B A U M A N R A R E B O O K S S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 5 "HAMMETT DID IT FIRST BUT CHANDLER DID IT BETTER": FIRST EDITION OF RAYMOND CHANDLER'S HIGH WINDOW 5. CHANDLER, Raymond. The High Window. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942. Octavo, original brown cloth, original pictorial dust jacket. Housed in a custom cloth clamshell box. $9500 First edition of Chandler's seminal third novel, the "hauntingly memorable" noir classic that con"rmed his legendary status, a handsome copy in the original dust jacket. High Window, which follows Big Sleep (1939) and Farewell, My Lovely (1940), clari!es "Chandler's ongoing theme, namely that Marlowe is a knight errant… 'It is the struggle of a fundamentally honest man to make a decent living in a corrupt society,' said Chandler" (Phillips, Creatures of Darkness, 79). Chandler "took a sub-literary American genre and made it into literature. Hammett did it !rst, but Chandler did it better… His power to create atmosphere can be found in the… brilliant opening of High Window… The sharpness of his observation is inseparable from his gift for the telling phrase" (Bruccoli & Layman, 22, 75). "On completing High Window Chandler wrote his publisher that "he 'seemed to have to get the thing out of my system,' and this obsessive need is what powers the book, turning it from a routine 'hard-boiled' story into something hauntingly memorable" (Crime & Mystery: 100 Best, 31). "It was Billy Wilder's admiration for High Window… that clinched his decision to hire Chandler to coscript Double Indemnity (1944)" (Phillips, 80). The !rst !lm adaptation appears the same year as publication when 20th Century Fox combined High Window with a Brett Halliday novel for Time to Kill, and Fox released another adaptation in Brasher Dubloon (1942), using the novel's original title. Published August 17, 1942. With "First Edition" on copyright page. Bruccoli A3.1.a. Bookplate (in the box). Book and dust jacket both show a hint of rubbing along edges, evidence of tape to verso of jacket from a previous protector, not as a repair; both generally bright, clean and near-!ne. An excellent unrestored copy.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDg3OTM=