Letter to Jamie Hamilton,
13 May 1949.
"I don't know what's happening to the writing racket in this country.
I get an offer of $1200 a year for the use of my name on the title of
a new mystery magazine. Raymond Chandler's Mystery Magazine. I
have nothing to do with the magazine, no control over the contents
and no contact whatever with the editorial policy. It does seem
to me that a line has to be drawn, and I am even willing to argue
that you can rule out ethics and you would still, if you had any
vision, have to draw that line as a matter of policy. But such is the
brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can
feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck."
___________________
The Raymond Chandler Papers
Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959
Edited by Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000
"Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America,
and America has never looked the same to us since."
— Paul Auster
