Steiner's Digest

A hidden gem for fans of Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming is available on the Internet Archive: a July-1958 BBC recording of a conversation by the two authors on the occasion of the publication of Chandler’s last novel Playback.

Chandler was not in great shape. Alcohol, depression and grief about the death of his wife had taken their toll. He died the following year.

At first, the talk appears almost almost comical, the conversation of two old men, faintly reminiscent of the rantings of the Muppet Show’s Waldorf and Statler. Fleming’s plum-in-the-mouth-upper-class accent sounds ridiculous, while Chandler’s short laughs would be branded ’nerdy‘ today.

They talk about thrillers as a literary genre, which seems odd as many ‚experts‘ nowadays would probably argue that Chandler’s books are detective novels rather than thrillers. Nevertheless, they say a few interesting things. But it is not what they say but the understated way in which they say it, which makes the recording so enjoyable.

There is an old-fashioned honesty and understatement in their conversation, a refreshing or rather soothing lack of eagerness, of moral and intellectual pretension, of political activism and most notably of any consciousness for self-marketing and the laws of publicity. You could call it amateurish in the best sense, but the iceberg glimmers in the sky and you feel that they only allow you a glimpse of what’s below the surface. Highly recommended.