Dabney Oil Syndicate - The Chandler Connection

The Chandler Connection

Raymond Chandler came to work for the Dabney Oil syndicate in 1922 as a bookkeeper and auditor in their Signal Hill (Los Angeles) office. He rose to office manager and vice-president, but was fired in 1932 for drinking, womanizing, and absenteeism. Because he had testified for them in a trial, two of his friends from the oil business offered him $100/month for living expenses. He spent the next year honing his writing skills, and became a master of pulp fiction, turning the hard-boiled detective novel into an art form.

Read more about this topic:  Dabney Oil Syndicate

Famous quotes containing the words chandler and/or connection:

    There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.
    —Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)

    We will have to give up the hope that, if we try hard, we somehow will always do right by our children. The connection is imperfect. We will sometimes do wrong.
    Judith Viorst (20th century)