Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American detective fiction writer Dashiell Hammett.
Book Review
The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammet, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1930
Dashiell Hammett, along with Raymond Chandler, reinvented the detective genre in the 1930's and 1940's. They moved the genre away from the amateurish and simple parlor detectives that had previously dominated the genre to hard-boiled action characters who knew what was what and didn't mind taking a beating to get the bad guys. And along the way they produced some very memorable literary characters as well. Nick and Nora Charles, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe are well known exemplars of the action detective.
Hammett and Chandler also speak to a different, more macho if you will, but also a more world-wary and world-weary style of detection than today’s hyper-extended and techno-detail-oriented detectives who rely on computers and gadgetry more than guts. Still, with few exceptions, it is hard now to find a better proto-type for the kind of detective that writers of detective fiction wished they had, in their long, smoke-filled, whiskey-soaked, staring at that blank white page, writer nights (and we will not even speak of the days), dreamed up than Sam Spade. Nor a better, sparse, functional language-filled story line than old Dashiell Hammett thought up.
A little summary of the plot line is in order. It’s the bird, stupid. Get it. Except this is a gem of bird, a stuff of dreams, stuff of wild, exotic, face the gates of hell for, bird that has more than one crew of thieves, well-groomed, well-spoken thieves, and in their way polite unless a crippled newsy or two get in their way, but thieves nevertheless looking to get their hands on the damn thing, and wealth, Great Depression get out from under wealth. Hey, anytime get out from under wealth. In any case you need a scorecard to sort out who, and who is not, on the level at any particular time, except maybe the kid hired gunsel who keeps shadowing old brother Spade.
Naturally, in a noir detective story, and Hammett is nothing if not a noir writer from word one, there has to be a femme fatale dame with a checkered, if vaguely sketched past, and a dubious present, a very dubious present. But she, Brigid O’ Shaughnessy, in this one, has that look, you know that look, that women’s look, that look that will set the boys walking, no racing, to run into walls, to take more than their fair of hits on the head, to go full tilt at those damn windmills, gladly. Enter ever so jaded Sam Spade (and partner, Miles Archer, but he is just in it for the sappy dupe-guy dressing). Sam has all the characteristics that mark a noir detective-tough, resourceful, undaunted, and incorruptible with a sense of honor to friend and foe alike that sets him apart from earlier detectives. And still he, been around the block many times and more, Sam Spade, is smitten when the femme fatale goes into her, well, femme fatale, act. Go figure. But those other traits will be hard-hearted Ms.Femme Fatale’s undoing in the end, as her version of the stuff of dreams goes awry. There, I have set up the mood for you. But this is one you should read and savor so I will leave it at that. If you want a well-thought out story that is also well-written from a member of the second echelon of the American literary pantheon, this one is for you.
Note: It is not altogether clear to me what Hammet’s political sympathies (or rather more to the point, organization connections) were in the period of his great detection-writing period, the early 1930s, although one can speculate they were at least progressive. I should note for those who are only familiar with the detective novels and crime short stories that Hammet was a make-no-bones-about-it supporter of the Communist Party during the hard, don’t turn that eye from your neighbor, see reds under every bed, your mommie is a commie turn her in, prison house, American night of the red scare, Cold War, post World War II period (and earlier as well, during the Popular Front all the way with FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), Joe Stalin, our father can do no wrong, Moscow Trials liquidate the Old Bolsheviks, the makers of the revolution, time but this post-war period is what concerns me here).
This was period when anything to the left of Herbert Hoover, including probably red tablecloths on restaurant tables, was suspect. This is also the period of the unlamented Joe McCarthy, the equally unlamented Richard Nixon, the deep, fatal, anti-communist purges in the labor unions from which we still suffer today (and anti-red purges in many other political and cultural institutions as well), and of the time of “the naming of names.” The high watermark time of the “fink” and of the “blacklist.” I have vilified, rightly so, no, righteously so, the likes of movie director Elia Kazan (Viva Zapata, On The Waterfront) for their “stool pigeon” scab actions before the "committees".
Kazan was, unfortunately, not alone in that dark, witch-hunt, keep your eyes down, keep walking straight ahead with blinkers on, tell them what they want to know although they already know it, night. I have also heaped tons of well-deserved praise on the heroic Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel, for holding their ground under intense pressure and under penalty of paying the ultimate price, their lives, for their steadfastness. For defending the Soviet Union, not in our Trotskyist way, but in their own honorable way, and didn’t complain about it when they were called on it, unjustly, by the American imperial state.
Dashiell Hammett was called, tooth brush in hand, before the “red scare” committees and just said no. Hats off. Now there is no need to get mushy about it, and one should not forget that in the end Hammett’s Stalinist politics (and vilification of leftist political opponents like our Trotskyist forbears) made us not less political opponents, but isn’t there something in old Hammett’s actions, that sense of “tilting to the windmills,” that leads right back to Sam Spade. Yes, I thought you would think so.
Book Review
The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammet, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1930
Dashiell Hammett, along with Raymond Chandler, reinvented the detective genre in the 1930's and 1940's. They moved the genre away from the amateurish and simple parlor detectives that had previously dominated the genre to hard-boiled action characters who knew what was what and didn't mind taking a beating to get the bad guys. And along the way they produced some very memorable literary characters as well. Nick and Nora Charles, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe are well known exemplars of the action detective.
Hammett and Chandler also speak to a different, more macho if you will, but also a more world-wary and world-weary style of detection than today’s hyper-extended and techno-detail-oriented detectives who rely on computers and gadgetry more than guts. Still, with few exceptions, it is hard now to find a better proto-type for the kind of detective that writers of detective fiction wished they had, in their long, smoke-filled, whiskey-soaked, staring at that blank white page, writer nights (and we will not even speak of the days), dreamed up than Sam Spade. Nor a better, sparse, functional language-filled story line than old Dashiell Hammett thought up.
A little summary of the plot line is in order. It’s the bird, stupid. Get it. Except this is a gem of bird, a stuff of dreams, stuff of wild, exotic, face the gates of hell for, bird that has more than one crew of thieves, well-groomed, well-spoken thieves, and in their way polite unless a crippled newsy or two get in their way, but thieves nevertheless looking to get their hands on the damn thing, and wealth, Great Depression get out from under wealth. Hey, anytime get out from under wealth. In any case you need a scorecard to sort out who, and who is not, on the level at any particular time, except maybe the kid hired gunsel who keeps shadowing old brother Spade.
Naturally, in a noir detective story, and Hammett is nothing if not a noir writer from word one, there has to be a femme fatale dame with a checkered, if vaguely sketched past, and a dubious present, a very dubious present. But she, Brigid O’ Shaughnessy, in this one, has that look, you know that look, that women’s look, that look that will set the boys walking, no racing, to run into walls, to take more than their fair of hits on the head, to go full tilt at those damn windmills, gladly. Enter ever so jaded Sam Spade (and partner, Miles Archer, but he is just in it for the sappy dupe-guy dressing). Sam has all the characteristics that mark a noir detective-tough, resourceful, undaunted, and incorruptible with a sense of honor to friend and foe alike that sets him apart from earlier detectives. And still he, been around the block many times and more, Sam Spade, is smitten when the femme fatale goes into her, well, femme fatale, act. Go figure. But those other traits will be hard-hearted Ms.Femme Fatale’s undoing in the end, as her version of the stuff of dreams goes awry. There, I have set up the mood for you. But this is one you should read and savor so I will leave it at that. If you want a well-thought out story that is also well-written from a member of the second echelon of the American literary pantheon, this one is for you.
Note: It is not altogether clear to me what Hammet’s political sympathies (or rather more to the point, organization connections) were in the period of his great detection-writing period, the early 1930s, although one can speculate they were at least progressive. I should note for those who are only familiar with the detective novels and crime short stories that Hammet was a make-no-bones-about-it supporter of the Communist Party during the hard, don’t turn that eye from your neighbor, see reds under every bed, your mommie is a commie turn her in, prison house, American night of the red scare, Cold War, post World War II period (and earlier as well, during the Popular Front all the way with FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), Joe Stalin, our father can do no wrong, Moscow Trials liquidate the Old Bolsheviks, the makers of the revolution, time but this post-war period is what concerns me here).
This was period when anything to the left of Herbert Hoover, including probably red tablecloths on restaurant tables, was suspect. This is also the period of the unlamented Joe McCarthy, the equally unlamented Richard Nixon, the deep, fatal, anti-communist purges in the labor unions from which we still suffer today (and anti-red purges in many other political and cultural institutions as well), and of the time of “the naming of names.” The high watermark time of the “fink” and of the “blacklist.” I have vilified, rightly so, no, righteously so, the likes of movie director Elia Kazan (Viva Zapata, On The Waterfront) for their “stool pigeon” scab actions before the "committees".
Kazan was, unfortunately, not alone in that dark, witch-hunt, keep your eyes down, keep walking straight ahead with blinkers on, tell them what they want to know although they already know it, night. I have also heaped tons of well-deserved praise on the heroic Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel, for holding their ground under intense pressure and under penalty of paying the ultimate price, their lives, for their steadfastness. For defending the Soviet Union, not in our Trotskyist way, but in their own honorable way, and didn’t complain about it when they were called on it, unjustly, by the American imperial state.
Dashiell Hammett was called, tooth brush in hand, before the “red scare” committees and just said no. Hats off. Now there is no need to get mushy about it, and one should not forget that in the end Hammett’s Stalinist politics (and vilification of leftist political opponents like our Trotskyist forbears) made us not less political opponents, but isn’t there something in old Hammett’s actions, that sense of “tilting to the windmills,” that leads right back to Sam Spade. Yes, I thought you would think so.
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