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Meandering.....but dull

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As a long-time fan of Raymond Chandler's, I looked forward to reading this book. However, the author meandered rather than analyzed, substituting visits to empty train stations or the outside of houses that the Chandlers lived in for any close-up analysis of her subjects. [I happen to be more interested in people than architecture; perhaps others with more passion for architecture or addresses will find this of interest.] Part of this is Chandler's fault; by burning all the letters his wife had written he blocked attempts by later writers to learn more about her. However, part of the book's dullness must be laid at the author's door since I never felt that she brought her main characters to life - whether by using letters of others or her own insights. Overall, the book is a failure of intent, writing and character.

Chandler's wanderings, and marriage...very good

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I'd never heard of Judith Freeman before. I've read most of Chandler's stuff (his Library of America volumes are on my shelf, read and reread) and I enjoy him endlessly. I know a few things about him (that he was really pretty much British, for instance, and that his wife was older than he) but I didn't know how much he and his wife moved around L.A. This latter fact, and his marriage to Cissy Pascal, are the center of this book, an odd work that is strangely fascinating, even though it can't tell us everything we want to know.

Chandler met Cissy just after he first came to Southern California, when she was still married to Pascal, her previous husband. He basically wooed her away from her current husband, apparently insisting afterwords that he'd rescued her from a loveless marriage, and they spent the rest of her life together, thirty-some years, mostly living in a series of rented apartments and homes in Southern California. He did take off a couple of times, chasing women or joining the Canadian army during World War I, but he always returned after a short hiatus. The odd thing is how much they moved. The lived the last 8 years of Cissy's life in a house in La Jolla, but before that they moved, constantly, sometimes twice a year. It's this fact, and the strangeness of Chandler being married to a woman 18 years older than he, who lied about it when they first met, that form the basis for this book.

The author decided, for whatever reason, to travel around Southern California, and visit the houses that Chandler lived in while he was here in Southern California. Many are now gone, some have fallen on hard times, a few are still in good neighborhoods (one's in Brentwood). The odd thing to wonder is whether we can learn anything from any of the homes individually, given that Chandler only lived in each one for a short period of time. I think in many ways the answer has to be no. Apparently both Chandlers were famously picky about where they lived: neighbors were often judged to be too loud, a dog barked, the sun hit the windows too harshly, whatever, and so they felt they had to move again. I think this, rather than the individual houses, tells us the most about the Chandlers, and the author seems to agree, though she dutifully journeys to each and every house. Interestingly, as an aside, the house in La Jolla (the only one they lived in for any length of time) was demolished just as the book was being finished. I'd say it was something of a travesty, given that it had been Chandler's residence, but he personally hated it, so I guess it's not much of a loss.

The moves, and the nature of the marriage, take up the main part of the book. The author doesn't spend a lot of time on things that don't interest her, and she makes it clear in the opening that she's not writing a formal, complete biography, so don't expect one. One of the difficulties of the book is that Chandler himself, after planning to release the letters between he and his wife, changed his mind and destroyed them before he passed away, leaving us with almost nothing of her, so that we're somewhat confused by the marriage and the relationship between the two people. Did he ever realize she'd lied about how old she was? Did he confront her about it? What was her reaction, when he did? We'll apparently never know.

That aside, this is at times a fascinating book. In part it's a portrait of a Los Angeles that's passed into history, one with mansions and servants and supper clubs on Hollywood Boulevard. The author spends a lot of time recreating this world, so that you can see what Raymond Chandler saw of Los Angeles and the world back then. Frankly, in some ways this is the largest strength of the book. I really enjoyed it, and would recommend it to anyone interested in Chandler or '40s LA.

You need to be a Chandler fan

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This is a book especially for Raymond Chandler fans, who not only have read his books, but have read them a second time and enjoyed them even more.

The writer is obviously in love with Chandler and lovingly
describes his life in a fascinating travel of where he
lived, what he did while there, and the most important,
his relationship with his wife and how the relationship
influenced his writings ( and perhaps veiwpoint.)

I also enjoyed the writer's similies and approach. She
was almost an anthropologist in her study; perhaps she
was.

I think it is a fascinating book for those who don't
know Raymond Chandler, but most definitely an important
book for those who are Raymond Chandler fans.

I couldn't put it down, and re-read certain parts, too.

Kit Menkin

LOS ANGELES EMBRACED

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This book captured me on many levels.
I found in this book, not only a love and reverence for Raymond Chandler, but also for Los Angeles.
I think that the Long Embrace is really the embrace of Los Angeles.
An embrace that impacted Chandler and Freeman and readers.

I am a native of Los Angeles and in the age bracket beyond midlife. I understand the journey and searching for a person's and a city's history.
I enjoyed her almost tangible manipulations of Los Angeles sights, sounds, textures and smells. I recognize her experiences as my experiences lovingly put into words. I recognize many of the streets and areas.

Also, my own memories of a Los Angeles with oil wells pumping,
where we did not have to lock our car or house doors at night!
Of a time when the building of the Music Center downtown showed that we were not a "hick town".

A city where some of the best places are hidden away from the traffic and the tourists still to this day.

Freeman's research intertwines Chandler and Los Angeles.
She brings up questions and presents answers about
the impact on Los Angeles of the automobile, oil, films, police corruption and the unlikely heroes that reveal themselves in the midst of it all. (as Chandler did)


It is interesting to finally learn about Chandler's wife, Cissy.
As to her giving the incorrect age- all the women friends of my mother and grandmother's did not give their true age. I remember them telling me " a woman never gives her true age". Children and men were not supposed to ask. I know of women who refused to use Medicare benefits because they did not want to reveal their true age.
It was not unusual(among some circles) for creative women to have real loving relationships with younger men or gay men. (i.e. Neysa Mcmein-artist).

Judith Freeman has real skill at blending research, fiction and her own interpretations on her lovingly selected subjects. She continues in the same vein in this book.

If you are familiar and enjoy her writing you will love this one.
If you are a Los Angeles native (whether born here or relocated here) you will enjoy learning more about your city.

Down these mean streets a woman must go

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"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid", Raymond Chandler wrote of his knight-errant protagonist Phillip Marlowe in a famous essay titled "The Simple Art of Murder". Like Marlowe, Judith Freeman takes us down those mean streets and the decay of Los Angeles since Chandler lived there from the 1930s into the 1950s. So little is known about Cissy (Pearl) Eugenie Pascal, Chandler's wife 18 years his senior, that this work obviously required a great deal of rumination on Freeman's part about the strange relationship between this odd couple. Despite the dearth of material about her, the author has been extremely thorough and unrelenting on her research and the book will rest significantly on its laurels as the most definitive work on the subject. As she acknowledges, she is greatly indebted to both Frank McShane's biography of Chandler and his edited collection of Chandler's letters. In her seeking out the 30-plus known residences of the Chandlers over the years, Freeman's search for the real Cissy has a "Waiting for Godot" type quality to it, often finding the addresses no longer esisted as the structures that stood there had been demolished. Freeman is driven by a complusion and obsession to uncover a past she know she cannot fully present but her persistance is admirable. One senses that a great weight must have been lifted from her when she finally completed the book. "Embrace" also delves heavily into Chandler's personality with a few pages on the question of whether he had latent homosexual feelings which at times bled over into jhis work, although this is minutiae of small significance. I thought I was long done with Raymond Chandler and would probably have passed this one up but I'm glad I didn't. I know all too well searching the streets of southern California for places and people that no longer exist or existed only in my youth. In the early 1970s I went looking for 77 Sunset Strip, only to learn that no such address ever existed, and the exteriors for the early '60s TV show were shot at Dean Martin's pizza joint in the 8000 block. I remember searching for an apartment building 35 years later formerly on Gower off Hollywood Boulevard then and now just a chain-linked parking lot. Sometimes I wonder whether Chandler, like Ross Macdonald, will withstand the test of time, the Chandler LOA editions notwithstanding. Some of Chandler's work didn't make a whole lot of sense ("The Big Sleep" in particular) and while writing he often didn't know where his plot turns would end up. The last decade's new generation of noir has far superceded their works. But the steaming sidewalks of L.A. and other Southern California towns still haunt me to this day, as do the writers present at the Creation.