When I bought those volumes of short-stories by the hard-boiled masters, Hammett and Chandler, sometime in February this year, I had identified some novels by Chandler which I don’t have and haven’t read, and put them on my mental wish-list. This used-books seller on Amazon, dealstar, has a good collection of books which no other used-books seller on Amazon has. So, after waiting for around four months, I thought now is the time for some Chandler novels. The prices are on the higher side, given that we are speaking of used-books, but I am lured by them books all the same; not that I have lots of money, it is that I am more of a succumb-er to book temptation … yen maadodu…
Recently, when Prof T P Ashoka, Kannada scholar and senior literary critic, visited my home, he saw my Hammett collection arranged on my shelf and “… oh, you like Hammett … he is one of my favourite writers …” That, sort of, made my day. Anyway, to come back to Chandler … I have two of Chandler’s novels, and two collections of short stories … I wanted some more novels … some of the novels were priced very high, so I choose those which were priced the lowest among the lot. And so, I choose The Long Goodbye, The Little Sister, and The High Window… the portal showed that two of these had good looking covers, but then the third was shown without a cover, just a bland image …
And when I finally received the books, this is how their covers looked … (this ‘perception and reality’ thing happened with another book from the same seller, but that is for the next post … )
I was happy with the covers on The Little Sister, and The High Window… The Long Goodbye cover doesn’t have style I thought … cover courtesy details on the back cover of The Little Sister, and The High Window say that – The covers of this series designed by James Tormey, incorporate material supplied by courtesy of 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, and RKO Pictures… the chaps on the covers are probably stylised images of actors who played Marlowe in films produced by these movie production houses … one of them resembles Humphrey Bogart … anyway … and the other thing is that all three books were published in the 1970s … and this gave me reason for tassalli-fication saying that the price I paid for these three Chandler novels is not that high … that these are rare, almost antique editions … hai na…