Los Angeles may be defined by outsiders as a city of glitzy film culture and crowded highways, but to writer Judith Freeman, it was Raymond Chandler’s vision of Los Angeles in his famous pulp and mystery novels that contribute to the definition of Los Angeles’ character.
“Funny how L.A. made him the writer he was and in return he gave the city a lasting image,” writes Freeman about Chandler in the first chapter of Chandler’s biography, The Long Embrace. Freeman abides by this thesis throughout the book, chronicling her journey around the Los Angeles area visiting the Chandlers’ former homes. The Chandlers moved frequently and lived everywhere in Los Angeles from “downtown to Santa Monica, Hollywood, the Westlake area, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, the mid-Wilshire district, Silverlake, Arcadia, Monrovia, San ernardio, Riverside, and Big Bear Lake, and Idyllwild in teh mountains aove L.A., and the desert towns of Palm Springs and Cathedral City” (7). It is through Freeman’s travels that Freeman unravels the story of the Chandler’s marriage.
At the beginning of the biography, Freeman claims that she was originally drawn to writing the book because of her interest in Raymond’s wife, Cissy, describing how she was fascinated by the eighteen-year age difference between the writer and his wife and promises the reader extra time devoted to drawing a little-before-seen portrait of Cissy. Cissy is portrayed as a quirky, independent character; Freeman shares how Cissy posed nude for artists in her youth, was an avid letter-writer, and voracious reader. While Freeman does not devote an excessive amount of pages to describing both Cissy’s character, Raymond’s story still seems to be of greater interest, especially given the fact that he precipitated most of the couple’s moving around the city. The relationship between Cissy and Raymond is fascinating to be certain, but Raymond’s fame and use of the Los Angeles city landscape as inspiration for his novels seems a generally more interesting perspective to explore. Freeman describes how important Cissy’s relationship was to Raymond, as she uncovers numerous love letters he wrote to her, yet the way in which Raymond observes the various landmarks in which he lived seem like the greater influence upon his famous collection of mystery novels.
What is most noteworthy about The Long Embrace is the way that Freeman integrates her modern-day observations of the places where the Chandlers lived with her history of both the Chandlers’ lives and the Chandlers’ personal recollections of what they liked and didn’t like about their various homes and neighborhoods. For example, Freeman includes passages from Raymond’s novels about his impressions of his various homes. When Raymond lived in the Bunker Hill area of downtown L.A., he wrote in his novel, The High Window how in Bunker Hill the houses have “parquetry floors [that] are scratched and worn through the once glossy finish and the wide sweeping staircases are dark with time and with cheap varnish laid on over generations of dirt. In the tall rooms haggard landladies bicker with shifty tenants. On the wide cool front porches, reaching their cracked shoes into the sun, and staring at nothing, sit the old men with faces like lost battles …” (Freeman 31). Chandler’s portraits provide a color, character, and historical dimension to Freeman’s observations. Freeman often wonders about how the Chandlers felt about living in certain regions and her hypotheses included with Raymond Chandler’s writing provide an interesting perspective to anyone living in Los Angeles today.
In order to appreciate Freeman’s dedication to describing the Chandlers and their marriage, however, one must approach The Long Embrace first with a foundation of knowledge about Raymond Chandler himself. While Freeman describes his jobs before he became a writer and how he struggled with alcoholism and affairs throughout his life, The Long Embrace seems more like a biography of the Chandlers’ marriage than a biography of Raymond Chandler himself. Again, while the marriage is an interesting facet of Raymond Chandler’s life, it seems that Chandler himself could have even used more attention in his own biography. For fans of Chandler’s mystery novels, little is mentioned of the inspiration for his most famous novels. Instead, Freeman describes his struggles in completing certain novels and screenplays at certain points in his life while living in particular cities rather than which events triggered the writings of which books. However, understanding where Chandler worked provides interest to those more fascinated with the writer than with his writing.
The Long Embrace is a thorough ode to 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles and provides perspective into Freeman’s thoughts and emotions as she journeys across Los Angeles to discover the Chandlers’ lives. While Freeman’s dedication to discovering the Chandlers is admirable, this journey can also seem exhausting for those who lack an intrinsic interest in Raymond Chandler’s relationships. For those interested in the early twentieth century and the face behind the pulp writing, The Long Embrace proves a detailed, intellectual treat.
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