Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler’s first novel with Philip Marlowe was The Big Sleep, written in 1939. But it wasn’t just the first one with Marlowe. It was his first novel ever, written when he was 51.
Overnight success? Not even close. I’ll bet you didn’t know he wrote poetry.
Come with me, love,
Across the world,
Ere glory fades
And wings are furled,
And we will wander hand in hand,
Like a boy and girl in a playroom land.
At school and through various day jobs, he wrote both poetry and essays. Eventually, though, in 1932, at the age of 45, he lost his job due to alcoholism. His timing couldn’t have been worse, since it was the onset of the great depression. While his wife, Cissy, supported them, he turned to writing crime fiction.
He studied his contemporaries and took five months to write his first short story (“Blackmailer’s Don’t Shoot”) published in 1933. That was followed by 15 more short stories in the next five years, plus another 5 in 1939, the year that The Big Sleep was published.
Although he’s sometimes been characterized as a late bloomer with regard to his writing, I’m not sure that’s quite right. I think he may have been thinking about writing and understanding writing long before his crime fiction was published. It just wasn’t until his alcoholism got in the way of a day job that his writing really took off.
As Philip Marlowe once said, “Now this is beginning to make sense, in a screwy sort of way.”
Are you a late bloomer, especially when it comes to writing?
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