Description
“FOR MY JEAN, PERPETUALLY LOVED, RAY”: EXCEEDINGLY RARE DEDICATION COPY OF CHANDLER’S LAST COMPLETED NOVEL, PLAYBACK, INSCRIBED IN THE MONTH OF PUBLICATION, SHORTLY BEFORE HIS DEATH, TO HIS CLOSE PERSONAL SECRETARY JEAN FRACASSE, TO WHOM HE DEEDED THE NOVEL’S BRITISH & COMMONWEALTH RIGHTS
CHANDLER, Raymond. Playback. Boston / Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin / Riverside, 1958. Octavo, original orange cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.
First American edition of Raymond Chandler’s last completed novel, a most rare dedication copy inscribed by him in the month of publication to Jean Vounder-Davis (then Fracasse), one of the novel’s two dedicatees, “For My Jean, Perpetually loved, Ray, La Jolla, October 1958,” the only Chandler title to carry a dedication. As Chandler’s lover and personal secretary, Jean was with him throughout the writing of Playback and was praised by him as the woman who “inspires me,” with Chandler supporting her and her children during a difficult divorce he described as leaving her with “no one to look to but me.” An exceptional copy in very scarce dust jacket.
This first American edition of Playback, Chandler’s last complete novel, published only months before his death, is an especially rare dedication copy dated in the month of publication and inscribed by him to Jean Vounder-Davis (then Jean Fracasse)—Chandler’s lover and personal secretary who, along with literary agent Helga Greene, is one of the novel’s dedicatees. Early in 1957 Chandler had moved back to La Jolla and “placed an advertisement for a new secretary in the San Diego Tribune. The woman who answered, Jean Fracasse, was a striking-looking Australian, formerly an actress and newsreader. Born in Sydney and educated in Paris and London, Jean had originally moved to California with her husband, a successful doctor. Now with two young children, she was in the middle of expensive divorce proceedings and in need of work. She was more than qualified for the post of Chandler’s secretary, having worked for a time in advertising, gained a doctorate in music, and been ‘one of the first three women ever employed by a network TV company… Having taken her on as his secretary in January 1957, Chandler soon became deeply involved in her divorce; he also gave her money. He went to the lengths of personally tracking down witnesses for her attorney, and…. found her company a tonic: ‘Somehow, just by the way she talks and acts, by her simplicity, her lack of pettiness, the keenness of her mind, she inspires me… [Playback] is arguably the funniest of all his novels… In his other books, Chandler made a point of not always giving Marlowe the best punchlines, lest he seem to readers too confident. This is not true in Playback, however, in which the detective is older and different… On the point of retirement, he has only his ego and his wit left” (Hiney, Raymond Chandler, 250-56).
Begun as an unproduced screenplay in 1953, Playback “is the only Chandler novel in which the author plays a small cameo role… Chandler appears as Henry Clarendon IV… [who] resembles his creator in some subtle ways. Thus Clarendon walks with a cane, just as Chandler did in later life. In addition Clarendon wears white gloves indoors, as did Chandler, who suffered from an unsightly skin malady on his hands” (Phillips, Creatures of Darkness, 220). In an October 5, 1958 letter—written the same month Chandler inscribed this dedication copy to Jean—he told Houghton Mifflin’s Hardwick Moseley: “I need money, cash money, not assets. I need it because for a year and eight months I have been supporting my Australian secretary and her two children. Hell, I even deeded the British and Commonwealth rights in Playback to Jean.” In another letter, dated the same month, Chandler wrote his English friend Roger Machell of Jean’s predicament: “Her filthy rotten screwy bastard of a husband… made a holograph will a few days before he died disinheriting his wife and children… Jean has no one to look to but me” (Raymond Chandler Letters, 258).“ After finishing Playback over Christmas 1957, Chandler spoke of accompanying Jean and her children to Australia, but on booking passage for Jean and the children, first to London and then to Australia, Chandler stayed in London, spending time with Helga Greene before returning to La Jolla (Hiney, 259). When Helga visited him there in February 1959, he proposed marriage but died a month later before they could marry. First American edition: preceded only three months by the English edition. With “First Printing” on copyright page. Hubin II:153. Bruccoli A11.2.a. Bruccoli & Clark I:65. See Bruccoli A11.1.a. With Jean’s poignant pencil inscription to the rear free endpaper: “Died March 26, 1959.”
Book fine; slight edge-wear, small closed tear with crease to front panel of scarce dust jacket. A most desirable near-fine dedication copy.
