Judith Freeman on the influence of Raymond Chandler [Video] - Los Angeles Times
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Judith Freeman on the influence of Raymond Chandler [Video]

Author Judith Freeman speaks with Los Angeles Times book critic David Ulin at the L.A. Times Festival of Books.

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At the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Sunday, I got a chance to sit down with novelist and nonfiction writer Judith Freeman to discuss the lure of Southern California as a literary landscape, and also the influence of Raymond Chandler on the city and its cultural life.

“When I moved here, one of the first writers that I started to read, through a friend of mine, was Raymond Chandler. And I thought, Wow, that’s Los Angeles,” Freeman said. “And I still think that he really got the city, he got underneath the city, he got everything about the city.”

Freeman’s 2007 book “The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved” explores Chandler’s experience of Los Angeles; as part of the research, she tracked down every place in the city he ever lived. Chandler, of course, is represented on our new interactive map of literary L.A.

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In addition to “The Long Embrace,” Freeman is also the author of four novels and a collection of stories.

“You know,” she said, “I really grew up in a house without books, in Utah. So I came to reading very late, when I was about 19 years old. When I discovered literature, I said, Oh my God. Who knew?”

To see our complete conversation, watch the video above.

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