…oh, and speaking of Chandler

Ian Fleming Interviews Raymond Chandler for the BBC

That’s the only known recording of Chandler‘s voice. How cool is that? Phillip Marlowe‘s creator being interviewed by James Bond‘s creator.

Chandler is getting on in years in this interview, and he comes across as a kinda-drunk cranky old man, but with a razor-sharp mind. It’s pretty awesome. And it’s a goldmine for Chandler fans–and not much less so for Fleming fans.

Since the death of his wife Cissy four years earlier, Chandler had been slowly drinking himself to death, and on the tapes he sounds inebriated. Fleming described him as being puffy and unkempt: “When he did look at you, he saw everything and remembered days later to criticise the tie or the shirt you had been wearing. Everything he wrote had authority …”

That’s from a piece in The Australian with lots of background on the interview.

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