Josephine. Are you a millionaire? Do ytou have oodles of spare cash lying about? If not, avoid autographed copies. They cost the earth (unless the bookseller hasn't noticed that it's autographed. My brother found a book like that once). After all, what are you paying for? The book will be just another book. Unless it's like my first edition Wallace, where the endint is missing, so I had to buy a later edition. Seriously, unless you're really into collecting, avoid that sort of thing. Firsts can be better value for money. I can't tell you American prices, but provincial (outside London) British prices are usually about ten to twelve pounds. As for where to find one, ransack all second hand bookshops within a sensible travel-time.

HUD

I was contacted by a member and he ask me question about the writing today. And it got me thinking about Raymond Chandler and his writings. I would think based upon what Chandler said in his letters that he would be aghast at the shape-shifting bloat of mystery novel today. Nowadays, it all the rage to domesticate the PI to render him or her "ordinary" to show him\her wrestling with the spouse and the kids and mortage payment and dinner parties, but it does little for a genre that was chiseled on the margins, and whose best flatfoot would turn a jaded eye to the dominate culture rather than grapple for a toehold within it.

What place have drudgery and unhappy marriages (of the hero) in the 'Modern Morality Play' (this is the phrase of the editors of the defunct Edgar Wallace Mystery magazine, not mine)? None. And I quite agree with Chandler's view of Smart society.

HUD

I know Raymond Chandler was the first person to put the phrase "You can't win 'em all," in print (at least he's credited for it.) Does anyone know who said it and in which book?

Really? I thought it was Socrates.

HUD

I'm guessing this is a joke... but maybe it's not. So, Hugh-- 'fess up to the Greek philosophy joke you're making!

I read this in an old New Yorker article, where the author wrote, "As Raymond CHandler famously wrote, 'You can't win 'em all...'"

It is a joke. Obviously, as a Greek, Socrates did not say 'You Can't win 'em all'. What he said was the equivalent, in Greek, in a philosophical way.

HUD

Answer to Linus W. question: I heard that Raymond Chandler was the first person to use and popularize the phrase "You can't win 'em all." Does anyone know who said it and in which book?"
 

So after a little legwork of my own, I found the answer to Linus' question in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs: Raymond Chandler was the first person to use this phrase in The Long Goodbye, when Roger Wade says it to Edward Loring.

I have a first edition copy of The Long Goodbye. Found by accident for 50 cents (in the 70's) at a Catholic school bazaar in Los Angeles, how apropos I say.

I am currently beginning to produce a 30-minute piece on Raymond Chandler for Mysteries & Scandals for E! Entertainment Television.

Are there any hard core, hard boiled Chandler collectors that would like to help us produce a great show? I am based in the LA area but can easily come to you in the US and Europe. I look forward to hearing from you.