SOURCE: "Chandler in the Thirties: Apprenticeship of an Angry Man," in Book Forum, Vol. VI, No. 2, 1982, pp. 143-53.

In the following essay, Meador discusses Chandler's early writing career, tracing the development of his use of language and his social attitudes, while also describing the creation of his chief fictional hero—Detective Philip Marlowe.

Los Angeles in the 1930s was not a sleepy village as Marlowe describes it in The Little Sister. The city he sentimentally recalls there is adrift somewhere in the past, kept alive through the remembering words of Raymond Chandler:

I used to like this town. A long time ago. There were trees along Wilshire Boulevard. Beverly Hills was a country town. Westwood was bare hills and lots offering at eleven hundred dollars and no takers . . . Los Angeles was just a big dry sunny place with ugly homes and no style, but goodhearted and peaceful. It...