Fleming: Again to go back to villains. Of course, the difficulty is to set in oneself – and to be able to persuade the reader – that the man is not to be pitied for being a sick man. It’s difficult to depict somebody who really is tough without being a psychopath.
Chandler: Well, it’s almost impossible to imagine an absolutely bad man who is not a psychopath.
Fleming: True. And then you create pity for him at once. It’s difficult … and that’s what I mean about villains. They’re very difficult people to build up.
Chandler: Well, he’ll have this very human side. He may be very kind to his family, but in his business – illegitimate – he may be quite ruthless.
Fleming: Well, you’ve got to know these people, you can’t invent them.
Passend zum jüngsten Theorie tl;dr über Chandlers „Die simple Kunst des Mordes“ ein Interview: 1958 interviewte Ian Fleming Raymond Chandler für die BBC. Die Tonaufnahme gibt es bei YouTube (Link).
Ein Transkript gibt es in diesem PDF ab Seite 30 bei der digitalen Literaturzeitschrift Five Dials.