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Many/most of Raymond Chandler’s works are set in the time period when LA was gradually shifting from oil to film as its predominant industry. I believe oil exec
by keiferski 2y ago
Many/most of Raymond Chandler’s works are set in the time period when LA was gradually shifting from oil to film as its predominant industry. I believe oil executives were in a few of the stories as villains too.
Great reads if you’re interested in the era.
- no_exit 2y agoUpton Sinclair's Oil! is pretty good too.
- mezentius 2y agoAbsolutely. Chandler was in fact employed by an oil company before he tapped a richer vein (sorry) with his fiction. Incidentally, while re-reading Chandler's "The Lady in the Lake," I realized that the scene in which Marlowe meets his employer, dozing off in a "high-backed chair" in his club's library, was a description of the library at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. Today, if you're a member (or know one), you can pop up to the third floor, still preserved in all of its interwar ersatz-Gilded-Age splendor, and doze off in one of those distinctive high-backed chairs after a drink and schvitz. It turns out that Chandler had worked across the street when employed by Dabney Oil, and visited the L.A. Athletic Club frequently.
- keiferski 2y agoAh you’re right, I’ve read a few biographies of Chandler but somehow totally forgot he worked for an oil company. IIRC it was a job he got through his father in law. Great trivia about the club - will definitely have to visit that if I make it to LA again.
- ahazred8ta 2y agoThere was a Rockford Files episode where he distracted a crooked businessman in LA by buying the mineral rights under his house and sending a drilling crew to his front yard.