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Raymond Chandler’s Neglected Authors

Sept. 22 1954
To: Hamish Hamilton

… If you want to know what I should really like to write, it would be fantastic stories, and I don’t mean science fiction. But they wouldn’t make a thin worn dime. That would be just a wonderful way to become a Neglected Author. God, what a fascinating document could be put together about these same Neglected Authors and also the one-book writers: fellows like Edward Anderson who long ago wrote a book called Thieves Like Us, one of the best crook stories ever written … Then there was James Ross who wrote a novel called They Don’t Dance Much, a sleazy, corrupt but completely believable story of a North Carolina town. I’ve never heard that he wrote anything else … And there was Aaron Klopstein. Who ever heard of him? He committed suicide at the age of 33 in Greenwich Village by shooting himself with an Amazonian blow gun, having published two novels entitled Once More the Cicatrice and The Sea Gull Has No Friends, two volumes of poetry, one book of short stories and a book of critical essays entitled Shakespeare in Baby Talk.

from Raymond Chandler Speaking.

From what I can determine, Aaron Klopstein is a figment of Chandler’s imagination. The Library of Congress never heard of him or his books, nor has the Social Security Death Index, and the only place the name appears to show up is in this letter.

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