Posts tagged The Maltese Falcon

Anonymous asked: what is "noir novels?"

I have addressed this point here and here.  Nonetheless, it is a good time to reiterate my view of what noir is, given that I was just questioning the noir bona fides of Stieg Larsson.

Noir is, to some degree, a matter of “I know it when I see it.”  If you read the previous posts, you’ll see that noir developed out of the hardboiled tradition.  Authors like James M. Cain and Cornell Woolrich wrote stories that were as bleak and hard as anything hardboiled (if not more so!), but  did not center on the hardboiled detective. 

There is no Philip Marlowe or Continental Op to set things right in Cain’s writing.  The protagonists are undone by their own desires, just like everyone else.  James M. Cain was an early pioneer of noir, and other notable noir authors include Cornell Woolrich, Dorothy B. Hughes, Jim Thompson, Patricia Highsmith and George V. Higgins.  More recently, Elmore Leonard, Dennis Lehane and James Sallis have all written excellent noir.

In a nutshell, this is what noir fiction is.  It is not film noir, which can be based on a work of literary noir (Double Indemnity, Strangers on a Train), but may also be derived from hardboiled fiction (The Maltese Falcon).  

As always, I invite readers to offer alternate views or clarifications to my own opinion.

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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.

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a-sweet-unrest asked: Hey there, could you perhaps give me some good examples of the classic noir femme fatale? Film ones would be best, as I'm thinking about costumes for a heroes vs. villains party.

I am putting this out there as others may have ideas for you.  I think James M. Cain furnishes a couple of the most recognizable femmes fatale: Barbara Stanwyck’ character in Double Indemnity and Lana Turner’s in The Postman Always Rings Twice.  Mary Astor was perhaps the original femme fatale in The Maltese Falcon.  And of course, we can’t leave Lauren Bacall or The Big Sleep off the list.  There’s Rita Hayworth (though not a blonde) in Gilda.  Gloria Grahame is great as femme fatale in either The Big Heat or In a Lonely Place.  

If you’re amenable to neo-noir, that opens up a whole host of other possibilities.  I also invite other readers to share recommendations (note that the poster prefers blonde characters).

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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.

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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.  

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Sam Spade at Starbucks

I generally don’t talk about politics on this blog, as that’s my day job.  But rules are made to be broken.  Whatever your politics, I think you should read David Brooks.  You may agree with him, or you may not.  But I think he is one of the most thoughtful social or political commentators writing today.  Even when I disagree with his conclusions, I think my own position is better for having to wrestle with his.

In today’s column, Brooks dings social entrepreneurs for lacking “moral realism” à la Hammett and Chandler.  Brooks is often criticized for making broad generalizations—and in some instances, they are simply incorrect.  Still, I would be interested to know if there many examples (or any examples) of social entrepreneurs with such moral realism.  

Regardless of his point vis-à-vis social entrepreneurs, I think Brooks is brilliant in his analysis of the hardboiled hero.  

In short, there’s only so much good you can do unless you are willing to confront corruption, venality and disorder head-on. So if I could, presumptuously, recommend a reading list to help these activists fill in the gaps in the prevailing service ethos, I’d start with the novels of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, or at least the movies based on them.

The noir heroes like Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon” served as models for a generation of Americans, and they put the focus squarely on venality, corruption and disorder and how you should behave in the face of it.

A noir hero is a moral realist. He assumes that everybody is dappled with virtue and vice, especially himself. He makes no social-class distinction and only provisional moral distinctions between the private eyes like himself and the criminals he pursues. The assumption in a Hammett book is that the good guy has a spotty past, does spotty things and that the private eye and the criminal are two sides to the same personality.

He (or she — the women in these stories follow the same code) adopts a layered personality. He hardens himself on the outside in order to protect whatever is left of the finer self within.

He is reticent, allergic to self-righteousness and appears unfeeling, but he is motivated by a disillusioned sense of honor. The world often rewards the wrong things, but each job comes with obligations and even if everything is decaying you should still take pride in your work. Under the cynical mask, there is still a basic sense of good order, that crime should be punished and bad behavior shouldn’t go uncorrected. He knows he’s not going to be uplifted by his work; that to tackle the hard jobs he’ll have to risk coarsening himself, but he doggedly plows ahead.

This worldview had a huge influence as a generation confronted crime, corruption, fascism and communism. I’m not sure I can see today’s social entrepreneurs wearing fedoras and trench coats. But noir’s moral realism would be a nice supplement to today’s prevailing ethos. It would fold some hardheadedness in with today’s service mentality. It would focus attention on the core issues: order and rule of law. And it would be necessary. Contemporary Washington, not to mention parts of the developing world, may be less seedy than the cities in the noir stories, but they are equally laced with self-deception and self-dealing.

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ahandsomestark asked: I remember seeing on your blog a few months ago that you hadn't read much Ross Macdonald but had picked up a few of his books. Have you had time to read anymore of him since then?

I have read more of him since my previous answer.  His novels are good, but I think they veer out of the hardboiled worldview (if I may call it that, instead of a genre).  Macdonald tried to modernize the hardboiled detective and perhaps humanize him.  In doing so he, he moves Lew Archer away from the pulpy, forceful roots of hardboiled fiction.  In so doing, he won critical praise for being more sophisticated than Hammett or Chandler (to say nothing of Spillane or Prather).  Macdonald was also devoted to Freudian explanations of human behavior.  This was all very much in vogue when he was writing, but is less so now.

More to the point, Otto Penzler regards noir and hardboiled as “diametrically opposed.”  I disagree with him.  I think that noir’s deeply pessimistic view of the world is reflected in good hardboiled fiction.  Philip Marlowe may be “not mean himself” (in Chandler’s famous words), but that does not really change the way the world works.  We see abundant noir fatalism in Chandler’s novels.  The “good guy,” such as he is, gets to watch everyone else tumble down.  But it’s the same bleak world.

But it isn’t the same bleak world in Ross Macdonald’s books.  People aren’t bad.  They have hang-ups and daddy issues.  It seems to me that this is actually a rather softboiled view of the world, despite the private eye protagonist.  Lew Archer wouldn’t turn Brigid O’Shaughnessy over to the police (as Sam Spade did), he would try to get her into therapy.  

I think John D. MacDonald dealt with some of the themes of alienation and angst that Ross Macdonald did, but in a far more hardboiled way.  A psychiatrist might not recommend this.  But a private dick shouldn’t do it any other way.

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The Composites is a fascinating new blog that takes literary descriptions and generates computer sketches.  I don’t think the hair is quite right, but that isn’t too surprising.  I doubt the computer software knows that description hails from the 1930s. Other noir figures that have made it onto the blog are Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley (the description is taken from The Talented Mr. Ripley; Ripley’s appearance changes through the Ripliad) and Pinkie Brown from Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. thecomposites: Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The V motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down—from high flat temples—in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan. (Suggested by http://exygoddess.tumblr.com )

The Composites is a fascinating new blog that takes literary descriptions and generates computer sketches.  I don’t think the hair is quite right, but that isn’t too surprising.  I doubt the computer software knows that description hails from the 1930s.

Other noir figures that have made it onto the blog are Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley (the description is taken from The Talented Mr. Ripley; Ripley’s appearance changes through the Ripliad) and Pinkie Brown from Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock.

thecomposites:

Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett

Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The V motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down—from high flat temples—in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan. (Suggested by http://exygoddess.tumblr.com )

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thelamplightersserenade asked: Why is Kiss Me Deadly considered "film noir at its finest"?

I suspect several dozen films could be billed as “film noir at its finest.”  So I’m not sure what separates Kiss Me Deadly from these.  But it’s a fine film noir, certainly.  Why?  Mickey Spillane’s novel gives it an impeccable hardboiled pedigree, and Mike Hammer is an excellent hardboiled hero.  

That said, the film’s Hammer is not the novel’s Hammer.  Ralph Meeker is sadistic, even by Spillane’s standards, as Hammer.  But the film also adds to the novel’s plot by adding elements that illustrate what many analysts of film believe to be a prime component of film noir: Cold War uncertainty.  I’m not sure I agree with them.  Hardboiled crime fiction begins long prior to the Cold War’s inception, and it’s inevitable that such a popular genre of fiction would be filmed.  But the espionage/nuclear subplot added to Kiss Me Deadly does address Americans’ postwar consciousness, and perhaps paranoia.  I’d say this is what separates it from The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, The Lady in the Lake, and other P.I. films.

Readers are, as always, welcome to provide any additional insights here.  It’s been a couple years since I’ve seen Kiss Me Deadly, so I might have missed something.

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When I heard James Sallis was penning a sequel to Drive, I was somewhat mystified.  The film ended so perfectly.  Then I read Sallis’ novella. I’m not sure novella is the right word for it.  It’s short.  But Sallis’ lean prose captures so much of Driver’s past and present.  Drive is succinct, but taut.  And it has a story that encompasses a great deal more than most novellas.  In the hands of a less masterful writer, Drive would have been a much larger tome. And the ending differs from the movie’s.  I loved the end of the film; it recalled Bogie’s fatalism at the end of The Maltese Falcon.  But the ending of the book is good, and leaves the reader wanting to know Driver’s further hardboiled misdeeds.  So I look forward to Driven, which will be released in April.  I’m not sure if it will lend itself to being adapted for film, but I know I will read it.

When I heard James Sallis was penning a sequel to Drive, I was somewhat mystified.  The film ended so perfectly.  Then I read Sallis’ novella.

I’m not sure novella is the right word for it.  It’s short.  But Sallis’ lean prose captures so much of Driver’s past and present.  Drive is succinct, but taut.  And it has a story that encompasses a great deal more than most novellas.  In the hands of a less masterful writer, Drive would have been a much larger tome.

And the ending differs from the movie’s.  I loved the end of the film; it recalled Bogie’s fatalism at the end of The Maltese Falcon.  But the ending of the book is good, and leaves the reader wanting to know Driver’s further hardboiled misdeeds.  So I look forward to Driven, which will be released in April.  I’m not sure if it will lend itself to being adapted for film, but I know I will read it.

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