Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Dashiell Hammett's early Continental Op detective novel, The Dain Curse.
Book Review
The Dain Curse, Dashiell Hammett, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1929
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 Charles, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe are well known exemplars of the action detective. However, on the way to creating these literary works of art Hammett did journeyman's work at the detective genre in various pulp detective magazines. Moreover, in the beginning he hid his detectives behind the anonymous, although not faceless or without personality average detectives, of a national detective agency (shades of his own past).
The unnamed universal Continental Operative (Op) who is the central character of here is the prototype for Hammett's later named detectives. He 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. The plot line here requires all the resourcefulness of the Op as he tries to solve a jewel heist (simple enough, right, just a day at the office for the average, faceless private dick). Naturally there is murder, mayhem, a swing through 1920s California’s high-end occult and cultish environment (it didn’t just start lately out there).
Needless to say you need a scorecard to tell who is on the level and who is not, including the people who hire said average private detective. The twists and turns as Op tries to mix and match with the various interests at play drive the drama of the film. As I mentioned in a recent review of Hammett’s Red Harvest if you want a well-thought out story, although not as memorable as The Maltese Falcon or the The Thin Man, that is also well-written, although without the numerous unforgettable lines of the above-mentioned novels, from a member of the second echelon of the American literary pantheon, this one is for you.
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Note: It is not altogether clear to me what Hammett’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 Hammett was a make-no-bones-about-it supporter of the Communist Party during the hard, don’t turn your 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, and tell them what they want to know although they already know it, night. I have also heaped tons of well-deserved praise on the 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 Dain Curse, Dashiell Hammett, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1929
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 Charles, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe are well known exemplars of the action detective. However, on the way to creating these literary works of art Hammett did journeyman's work at the detective genre in various pulp detective magazines. Moreover, in the beginning he hid his detectives behind the anonymous, although not faceless or without personality average detectives, of a national detective agency (shades of his own past).
The unnamed universal Continental Operative (Op) who is the central character of here is the prototype for Hammett's later named detectives. He 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. The plot line here requires all the resourcefulness of the Op as he tries to solve a jewel heist (simple enough, right, just a day at the office for the average, faceless private dick). Naturally there is murder, mayhem, a swing through 1920s California’s high-end occult and cultish environment (it didn’t just start lately out there).
Needless to say you need a scorecard to tell who is on the level and who is not, including the people who hire said average private detective. The twists and turns as Op tries to mix and match with the various interests at play drive the drama of the film. As I mentioned in a recent review of Hammett’s Red Harvest if you want a well-thought out story, although not as memorable as The Maltese Falcon or the The Thin Man, that is also well-written, although without the numerous unforgettable lines of the above-mentioned novels, 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 Hammett’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 Hammett was a make-no-bones-about-it supporter of the Communist Party during the hard, don’t turn your 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, and tell them what they want to know although they already know it, night. I have also heaped tons of well-deserved praise on the 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.
