Some of the best parts of Chandler's notebooks were his compilations of pickpocket lingo, jail house slang, and terms used by Narcs Writers keep noteb

Raymond Chandler’s Guide to Street, Hoodlum, and Prison Lingo

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2021-07-05 19:30:17

Some of the best parts of Chandler's notebooks were his compilations of pickpocket lingo, jail house slang, and terms used by Narcs

Writers keep notebooks because ideas come in the most unexpected of places. Notebooks contain a junkyard of treasures waiting to be discovered. They provide ports of entry to the imagination. And as Joan Didion once wrote, a place to keep “on nodding terms with the people we used to be”.

Thomas Hardy kept four notebooks: a “literary notebook”; a “Poetical Matter” notebook for his poetry; a “Studies, Specimens, etc.” notebook for assorted jottings; and a notebook for “Facts” which he compiled with help from his wife Emma out of old newspaper stories from the 1820s.

Raymond Chandler kept two kinds of notebook. One recording daily events and progression on works in hand. The second contained lists of titles, puns, similes, story ideas, observations, and first drafts. When Chandler moved to England, he had most of his notebooks taken out to city dump and burnt. Only two loose-leaf notebooks remained after Chandler’s death.

These notebooks reveal Chandler’s dedication to his craft, his fastidious nature, and his no-nonsense straightforward prose. Among his earliest notes are later marginalia denouncing any hint of pretentiousness.