{"id":9544,"date":"2022-03-03T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-03T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9544"},"modified":"2022-05-05T08:21:46","modified_gmt":"2022-05-05T12:21:46","slug":"advice-from-raymond-chandler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9544","title":{"rendered":"Advice from Raymond Chandler"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Author Raymond Chandler, considered the godfather of hardboiled crime\u2014don\u2019t call it noir<\/a>\u2014stepped out of his fictional mean streets and into the real world on occasion and wrote some rather charming and forward-thinking essays of workplace advice: \u201cNotes to an Employer\u201d and \u201cAdvice to a Secretary.\u201d Thank The Strand Magazine<\/em> for reprinting these a few months back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chandler\u2019s secretary at the time he wrote \u201cAdvice to a Secretary\u201d was Juanita Messick, and it\u2019s down-to-earth, simultaneously encouraging and, on some points, demanding. Chandler is expressing very clearly his own needs and starts by saying, \u201cNever pretend to know something which you do not know, or only know imperfectly.\u201d This dictum is routinely ignored in social media, but Chandler says it\u2019s a prescription for misunderstanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It sounds as if he\u2019s run up against sticklers of various types and considered it a bad experience. He didn\u2019t welcome input about grammar, literary usages, and punctuation, believing there\u2019s more latitude than purists might think, \u201cPunctuation is an art and not a science.\u201d It has to replicate, insofar as possible, the natural cadences of speech, which vary from what precise rules might suggest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He tells Messick to never take anything for granted. Ask questions if something isn\u2019t clear. \u201cDemand an explanation.\u201d Being my own secretary, I admit to interrogating myself frequently about sentences I wrote a month, or a week, or an hour before: \u201cYes, but what do you mean here? What are you trying to say?\u201d Amazingly, words that seemed perfectly clear when I wrote them somehow manage to shed all significance. It\u2019s the one advantage of a short attention span; every time I read something I\u2019ve written, it\u2019s new to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chandler was uncomfortable with the employer-employee relationship and there\u2019s no stronger egalitarian impulse today, seventy years later, than when he said, \u201cIf he (always a he in Chandler\u2019s piece) is talking nonsense, tell him so; you can do him no greater service.\u201d And he encourages the secretary to stick up for herself when she\u2019s tired or late or must leave on the dot: \u201cWe are both just people.\u201dStrand<\/em> editor Andrew Gulli discovered \u201cAdvice to a Secretary\u201d in a shoebox at Oxford University\u2019s Bodleian Library. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gulli was engaged by it in part because, he says, writers whose work embodies very dark themes often\u201d are among the most friendly and benign people around.\u201d In my experience, gatherings of mystery and crime writers bear out this impression. Certainly, \u201cAdvice to a Secretary\u201d suggests a considerate and accommodating employer. Or, as Cynthia Conrad<\/a> wrote in BookTrib<\/em>, \u201cFor a moment we see the big-hearted softie under the tough-guy trench coat.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author Raymond Chandler, considered the godfather of hardboiled crime\u2014don\u2019t call it noir\u2014stepped out of his fictional mean streets and into the real world on occasion and wrote some rather charming and forward-thinking essays of workplace advice: \u201cNotes to an Employer\u201d … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Raymond Chandler's \"Advice to a Secretary\" gives great insight into the kind of man (and employer) he was!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,267,104],"tags":[306],"class_list":["post-9544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-non-fiction","category-the-morgue","tag-raymond-chandler"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2tW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9546,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9544\/revisions\/9546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}