist and editor of the Edgar-award winning anthologies Los Angeles Noir (Akashic Noir, 2007) and Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics (Akashic Noir, 2010)

Listen now by clicking below:

http://media.scpr.org/audio/upload/2014/12/29/Raymond_Chandler-52208a2f.mp3?context=airtalk&via=website

24th June 1958: American thriller writer Raymond Chandler (1888 – 1959), centre, at a party in Portman Square, London. On either side of him are publisher Anthony Blond (1928 – 2008) and Blond’s wife Charlotte. (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images)