Posts tagged Dashiell Hammett

The Fraternity

She was standing at the bus stop. Sounds like a Hollies song. But she had a wedding ring on, and I already had a moll. No romance here.  But she was still standing at the bus stop. Reading a book. I was curious. I glanced over to see what it was. It was a Robert B. Parker.

She saw me looking. Glanced up. I nodded. Pulled the Mike Hammer I had in my messenger bag and held it up. She smiled and nodded back.  She turned back to her book. I put mine away. Checked my watch and wondered when the goddamn bus would get there.

Nothing more was said.  Nothing more to say.  We were both members of the same fraternity.  It has no name.  Doesn’t need a name.  All it needs is a dirty world—and an avenging angel.  Or several: Spade, Hammer, McGee, Spenser, whoever.  Someone to tame the monsters in a dirty world.  

James Ellroy said the message of film noir is “You’re fucked.”  It isn’t just in the movies. It was in the books before that, and it’s still there.  That’s why we read.  And that’s why we have our heroes: they make sure the bad guys get fucked just a bit faster.  

That’s what this fraternity is about.  There may not be much justice around.  But there’s some “get fucked” vengeance stored away in books.  So we keep that alive—we’ll take what we can get.  We may not have anything else in common.  We don’t need anything else in common.  We just share little nods of recognition and respect.  Because we know who we are. 

We keep the avenging angels alive.  Every time we turn a page.

24 notes 

knrwrites asked: Quick question. On one post you had mentioned hardboiled novels which made me think of eggs (i was hungry :-d) but it also made me wonder if there's a such thing as softboiled novel? If there is can you explain the difference?

Are there softboiled novels?  Certainly, but they are not referred to as such.  Hardboiled detectives were referred to as hardboiled because they were being contrasted with Golden Age crime fiction: Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, etc.  In the classic locked-room mysteries, and subsequent cozies, mannerly sleuths solve elaborate crimes with equally elaborate ratiocination.

In his essay, “The Simple Art of Murder,” Raymond Chandler argued that “[Dashiell] Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not with hand-wrought duelling pistols, curare, and tropical fish.”  Hardboiled detectives were gritty, morally ambivalent and (for the time, at least) sexually frank.  You certainly would not use this list of characteristics to describe Lord Peter Wimsey or Miss Marple.

These Golden Age mysteries were around long before hardboiled fiction makes an appearance, so they aren’t really described as softboiled.  I, however, am not above using softboiled as a disparaging term for crime fiction which strikes me as too gentle.

3 notes 

Continuing with literature porn from the book sale, here are two hardboiled greats with similar last names.  Ross Macdonald (born Kenneth Millar) is widely regarded as the third member of the hardboiled trinity, right alongside Hammett and Chandler.  I’m not so sure if he deserves such a lofty perch, but Macdonald is certainly one of the greats.  Here we have Lew Archer novels The Doomsters, The Galton Case and The Wycherly Woman.  Early Lew Archer short stories were collected as My Name is Archer.  And The Ferguson Affair is a rare non-Archer mystery from Macdonald. Ross Macdonald originally wrote under the name John Macdonald (and then John Ross Macdonald) so his writing would be considered on its own merits—and not because of his wife Margaret Millar’s popular mysteries.  Macdonald switched from John to Ross so as not to be confused with established pulp and hardboiled scribe John D. MacDonald. John D. MacDonald does not enjoy quite the critical esteem that Ross Macdonald does.  Nonetheless, his Travis McGee novels are genre classics.  Here we have The Deep Blue Good-by, The Scarlet Ruse, Cinnamon Skin and The Lonely Silver Rain.   John D. MacDonald and Ross Macdonald both wrote hardboiled fiction, but were very different otherwise.  Macdonald’s Freudian Archer is a far cry from the more heroic McGee.  But both are important in the development of hardboiled crime fiction.

Continuing with literature porn from the book sale, here are two hardboiled greats with similar last names.  Ross Macdonald (born Kenneth Millar) is widely regarded as the third member of the hardboiled trinity, right alongside Hammett and Chandler.  I’m not so sure if he deserves such a lofty perch, but Macdonald is certainly one of the greats.  Here we have Lew Archer novels The Doomsters, The Galton Case and The Wycherly Woman.  Early Lew Archer short stories were collected as My Name is Archer.  And The Ferguson Affair is a rare non-Archer mystery from Macdonald.

Ross Macdonald originally wrote under the name John Macdonald (and then John Ross Macdonald) so his writing would be considered on its own merits—and not because of his wife Margaret Millar’s popular mysteries.  Macdonald switched from John to Ross so as not to be confused with established pulp and hardboiled scribe John D. MacDonald.

John D. MacDonald does not enjoy quite the critical esteem that Ross Macdonald does.  Nonetheless, his Travis McGee novels are genre classics.  Here we have The Deep Blue Good-by, The Scarlet Ruse, Cinnamon Skin and The Lonely Silver Rain.  

John D. MacDonald and Ross Macdonald both wrote hardboiled fiction, but were very different otherwise.  Macdonald’s Freudian Archer is a far cry from the more heroic McGee.  But both are important in the development of hardboiled crime fiction.

15 notes 

As promised, here are some of the books I found at the recent treasure hunt/book sale.  This will take a number of posts, but there’s no such thing as too much literature porn.   That being the case, Hammett and Chandler are always a good place to start.  I found three Hammett classics: The Thin Man, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse.  Raymond Chandler contributed the aforementioned movie tie-in edition of The Long Goodbye.  Spenser scribe Robert B. Parker finished Chandler’s Poodle Springs manuscript.  And Joe Gores wrote a fictional treatment of the legendary Hammett’s career as a P.I. (Gores’ novel was the basis for the 1982 Wim Wenders film of the same name). And that’s the first batch.  Much more to come. 

As promised, here are some of the books I found at the recent treasure hunt/book sale.  This will take a number of posts, but there’s no such thing as too much literature porn.  

That being the case, Hammett and Chandler are always a good place to start.  I found three Hammett classics: The Thin Man, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse.  Raymond Chandler contributed the aforementioned movie tie-in edition of The Long Goodbye.  Spenser scribe Robert B. Parker finished Chandler’s Poodle Springs manuscript.  And Joe Gores wrote a fictional treatment of the legendary Hammett’s career as a P.I. (Gores’ novel was the basis for the 1982 Wim Wenders film of the same name).

And that’s the first batch.  Much more to come. 

8 notes 

chelsea-leber asked: Can I just tell you how excited I am that you followed me? That's really creepy, but I'm okay with that. For years I read these books and people look at me funny because Raymond Chandler is no Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner would scoff at Dashiell Hammett. There are very few people who appreciate hard-boiled fiction and noir and often times I am told it is cheaply done and doesn't count as literature. So, if there was a way to pick you up and spin you around via the internet, I would.

You are far from creepy.  I’m always excited to meet a fellow fan of hardboiled and noir, as well.

Hardboiled literature evolved out of pulp fiction, which was not intended as anything more than popular entertainment.  Often writers like Donald Henderson Clarke or Carroll John Daly were not possessed of great literary talent.  But really, how many novels does Knopf publish each year that are promptly forgotten?  I’m not sure this invalidates the entire enterprise.

But Hammett and Chandler, while clearly writing genre fiction, were wordsmiths who transcended their paid-by-the-word predecessors.  Hammett was arguably utilizing lean, spare prose several years before Hemingway was.   Faulkner evidently did not think The Big Sleep beneath him when he was writing the screenplay for Howard Hawks.  Chandler certainly had noticeable deficiencies when it came to constructing plots.  But as a wordsmith, I think he can take his place with any writer who has ever used the English language.

Furthermore, noir has developed a great deal since Hammett and Chandler.  I defy an critic of hardboiled and noir to tell me that Patricia Highsmith is not literature or is cheaply done.  Likewise with James Ellroy or Dennis Lehane.  While Ross Macdonald is not my favorite hardboiled author, his work was held in high regard by the literary arbiters of his day.

Sure, we still have Michael Connelly and Sue Grafton, whose work may be enjoyable (Connelly is, Grafton may not always be), but is hardly great literature.  But every genre is a mixed bag.  Literary hardboiled/noir fiction is there to be had.  And there’s no need to be ashamed of reading the really fun genre stuff like Richard S. Prather or Jim Thompson, either.

What say you, tumblchums?  Which hardboiled/noir authors do you think are most noteworthy beyond the genre?

6 notes 

thelamplightersserenade asked: What constitutes hard-boiled prose? I hear that term thrown around a lot with authors such as Cain and Hughes, but what does it mean? Sentence structure, dialogue, plots, wording...?

As with the previous question, definition can be tricky.  I think there are a number of elements we associate with hardboiled prose.  They may not all be present at all times, but some combination of them is necessary.  

First-person narration is often (though not always) used.  Telegraphic prose is also important.  Think Raymond Chandler or James Ellroy.  Cynicism is usually present in the narrator’s tone, as well.  But cynical tone may be more thematic than stylistic.

I think the terse, clipped sentences are probably most important.  When Hammett and Chandler (among others) were writing for pulp magazines and paid by the word, they had to be economical in their use of language.  Editors would trim words wherever they could in order to pay the writers less.  This led the proto-hardboiled pulp writers to develop telegraphic, high-impact style in order to make each word necessary and ensure they would be paid for each word.

6 notes 

The 27th of May is so full of literary achievement, it ought to be a holiday.  Today is, most famously, the centennial of John Cheever.  While Cheever did not write crime fiction or noir, I’d like to think this blog supports great literature of all types.  Sometimes, I even read some of it.  If you’re a Mad Men fan, you will probably enjoy reading Cheever, one of the show’s influences.  But he also deserves to be read on his own terms.

I love short stories, and Cheever was a master of the form.  His 1978 anthology The Stories of John Cheever won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  I’ll be curling up with my copy and rereading some of my favorites from Cheever’s collection.  If you are unfamiliar with Cheever’s stories, I urge you to rectify this.  “The Enormous Radio” is one of his best.  

But this day is not without noirish significance.  The father (or grandfather, or godfather, or maybe uncle-in-law) of hardboiled crime fiction, Dashiell Hammett, was born on 27 May 1894.  I could rhapsodize over Hammett, but if you’re reading this, you probably know all about him.  If you don’t, go pick up The Maltese Falcon.  Or Red Harvest.  Or The Thin Man.  Or The Glass Key, or The Dain Curse, or anything by Hammett.

Pulp scribe Leslie Charteris was born on the auspicious 27th day of May.  Charteris had his centennial five years ago, but his birthday still deserves a mention.  Charteris invented The Saint and wrote a great many of his early adventures before turning the series over to other authors (who ghostwrote subsequent episodes so that all Simon Templar’s escapades bear Charteris’ name).  I don’t think Charteris is the literary equivalent of either Cheever or Hammett, but he’s damned fun to read.

8 notes 

A Beginner’s Guide to Crime Fiction

I shared this on Twitter, but I thought I would also mention it here.  Max Allan Collins recommends ten works of crime fiction.  It is, of course, always easy to quibble with the choices on such lists.  But it’s a damn good list, even if one that I drew up would likely be a little different.  Collins’ list is definitely heavy on the hardboiled and noir, and heavy on the classics.  

Perhaps I will draw up a list of my own.  What about you, tumblchums?  What books would be on your Beginner’s Guide/Essential Works list?

9 notes 

Today is an important day in the history of crime fiction—and in the history of fiction.  On 20 April 1841, Graham’s Magazine published “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”—arguably the first detective story.  Despite Poe’s dark reputation, the story is not noir.  Poe invented not only the detective story, he invented the locked-room mystery that Raymond Chandler would rebel against nearly a century later in “The Simple Art of Murder.”   No matter.  Poe may have been surpassed (i.e., he has been surpassed), but he nonetheless deserves credit for being the first.  Without Poe, we may never have seen the pulps.  Without pulp magazines, we would likely never have seen The Maltese Falcon, Philip Marlowe, or any subsequent hardboiled fiction inspired by Hammett and Chandler.

Today is an important day in the history of crime fiction—and in the history of fiction.  On 20 April 1841, Graham’s Magazine published “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”—arguably the first detective story.  Despite Poe’s dark reputation, the story is not noir.  Poe invented not only the detective story, he invented the locked-room mystery that Raymond Chandler would rebel against nearly a century later in “The Simple Art of Murder.”  

No matter.  Poe may have been surpassed (i.e., he has been surpassed), but he nonetheless deserves credit for being the first.  Without Poe, we may never have seen the pulps.  Without pulp magazines, we would likely never have seen The Maltese Falcon, Philip Marlowe, or any subsequent hardboiled fiction inspired by Hammett and Chandler.

49 notes 

You can thank local thrift shops for this round of literature porn—I certainly do.  For a mere $3.00, I came away with a pretty well-rounded selection of crime books.  Blye, Private Eye is a non-fiction profile of real-life private detective Irwin Blye by Goodfellas and Casino screenwriter (and Nora Ephron’s husband) Nicholas Pileggi.  Eric Ambler and Ross Thomas wrote masterly—though very different—hardboiled espionage thrillers.  Ambler is represented via his Hitchcockian final novel, The Care of Time.  The Back-Up Men is a more cynical thriller in Thomas’ McCorkle and Padillo series.  Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon needs no introduction or commentary.  And Scott Phillips’ The Ice Harvest was a critically-lauded debut novel.  I found a move tie-in edition.  These aren’t really my favorite, but it was selling for less than a dollar.  I’ll take it.  

You can thank local thrift shops for this round of literature porn—I certainly do.  For a mere $3.00, I came away with a pretty well-rounded selection of crime books.  Blye, Private Eye is a non-fiction profile of real-life private detective Irwin Blye by Goodfellas and Casino screenwriter (and Nora Ephron’s husband) Nicholas Pileggi.  Eric Ambler and Ross Thomas wrote masterly—though very different—hardboiled espionage thrillers.  Ambler is represented via his Hitchcockian final novel, The Care of Time.  The Back-Up Men is a more cynical thriller in Thomas’ McCorkle and Padillo series.  Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon needs no introduction or commentary.  And Scott Phillips’ The Ice Harvest was a critically-lauded debut novel.  I found a move tie-in edition.  These aren’t really my favorite, but it was selling for less than a dollar.  I’ll take it.  

10 notes