
The Long Embrace
Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved
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Narrated by:
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Suzanne Toren
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By:
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Judith Freeman
Freeman uncovers vestiges of the Los Angeles that was terrain and inspiration for Chandler's imagination, including the nearly two dozen apartments and houses the Chandlers moved into and out of over the course of two decades. She also uncovers the life of Cissy Pascal, the older, twice-divorced woman Chandler married in 1924, who would play an essential role in how he came to understand not only his female characters - and Marlowe's relation to them - but himself as well.
A revelation of a marriage that was a wellspring of need, illusion, and creativity, The Long Embrace provides us with a more complete picture of Raymond Chandler's life and art than any we have had before.
©2007 Judith Freeman (P)2008 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
"A beautiful and original book....Freeman writes about L.A. with a tender precision and yearning that borders on the religious....Freeman's identification with her subject is so complete we feel we're there with Chandler too." (The Los Angeles Times)
"A compelling picture of present-day Los Angeles and a compelling dual portrait of Chandler and his wife....Ms. Freeman knows the territory as well as Marlowe himself....she feels the language and captures the mood. Like Cissy, when she crooks her finger, it's impossible not to follow." (The New York Times)
A must for Raymond Chandler fans...
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The research about Chandler's early life and his sad decline after Cissy died is interesting, as is the information provided about Cissy. One piece of information that might have been resolved: Freeman discusses Chandler's affairs during his Hollywood years and indicates that the Chandlers came close to divorce, yet Chandler's letters state that he was never unfaithful to her and that she was the love of his life. Both of these contradictory ideas are presented without a resolution, but that, too, might be just part of the method here.
Well worth listening to, and worth the patience that it might take to work through the first few chapters.
A fine portrait of Chandler
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These questions are raised, but, mostly unanswered, in “The Long Embrace”, a disjointed, not-exactly-biography that dedicates too many pages (or, if you listen to the audiobook, too many hours) tracking down Chandler and Cissy’s constant, perhaps, obsessive, moves in and around Los Angeles 70-80 years ago. Trust me, that search, loaded with irrelevant detail, is almost completely devoid of interesting information.
If you can persevere through all those pages about all those apartments, there are some interesting questions that do get somewhat addressed: To what extent can we read the enigmatic Chandler and Cissy into his various characters? How did the reclusive Chandler handle Hollywood, where he became a successful screenwriter? What did the snobbish Chandler think of the movies based on his books and how did he regard Humphrey Bogart, Dick Powell and the other actors who played Chandler’s creation, the iconic detective Philip Marlowe?
Chandler was such a unique, bizarre, brilliant, flawed character that there are inevitably some worthwhile moments in “The Long Embrace”. But they are overwhelmed by so many trips to so many apartments in so many parts of L.A. that they stand out like "a black widow spider on a piece of angel food cake".
Separates the Wheat from the Chaff ... and Prints the Chaff
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Not worth it
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