Playback: A hidden memoir of Raymond Chandler
Playback reveals little of Chandler’s iconic character, Philip Marlowe; Playback reveals much of Raymond Chandler’s sad last days. The novel is a dud as far as a Marlowe story, but it’s sentimental of Chandler. Playback’s prose doesn’t hold a candle to Chandler’s famous style. Semblances of that prose mastery flickers here and there, but flickers like the embers on a candle just blown out. Chandler’s legendary similes that forever altered hard-boiled detective stories, Hollywood Noire, and literary devices — not a single one is found in Playback. The wry one-liners he mastered are instead clumsy, overdone, and overly shtick. His details, a feature of his writing that made him a master, his ability to depict a room of furniture or a small detail of clothing that made scenes and people and environment come to life — struggle like a once powerful heavyweight boxer turned fat and bloated. What I find his most memorable and powerful skill, his ability to create atmosphere, to detail the weather or the must of a room, all breathing life, conceptual color, and meaning into a scene — vanished somewhere in a bottle of booze years before he wrote Playback. But the story reveals Chandler. It gives us raw, memoir glances into his life. Chandler surfaces in the story, and in those glimpses, Playback turns worthwhile, despite those glimpses betraying a sad, troubled, lonely, and lost man.
Playback is worth it if you have studied Chandler and have an intimate knowledge of him. That intimacy would derive from reading Tom Hiney’s Raymond Chandler, Judith Freeman’s The Long Embrace, Chandler’s notebooks, and multiple readings of his stories and essays. Having this knowledge would make you keenly aware of Chandler’s state when he wrote Playback, and familiar with key details of his past that surface inside the story. Furthermore, you’d know that Chandler wrote the entirety of his Marlowe and hard-boiled canon while stone-cold sober, and often wrote those stories in a state where he was working to get his life back together. Playback is the only story he wrote drunk, and he never intended to write it. He meant for The Long Goodbye to be the last of the series, and he wrote that while his wife, Cissy, was dying in the next room.
He and Cissy enjoyed an odd marriage but a marriage with a rich and distinct bond. Cissy herself is a mystery. She was a nude model, and a painting of her, now since lost, once hung in a famous New York City hotel. Little is known of her family, other than she was married twice before, and her name kept changing. Changing like an alias and not due to marriage. It is suspected she grew up poor, but her intelligence, sensual expression, and her love of art, she saw as her ticket to something better. Or so it is believed. She was married to Chandler’s friend. It is unclear if the relationship started as an affair, or that Cissy was in a more open relationship at the time due to her second husband barely being around. Cissy had an odd thing with the name changes, but even odder and more mysterious, she was twenty years older, a great possibility even more than that, than Chandler when they met. Yet due to her beauty, and perhaps some of his innocence and shyness around women at the time, he thought she was the same age. She was also known to have an insatiable sexual appetite.
That last part matters because, for a bit, it looked like the dream marriage. Chandler was making a ton of money in the oil boom in California, and he had an intellectual and sexual dynamo at home. But then something happened. Either Cissy’s age came to light, although that didn’t seem to happen until much later, but it is believed an incident happened that sparked Chandler’s spiral into darkness. He had a pattern of this before, but this was the first time that we know of, where he spiraled in his marriage, or so it is believed. He began sleeping with his secretaries. He had the fortunate or unfortunate gene, depending on one’s appetite for libation, where he didn't get hangovers. So he would drink for days and days on end. And when he drank he turned into an impish, poorly behaved child. During this spiral, it looked like he fell in love with a secretary, and she knew he was married, yet that affair blew up in his face. The oil boom went bust, he got fired, his boss may have been a scammer, and he returned to Cissy. He sobered up, and the Chandlers went from wealthy to poor. During this time, however, he read hard-boiled detective novels, like those of Dashiell Hammett, and he believed he could write detective stories. Throughout his time writing the Marlowe series, and gaining fame, Chandler continued with his roller coaster of ups and downs. When Cissy’s age became apparent due to her health issues and her sudden drop in sexual appetite (it’s probable she developed or had some physical ailment) Chandler went on wilder sprees, months of endless inebriation, childlike behavior, sleeping with his secretaries, and threatening suicide for attention. Despite this, Chandler and Cissy were immensely devoted to each other. The surviving letters we have of each show them doting on each other, even during Chandler's egregious transgressions. They spent all their time with each other, but more as an unhealthy co-dependency, still they enjoyed this time. Even when their relationship became sexless due to her physical ailments and then later him drinking himself to permanent limpness, both of which flamed enormous self-doubt and insecurity for Chandler, they still deeply loved each other. Chandler was dependent on Cissy, and she was dependent on him. Without a doubt, they were each the other’s everything. All that history occurred before he wrote The Long Goodbye. Marlowe was the one who sobered Chandler up. Marlowe was the one who inspired Chandler to stop fooling around and to create. This created a relationship between the two. Marlowe was everything Chandler wanted to be but lacked either the capacity or the motivation to be. And when Chandler wrote The Long Goodbye Cissy was dying in the next room. And Chandler, perhaps, saw writing on the wall what his life would look like post Cissy. The final scene of The Long Goodbye is Marlowe saying goodbye to Chandler. And soon after he finished writing it, Cissy died.
Chandler then nosedived into his worst demons. As mentioned, when he was drunk, he behaved like a crazy child. He’d crawl on the floor, jump on furniture, cry and scream, and bust up rooms. This demented behavior got him kicked out of hotels, friend circles, and it isolated him (only a handful of people showed up to his funeral). He went spendthrift on women with his fortune. He’d fall in love, buy them a ton of jewelry (some of which they returned because they didn’t want anything to do with him), or he’d constantly try to marry them. When he could, he tried seducing certain women, usually big fans of his, but he only wanted to get them naked in a room just to just see a naked woman. Since he couldn’t reciprocate, and when these women picked up on his ploy, they berated him for it, for making them feel cheap and foolish. It was one of these women he was trying to see naked or get validation from that inspired him to write Playback. She quipped to him that wouldn’t it be funny if he married off Marlowe. Besotted, and plastered, he wrote Playback over a course of a few days. The book is dedicated to her, Jean.
In a rare sober moment, Chandler said Playback was complete garbage and that he didn’t remember writing it. This rare sober moment was when he was trying to straighten out his life to marry Helga, a Guinness heiress. She is the other name in the dedication. And Chandler is right, it is garbage. Garbage as far as a Marlowe book goes. It’s devoid of his atmospheric flourishes:
The house was on Dresden Avenue in the Oak Knoll section of Pasadena, a big solid cool-looking house with burgundy brick walls, a terra cotta tile roof, and a white stone trim. The front windows were leaded downstairs. Upstairs windows were of the cottage type and had a lot of rococo imitation stonework trimming around them.
- The High Window
It was one of those clear, bright summer mornings we get in the early spring in California before the high fog sets in. The rains are over. The hills are still green and in the valley across the hills you can see the snow on the high mountains. The fur stores are advertising their annual sales. The call houses that specialize in sixteen-year-old virgins are doing a land-office business. And in Beverly Hills the jacaranda trees are beginning to bloom.
- The Little Sister
Instead, we get a colorless version:
The entrance was on a balcony which looked down over the bar and a dining room on two levels. A curving carpeted staircase led down to the bar. Nobody was upstairs but the hat check girl and an elderly party in a phone booth whose expression suggested that nobody better fool with him.
- Playback
Close.
Still good.
Better than than most, but it lacks the detail that makes it come to life, and lacks his signature phrases that create mood, the feel of the room or environment.
Ian Fleming of James Bond fame tried to help Chandler late in his life. And a famous radio interview exists between them. In it, Chandler, fully marinated, rambled incoherently on how to pull off crimes. Chandler liked Ian Fleming’s work. He liked Casino Royale which introduces James Bond to the world. But Chandler never gave Marlowe gadgets like how Bond gets some. But in Playback Marlowe suddenly has gadgets, but more folksy gadgets, like using a stethoscope to listen into another room, or a flash pen to light up things or cause a distraction. If you know Marlowe, the gadgets in Playback are jarring, and if you don’t Marlow, they come across as corny.
In that interview with Ian Fleming, Chandler rambles about how to commit crimes. He deploys similar rambles in Playback:
"It’s as full of holes as a sink strainer. You’re being fed a line, Mr. Umney. Where would a man keep material like the important papers you mentioned — if you had to keep them at all? Certainly not where a secretary could get them. And unless he missed the stuff before she left, how did he get her followed to the train? Next, although she took a ticket to California, she could have got off anywhere. Therefore she would have to be watched on the train, and if that was done, why did someone need me to pick her up here? Next, this, as you tell it, would be a job for a large agency with nations-wide connections. It would be idiotic to take a chance on one man. I lost her yesterday. I could lose her again. It takes a bare minimum of six operatives to do a standard tail job in any sizable place, and that’s just what I mean — a bare minimum. In a really big city you’d need a dozen. An operative has to eat and sleep and change his shirt. If he’s tailing by car he has to be able to drop a man while he finds a place to park. Department stores and hotels may have half a dozen entrances. But all this girl does is hang around Union Station here for three hours in full view of everybody. And all your friends in Washington do is mail you a picture, call you on the phone, and then go back to watching television."
If you know Marlowe, this ramble is uncharacteristic. And these uncharacteristic elements permeate the novel. But the most uncharacteristic scenes are the most telling. One theme of those scenes is Marlowe sleeping with the female characters.
In the other novels, Marlowe is choosy. He’s a sensitive man, sensitive in the sense of empathy, aware of his feelings pertaining to the environment, and keen to pick up on the feelings of others. Marlowe is not a Boy Scout, it’s implied he’s a good lover, but he wants a type. Women make plenty of passes at Marlowe, but he turns them down. In Playback Marlowe beds all the main female characters. The scenes after Marlowe sleeps with someone are the most revealing of Chandler. It’s here Marlowe is gone, and we get a peek into Chandler.
And again in the darkness that muted cry, and then again the slow quiet peace.
“I hate you,” she said with her mouth against mine.
“Not for this, but because perfection never comes twice and with us it came to soon. And I’ll never see you again and I don't want to. It would have to be forever or not at all.”
"And you acted like a hardboiled pick-up who had seen too much of the wrong side of life.”
“So did you. And we were both wrong. And it’s useless. Kiss me harder."
Suddenly she was gone from the bed almost without a sound or movement.
After a little while the light went on in the hallway and she stood in the door in a long wrapper.
“Goodbye,” she said calmly. “I’m calling a taxi for you. Wait out in front for it. You won’t see me again.”
“What about Umney?”
“A poor frightened jerk. He needs someone to bolster his ego, to give him a feeling of power and conquest. I give it to him. A woman’s body is not so sacred that it can’t be used — especially when she has already failed at love.”
She disappeared. I got up and put my clothes on and listened before I went out. I heard nothing. I called out, but there was no answer. When I reached the sidewalk in front of the house the taxi was just pulling up.
I looked back. The house seemed completely dark.
No one lived there. It was all a dream. Except that someone had called the taxi. I got into it and was driven home.
Those last few lines struck me. The sadness, the sentiment, and its potential meaning. While I will never know, I boiled the meaning down to three guesses. One, Chandler could be reminiscing about his early days with Cissy. He could be sentimental about his past vigor and her insatiable sexual appetite. Two, he may be wondering about the secretary he fell in love with, the one he carried an affair with for quite some time, but then she vanished out of his life as he had to vanish out of hers. Or, three, maybe he’s dealing with his compunction over the handful of secretaries he had affairs with. And what those flings did not only to Cissy, but also to the many women he had them with, and perhaps wondering whatever became of those women, long since out of his life. It’s hard to tell if he’s roiling in guilt or if he’s waxing sentimental. But certainly, it’s Chandler wrangling with his past. He does it again with another bedded woman.
Then I got to thinking there are two kinds of women you can make love to. Those who give themselves so completely and with such utter abandonment that they don’t even think about their bodies. And there are those who are self-conscious and always want to cover up a little. I remembered a girl in a story by Anatole Franc who insisted on taking her stockings off. Keeping them on made her feel like a whore. She was right.
And this scene Chandler details post-coital regret from the woman’s perspective and Marlowe’s self-doubt, like Marlowe failed to impress. That they became strangers after the act. It’s all about Chandler here. He’s wrangling with something. My first guess is that he’s wrangling over Cissy. Apparently, Cissy used to clean or hang around the house either in the nude or in lingerie. This leads me to wonder if the stocking part could be some drunken yet sad outburst at Cissy he blurted onto the page. Chandler was an insecure and immature man. Letters and quips to friends reveal that when Chandler discussed Cissy’s past, he did what all insecure and immature men do, he compared himself obsessively to past lovers all while convincing himself that all the men she was with before him were better lovers, and then projecting this sophomoric obsession onto a sophomoric belief that women, in particular, Cissy, thought only in comparisons. Despite her always doting on him, never divorcing him, and staying faithful during times of penury and his blatant infidelity, his insecurity made him paranoid that she kept thinking other men were better.
My second theory regards Chandler’s desire to get a woman nude just to see her nude. As I mentioned, Chandler drank himself completely impotent. And he’d seduce eager and willing women, they’d get undressed, and he just wanted to look. Then they’d get mad since nothing could be reciprocated. They realized that it was just a ploy. So perhaps he is projecting his insecurities, his sadness, or who knows what else.
The other Chandler rambles seen on the pages are from random old men. They discuss God, women, death, life, and money, and all are sad, insecure, incoherent, and come out of nowhere and then vanish to nowhere. Through these rambles I find a sad, scared, and besotted Chandler. Another telling theme, a more self-doubtful and nearly groveling Marlowe when Marlowe deals with male authority figures in the novel. Marlowe is grounded in his convictions and his confidence, normally. But in Playback Marlowe is spiraling with doubt, insecurity, and random asides uncharacteristic of Marlowe. This could be his worry about impressing Helga Guinness's father, it could be some form of drunken guilt or victimhood, or maybe it's a Chandler desperate for validation. Whatever it is, it says volumes of Chandler and says nothing of Marlowe.
Playback is Chandler’s drunken self-reflections. They are sad, pathetic, and revealing. And personally, it's challenging to see one of my heroes, a man who created an iconic figure, the man who depicted Los Angeles and its emotions and feelings and sense in a timeless manner, a man who took the genre of hard-boiled detective stories to sonic heights, seeing that man spiral into his worst demons. But it's undoubtedly honest. And for Chandler fans, that makes it worth reading. Maybe it’s reading it for sympathy, or maybe understanding of him. It’s a terrible Marlowe novel, yet it’s a sophisticated Chandler memoir.