speech 4
Trouble is my Business (893 words, about seven minutes)
''It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid-October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard, wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.I was wearing my powder blue suit, dark blue shirt, tie and display hankerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private eye should be and I was calling on four million dollars.''
Mister toastmaster, fellow members and guests. That's not a description of my weekend.
Instead it's an excerpt from The Big Sleep, a book by one of my favourite authors.
Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and went on to write a series of short stories and novels dealing with gangsters, crooked cops, petty thugs, sexy sirens and private detectives in the Hollywood of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.
I'd like to tell you tonight a little bit about his life, his career and his works.
I believe he created one of the most entertaining fictional characters of all-time in his wise-cracking, macintosh-clad,steel-jawed private detective Phillip Marlowe.
His other achievement was to write some of the funniest, most imaginative prose in the detective fiction genre and to give Humphrey Bogart one of his greatest screen roles.
Chandler's early life was divided between the United States and Britain and critics say this allowed him to write about America's seedyside with something of an outsider's perspective.
At the age of seven in 1895 his parents divorced and he was taken to England where he was educated and became a British citizen.
In 1907 at 19 he got a job with the British civil service and then worked in various roles including as a freelance journalist.
In 1912 he returned to the US and started training as bookkeeper. Then when world war two broke out he signed up with the Canadian army and saw active service.
After the war he moved to Los Angeles where he landed a job in the oil business.
He married and managed to work his way up throught the company, eventually becoming a wealthy executive.
But Chandler had a vice - alcoholism - and in 1932 he was fired for drinking and absenteeism.
This proved a major turning point in his life.
He was forced to look for a way to support himself and his wife and began writing for pulp fiction magazines.
These were inexpensive books printed on cheap paper, usually with lurid covers, that told readers exciting crime stories.
Chandler's first short story, Blackmailers Don't Shoot, was published in Black mask magazine in 1933 and he proved to have a talent for the style.
He followed it up with more stories in Dime Detective and Detective Fiction Weekly, honing his style.
Chandler's stories were about the seedy side of life, blackmail, illegal casinos and bad, bad women with heavenly bodies.
Then in 1939 he finished his first novel, The Big Sleep, and introduced his most famous creation to the world.
Unlike Marlowe, who was diminutive, private detective Phillip Marlowe was 6 foot, very tall for the 30s, about 40 years old, solidly built with a rock hard jaw.
Able to handle himself in a fight Marlowe also had a college education, liked classical music and solving chess problems in his spare time.
He was willing to work for a pittance if the cause was right, carried a gun under his trench coat and kept a bottle of burbon in his dingy office.
In the Big Sleep Marlowe gets beaten up, is betrayed by three women and nealry loses his life before saving the day.
Chandler followed this book with Farewell my Lovely in 1940, another Marlowe adventure, which gave us this classic line: "I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a house in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.''
In another scene a gangster is described as ''as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a piece of angel food cake''
Next came the High Window and the Lady in The Lake in 1942 and 43.
The Lady in the Lake gave us this line when Marlowe is describing an obnoxious bureaucrat: "To say her face would have stopped a clock would have been to insult her. It would have stopped a run away horse.''
As Chandler's books took off he was called onto write for Hollywood and he adapted Double Indemnity for the screen along with The Big Sleep in which Humphrey Bogart played Marlowe.
More books followed: The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye and Playback in 1958.
Sadly Chandler's own private life was about as irregular as Marlowe's.
His wife died in 1954 and depressed he began drinking heavily and his health deteriorated. He died in 1958.
It was a sad end, but Chandler's legacy lives on.
Crime writers from America's Robert B Parker to Australia's Peter Corris have tried to imitate and adapt his style.
Marlowe-like figures live on in dozens of cop shows and movies.
His books, with their references to meals in diners that cost a dime, cars with running boards and men in hats, are immensely readable sixty years on.
I'd recommend them to anyone who like a good read and a first class hero
''It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid-October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard, wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.I was wearing my powder blue suit, dark blue shirt, tie and display hankerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private eye should be and I was calling on four million dollars.''
Mister toastmaster, fellow members and guests. That's not a description of my weekend.
Instead it's an excerpt from The Big Sleep, a book by one of my favourite authors.
Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and went on to write a series of short stories and novels dealing with gangsters, crooked cops, petty thugs, sexy sirens and private detectives in the Hollywood of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.
I'd like to tell you tonight a little bit about his life, his career and his works.
I believe he created one of the most entertaining fictional characters of all-time in his wise-cracking, macintosh-clad,steel-jawed private detective Phillip Marlowe.
His other achievement was to write some of the funniest, most imaginative prose in the detective fiction genre and to give Humphrey Bogart one of his greatest screen roles.
Chandler's early life was divided between the United States and Britain and critics say this allowed him to write about America's seedyside with something of an outsider's perspective.
At the age of seven in 1895 his parents divorced and he was taken to England where he was educated and became a British citizen.
In 1907 at 19 he got a job with the British civil service and then worked in various roles including as a freelance journalist.
In 1912 he returned to the US and started training as bookkeeper. Then when world war two broke out he signed up with the Canadian army and saw active service.
After the war he moved to Los Angeles where he landed a job in the oil business.
He married and managed to work his way up throught the company, eventually becoming a wealthy executive.
But Chandler had a vice - alcoholism - and in 1932 he was fired for drinking and absenteeism.
This proved a major turning point in his life.
He was forced to look for a way to support himself and his wife and began writing for pulp fiction magazines.
These were inexpensive books printed on cheap paper, usually with lurid covers, that told readers exciting crime stories.
Chandler's first short story, Blackmailers Don't Shoot, was published in Black mask magazine in 1933 and he proved to have a talent for the style.
He followed it up with more stories in Dime Detective and Detective Fiction Weekly, honing his style.
Chandler's stories were about the seedy side of life, blackmail, illegal casinos and bad, bad women with heavenly bodies.
Then in 1939 he finished his first novel, The Big Sleep, and introduced his most famous creation to the world.
Unlike Marlowe, who was diminutive, private detective Phillip Marlowe was 6 foot, very tall for the 30s, about 40 years old, solidly built with a rock hard jaw.
Able to handle himself in a fight Marlowe also had a college education, liked classical music and solving chess problems in his spare time.
He was willing to work for a pittance if the cause was right, carried a gun under his trench coat and kept a bottle of burbon in his dingy office.
In the Big Sleep Marlowe gets beaten up, is betrayed by three women and nealry loses his life before saving the day.
Chandler followed this book with Farewell my Lovely in 1940, another Marlowe adventure, which gave us this classic line: "I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a house in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.''
In another scene a gangster is described as ''as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a piece of angel food cake''
Next came the High Window and the Lady in The Lake in 1942 and 43.
The Lady in the Lake gave us this line when Marlowe is describing an obnoxious bureaucrat: "To say her face would have stopped a clock would have been to insult her. It would have stopped a run away horse.''
As Chandler's books took off he was called onto write for Hollywood and he adapted Double Indemnity for the screen along with The Big Sleep in which Humphrey Bogart played Marlowe.
More books followed: The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye and Playback in 1958.
Sadly Chandler's own private life was about as irregular as Marlowe's.
His wife died in 1954 and depressed he began drinking heavily and his health deteriorated. He died in 1958.
It was a sad end, but Chandler's legacy lives on.
Crime writers from America's Robert B Parker to Australia's Peter Corris have tried to imitate and adapt his style.
Marlowe-like figures live on in dozens of cop shows and movies.
His books, with their references to meals in diners that cost a dime, cars with running boards and men in hats, are immensely readable sixty years on.
I'd recommend them to anyone who like a good read and a first class hero
posted by Daniel Dasey at 11:02 PM
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