SOURCE: "The Tale-Teller," in Down These Mean Streets a Man Must Go: Raymond Chandler's Knight, The University of North Carolina Press, 1963, pp. 22-30.

In the following essay, Durham examines Chandler's published short stories, praising his evocative descriptions of character and the city of Los Angeles.

Thousands of ghost-like flimsy wooden derricks were standing throughout the Los Angeles Basin, the Dabney-Johnston Oil Corporation (soon to move to tiny quarters at 620 West Olympic Boulevard with only one company, the South Basin, remaining) was still operating, but Raymond Chandler, in 1933, was no longer in the oil business. His separation from business, although primarily for economic reasons, was hardly less abrupt than was Sherwood Anderson's a few years before.

When Anderson decided to leave the world of business, he did it (so he said) in dramatic fashion. In his factory office he turned to his secretary, saying, "My feet are cold, wet...