Planning a Raymond Chandler Evening...er Afternoon - 2009-02-01 00:36:28
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So I was recently reading Raymond Chandler and in rereading the timeline (in this book) for his biography realized something that hadn't really clicked in my brain before - I now live near many of the places where Chander once lived.

1934-37 ...Chandler and Cissy [his wife] move frequently (sometimes two or three times a year) throughout southern California, living in furnished apartments in Los Angeles, Riverside, La Jolla, Cathedral City, and Pacific Palisades, and sometimes renting a cabin at Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains. (Later writes: "I never slept in the park but I came damn close to it. I went five days without anything to eat but soup once, and I had just been sick at that.")

According to wikipedia:

"...he returned to La Jolla, where he died (according to the death certificate) of pneumonial peripheral vascular shock and prerenal uremia in the Scripps Memorial Hospital. ...Raymond Chandler is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, San Diego, California, as per Frank MacShane, The Raymond Chandler Papers. Chandler directed that he be buried next to Cissy, but he wound up in the cemetery's Potter’s field, because of the lawsuit over his estate."

I'm particularly familiar with Scripps as it's where I was in the hospital back in 2004, and where most of my doctor's visits are these days. It's in a lovely area of La Jolla, and I hope that Chandler had a view of the ocean from his hospital room - though he was actually never as in love with the ocean as many residents here are.

Anyway now I'm digging around, trying to see if I can find the locations of some of the places around the San Diego area where Chandler lived. And I thought that Jon and I would see what we could take photos of next weekend - in my mind I thought "we'll make a Raymond Chandler afternoon of it...wait, why does that sounds familar?" Because somewhere on a cd I have the Robyn Hitchcock song Raymond Chandler Evening (on album Element of Light). It's not one of my favorite Hitchcock songs, but it was too nice that the song title hopped into my head like that. And thanks to YouTube...



And for those interested, the lyrics:

It's a Raymond Chandler Evening
At the end of someone's day
And I'm standing in my pocket
And I'm slowly turning grey
I remember what I told you
But I can't remember why
And the yellow leaves are falling
In a spiral from the sky
There's a body on the railings
That I can't identify
And I'd like to reassure you but
I'm not that kind of guy
It's a Raymond Chandler Evening
And the pavements are all wet
And I'm lurking in the shadows
'Cause it hasn't happened yet

Anyhow, on to the hunt for the addresses of Chandler's apartments. I know there are quite a few biographies that will have that information, but I also have great faith in my fellow Chandler fans - others will have thought of this, others will have traveled and then written of it - right?
Right.

Raymond Chandler and Me
"...My first published novel will be released in November. Veil of Lies; A Medieval Noir. You read that right. Medieval Noir. It isn’t just a name. It’s a new subgenre invented by yours truly. What is the saying? If you can’t find the books out there you want to read, write them? That’s me. Blending my favorite genres, medieval mystery with noir, hard-boiled stuff, pulp. Dark, edgy, moody. It works. But at the launch of my career as a novelist, I needed all the help I could get. Short of channeling the man’s ghost, I decided to go on a journey to see the places he lived...and the spot that became his final resting place."

Even better - the author of that post was at the Chandler house in La Jolla when it was for sale and thus got to take a look inside. And then posted a photo or two.

Here's an article on places Chandler lived in LA, by an author who went on to publish a Chandler biography...

Tracking Chandler’s every move
By Judith Freeman, LA Times, December 23, 2004 in print edition F-1
"One thing we know is that Chandler and his wife were very fussy people. It was easy for them to find something wrong with wherever they lived. More to the point, Chandler was a restless person whose many childhood moves with his mother – first from the Midwest to England, and then to various residences in London – set an early pattern of restlessness.

...However, many of the places where Chandler lived in L.A. don’t exist anymore. At least half have been replaced by something else. It seemed to me that in my search, I was discovering how Los Angeles is a city of architectural disposability, forever in the process of erasing its rather recent past."

.
Similarly it turns out that the address Chandler lived at in La Jolla on Neptune Place is no longer there - but then, that's California. Real Estate is always changing out here. Even the one home that Chandler actually owned...

Rubbing out Chandler's place?
Peter Rowe, San Diego Union Tribune, July 25, 2004
"6005 Camino de la Costa remains much as it was between 1946 and 1955, when Raymond Chandler lived here. He was already a successful writer, and his mysteries "The Big Sleep" and "Farewell, My Lovely" had been turned into movies. But in this comfortable La Jolla home, Chandler added stories, screenplays and two novels – "The Little Sister" and his last masterpiece, "The Long Goodbye" – to his body of work.

Now, this landmark's out-of-state owners are planning a major renovation; call it "The Big Remodel." A second floor will be added, and one new room to the ground floor. Whether the house will still resemble the place where Chandler lived and worked is an open question."

Part of me thinks that if you own a historic home like this then you shouldn't be ripping it up so dramatically - but then, it is their home after all, and not something the city bought to preserve. Though if you read the article it appears that a company bought the house and didn't know anything about Chandler or his history in the house - and didn't sound too interested when the reporter called them about it. Great. But that was 5 yrs ago - we'll have to see how different it looks now.

Ah ha, here's a blog entry with some photos from 2006 that gives an answer to that question...

Chandler Pilgrimage
"Since John Billheimer and I were visiting the San Diego area to sign at Mysterious Galaxy Books, we thought we'd take the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to the site. Turns out the house is undergoing a controversial remodel, adding a second floor and additional rooms to the ground floor. Here's how it looks now..."

I am wildly unimpressed. We'll see if it looks any better now that it's had a few years and some landscaping. (Same blog also has a post with Chandler doing a cameo in Double Indemnity.)

It is sort of a shame in that I'd like to see something of Chandler's that would remain as a monument to him, and since that's his only house in a life full of rentals it seems the logical choice. In any case, I'm putting the house on my list of things to visit mainly because it looks to be the one location that's still there. By "visit" I mean drive by and look at from the street - the house isn't open to the public after all.

After much surfing I stumbled onto this great Site for Chandler locations:

Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles (Shamus Town©®)
In particular - Where Raymond Chandler lived in Los Angeles & Southern California 1913-1959 - with notes as to where the information for the addresses came from (letter, document, phone directory, etc.)
From that site I picked up a few more addresses. I'd definitely recommend this site for anyone planning to do this same sort of tour for Chandler in the LA area. I also spent quite some time just looking at the great photos of LA (and more here) during Chandler's time. (I find the Venice Oil Wells especially fascinating for some reason.) Interesting page on LA's Bradbury Building (which we visited back in 2006), suggesting that it might not be the building Chandler referred to as "The Belfont Building" - but it's a good excuse as any to ponder how nice it is that the Bradbury Building still exits. (Check out the great ironwork in those photos.) And don't miss the True Crime page - very interesting.

And so with all the web results...

The Local (San Diego) Visit List

* La Jolla apartment: 1265 Park Row
Chandler lived here sometime in 1939

* La Jolla home: 6005 Camino de la Costa
Only home he ever purchased, others were rentals

* La Jolla's Del Charro Motel, 2380 Torrey Pines Rd.
After selling his home in 1955 [place was apparently too lonely after wife's death] he stayed here before moving on to a new apartment. Can't find information on what's currently at this location - so we'll have to go take a look at the area.

* La Jolla apartment: 6925 Neptune Place
No longer there according to some online info, but we'll check out the street.

* La Jolla apartment: 824 Prospect St
Rented in 1958.

* La Jolla apartment: 524 Prospect St
Rented in 1959.

* Scripps Clinic, La Jolla
Hmmm. Is it this location on Genesee Executive Plaza or this one in Torrey Pines? I'm assuming it's the Torrey Pines one because that's next to the hospital. Must check up on that...

* Mount Hope Cemetery
3751 Market Street, San Diego, CA
(Open 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m)
Since this cemetery is all the way downtown we may put this part off for another day - we'll see how long this trek takes.

I'm assuming that the only place we'll definitely be able to find will the the house on Camino de la Costa and the other locations will be transformed into homes/condos or will have been torn down. Part of the interest in this will be to discover what currently is in those locations. And we'll be taking photos of course.

For our lunch stop my thought was to try and find someplace local that Chandler had visited - perhaps someplace he'd actually eaten. Though with Chandler it'd more likely I could find someplace he'd had something to drink. So far this is all I've come up with:

La Valencia Hotel
1132 Prospect Street, La Jolla, CA
"Even La Jolla resident Raymond Chandler, famous mystery writer of the forties and fifties, used La Valencia under a thinly disguised fictitious name as a backdrop for the thriller, "Playback.""

I have no idea which of the restaurants at the Valencia (there are 3 or 4) would be in a part of the hotel that would have been used during Chandler's time - so we'll just eat at whichever seems most interesting, and then I'll ask the hotel folk about the history once we're there. (Or at worse give em a call later and ask.)

Helpful Chandler Site I'm Still Sifting Through:
The Raymond Chandler Website: Criticism and Scholarship

Interesting list:
45 Calibrations of Raymond Chandler, Peter Straub

Another article:
The Man Who Gave Us Marlowe
By Allen Barra, New York Sun, November 7, 2007


If any other Chandler fans wander through and read this - please feel free to offer any suggestions for futher field trips, especially if you know of any bars or restaurants he frequented. I'm a long time reader of Chandler, and feel somewhat silly that it never occurred to me that I should actually wander past the areas where the man lived. I've shy'd away from reading any biographies of Chandler because I (somewhere in my stacks of books) have a collection of his letters - I've enjoyed reading the man's own words, and after that you somehow feel you've learned more than enough. And as someone who's had a family that's dealt with alcoholism I can feel a lot of empathy for Chandler, and at the same time have no illusions as to how difficult his life probably was.
Meanwhile if you have any biographies to recommend, please do!

UPDATE! June 3, 2009
I've posted photos of Chandler's home here.

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