VARIOUS PROPERTIES
CHANDLER, Raymond (1888-1959). Typed letter signed ("Raymond Chandler") to William Gault, writer of mystery and genre fiction, La Jolla, California, 8 March 1956. 1 page, 4to, single-spaced, Chandler's address imprinted at top, a little wrinkled, a slight marginal tear.
Details
CHANDLER, Raymond (1888-1959). Typed letter signed ("Raymond Chandler") to William Gault, writer of mystery and genre fiction, La Jolla, California, 8 March 1956. 1 page, 4to, single-spaced, Chandler's address imprinted at top, a little wrinkled, a slight marginal tear.
"I NEVER HEARD OF A COMIC STRIP CHARACTER CALLED HEMINGWAY." A very good, chatty letter, discussing several detective literature writers: "A man named Fox had the impudence to suggest that I deliberately designed my signature to be unintelligible...I got that way from being a nervous wreck and I got to be a nervous wreck from signing checks. I never heard of a comic strip character called Hemingway, possibly because I never look at comic strips...So it was the other Hemingway. Surely you would be very wrong to allow yourself to be made ever into a new Brett Halliday [author of the Michael Shayne mystery books]...As for Fred Brown, if this is Frederic Brown [Amerian mystery novelist], and he is a high-brow, why does he write this faux naif style? He does it better than [Erle Stanley] Gardner's A.A. Fair [a Gardner pseudonym] but it's natural to Gardner who is a very able man but definitely not a highbrow. I don't remember autographing a book for Craig Rice [pseudonym of the mystery writer Georgiana Ann Randolph] but I was at her house once...and I probably did it there. I don't know her well enough to know why she went to hell but she is the only mystery writer who ever got on the cover of Time, isn't she?...Gardner always hints at vast stores of secret information which for some recondite reason may not be disclosed..."
"I NEVER HEARD OF A COMIC STRIP CHARACTER CALLED HEMINGWAY." A very good, chatty letter, discussing several detective literature writers: "A man named Fox had the impudence to suggest that I deliberately designed my signature to be unintelligible...I got that way from being a nervous wreck and I got to be a nervous wreck from signing checks. I never heard of a comic strip character called Hemingway, possibly because I never look at comic strips...So it was the other Hemingway. Surely you would be very wrong to allow yourself to be made ever into a new Brett Halliday [author of the Michael Shayne mystery books]...As for Fred Brown, if this is Frederic Brown [Amerian mystery novelist], and he is a high-brow, why does he write this faux naif style? He does it better than [Erle Stanley] Gardner's A.A. Fair [a Gardner pseudonym] but it's natural to Gardner who is a very able man but definitely not a highbrow. I don't remember autographing a book for Craig Rice [pseudonym of the mystery writer Georgiana Ann Randolph] but I was at her house once...and I probably did it there. I don't know her well enough to know why she went to hell but she is the only mystery writer who ever got on the cover of Time, isn't she?...Gardner always hints at vast stores of secret information which for some recondite reason may not be disclosed..."