2 weeks after a double-decker busload of people is gunned down on a Stockholm street in November 1968, the consumer pulse of the metropolis does not skip a beat.  On page 101 of The Laughing Policeman, we get this deliciously noir-ish description of Christmas shoppers continuing forth, even as the specter of death hangs about the city:

The consumer society and its harassed citizens had other things to think of.  Although it was over a month to Christmas, the advertising orgy had begun and the buying hysteria spread as swiftly and ruthlessly as the Black Death along the festooned shopping streets.  The epidemic swept all before it and there was no escape.  It ate its way into houses and apartments, poisoning and breaking down everything and everyone in its path.  Children were already howling from exhaustion and fathers of families were plunged into debt until their next vacation.  The gigantic legalized confidence trick claimed victims everywhere.  The hospitals had a boom in cardiac infractions, nervous breakdowns and burst stomach ulcers.

The police stations downtown had frequent visits from the outriders of the great family festival, in the shape of Santa Clauses who were dragged blind drunk out of doorways and public urinals.  At Mariatorget two exhausted patrolmen dropped a drunken Father Christmas in the gutter when they tried to get him into a taxi.  (101)

From the pens of married authors Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahllöö, Christmas in Sweden does not resemble quite the winter wonderland that I would have imagined.  In fact, the above version of the Christmas holiday rush seems more on par with a holiday scene from my birth nation, the place that invented the modern consumer Hellscape, crippling credit card debt, and the drunken Santa Claus.

This being the case, in The Laughing Policeman, an excellent work of crime fiction that I would easily mention in the same breath with the works of Cain, Hammett and Chandler, American consumerism is not the biggest fish to fry.   Sjöwall and Wahllöö paint a picture of Stockholm as a city under siege by that most invasive and troublesome of American exports: violence.  Published in 1968, The Laughing Policeman can be read as a vision of the global ripple effects of American corruption and violence as fictionalized so deftly by the above trio of crime writers in the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s.  According to Cain, Hammett and Chandler, there was something rotten abrewing in the Land of the Free in the 20th Century, and according to Sjöwall and Wahllöö, whatever it was had a passport.

The novel opens with a fully-armed squadron of policemen attempting to break up a Vietnam War protest on the steps of the American Embassy in Stockholm.  The police presence is so great that the rest of Stockholm is left unguarded.  It is in this space of time that an unknown assailant unloads an automatic weapon – later discovered to be American-issued – on 9 people on a double-decker bus.  The crime, the bloodiest in Swedish history, sends shockwaves throughout the country.  The Stockholm police force is caught completely off-guard, leading them to turn to American research in order to decide how to proceed forth with an investigation.  “We have no Swedish precedents,” one of the detectives notes, “…unless we go back as far as the Nordlund massacre on the steamer Prins Carl.  So [our investigators have] had to base their research on American surveys that have been made during the last few decades” (92).

What follows is a pleasurably cynical back-and-forth between these beleaguered Swedes, as they discuss their surprising case and those bloody Americans who have been dealing with instances of this nature for years:

“Unlike us, the American psychologists have no lack of material to work on.  The compendium here mentions the Boston strangler; Speck, who murdered eight nurses in Chicago; Whitman, who killed sixteen persons from a tower and wounded many more; Unruh, who rushed out onto a street in New Jersey and shot thirteen people dead in twelve minutes, and one or two more whom you’ve probably read about before.”

He riffled through the compendium.

“Mass murders seem to be an American specialty,” Gunvald Larsson said.

“Yes,” Melander agreed.  “And the compendium gives some plausible theories as to why it is so.”

“The glorification of violence,” said Kollberg.  “The career-centered society.  The sale of firearms by mail order.  The ruthless war in Vietnam”.

Melander sucked his pipe to get it burning and nodded.

“Among other things,” he said.

“I read somewhere that out of every thousand Americans, once or two are potential mass murderers,” Kollberg said.  “Though don’t ask me how they arrived at that conclusion.”

“Market research,” Gunvald Larsson said. “It’s another American specialty.  They go around from house to house asking people if they could imagine themselves committing a mass murder.  Two in a thousand say, ‘Oh yes, that would be nice.’” (92-93)

Having visited the Swedish Army Museum (Armémuseum) in Stockholm last summer, I know that this is a country where violence was not simply introduced in the 1960s via American global influence.  For centuries, Sweden was a war hungry nation, hellbent on military expansion and conquest.  However, what The Laughing Policeman documents is a new era, with the USA as the epicenter, of modern warfare, consumerism and industrial malaise.  As with every great work of noir fiction, The Laughing Policeman takes the reader beyond the veil of a modern world, exposing the vile creatures who thrive wonderfully in the modern urban setting and with whom we can admit, if we’re honest, we all share a bit of complicity.  But honesty doesn’t play well in the modern city, and for the detectives who must spend their days peering into the nastiness, the truth of things is no laughing matter — although the occasional cynical wisecrack, as a means of keeping things at arms length, never hurt anybody.

My reading tastes take me all over the place, both in terms of content and era.  These are the best books I read this year, regardless of publication date.

1) Larry McMurtry – Lonesome Dove.  This was my second time through Lonesome Dove but the first in ten years.  It is even better than I remembered.  It is one of the few books I would recommend to anyone.

2) Dashiell Hammett – The Maltese Falcon.  If you want to read a detective novel, this is as good a choice as any and better than most.  In many ways, this novel, along with the 1941 film adaptation, defined the genre.

3) Cormac McCarthy – The Road.  Review here.

4) Joe Posnanski – The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds. One of the best baseball books I’ve ever read.  I tend to avoid books that focus on a single team or a single season, but it would have been a big mistake to skip The Machine.

5) Philip Roth – American Pastoral.  A deeply flawed masterpiece.  It is somehow less than the sum of its parts, but each of the parts is great.

Honorable mention: Pekka Hämäläinen – The Comanche Empire.  I haven’t finished this one yet, but the first 200 pages are amazing.  It’s easily the best history book I read (or tried to read) this year.

Up next: Top Five Songs of 2009.

First Published: International Readers League, 1937
Edition Read: International Readers League, 1937
ISBN: ???
Series: Perry Mason 10

Not one of my favourites, but still good. What’s particularly good about this one is that Gardner tells you everything you need to know in order to solve the mystery so that even though you probably won’t work it out, you could.
I might as well admit that my favourite Perry Mason books are the ones where the great punch line comes during the trial. Hits all the great lawyer fantasy high spots. This isn’t one of those  stories. It’s much more akin to a normal detective story except that, of course, Perry Mason spends most of the time on the run from the law.

While I’m admitting things, I might as well also admit that whenever I read one of these books I’m secretly hoping that Della Street and Mason finally start dating. For one thing, they’re made for each other. For another, it would make me feel better about having a certain amount of hero worship for a guy who has a secretary who is clearly in love with him and whom he pulls close and kisses whenever he is stressed and then promptly ignores while he does whatever he wants. I guess all heroes are egomaniacal bastards.

As for the mystery part of this one – it’s almost locked door-y. The set-up doesn’t really change throughout the book. We know, more or less, who the limited list of suspects are from the very beginning and we simply go through the ridiculously hectic motions of Mason’s investigative method (basically, running around being smarter than everyone else and having private detectives do all the work for him while he takes ridiculously exaggerated risks). Fun stuff.

And it’s classic good hard boiled fiction. By which I mean that it is a hell of a lot better writing than the standard “It was a dark night. The rain fell like specks of wet grime on my trench coat as I watched her. She was worth watching, but that wasn’t why I was here. I was here about the murder.” But, of course, nowhere near as good as Chandler or Hammett (is anything?). There’s no great description or evocative mood-writing. There’s just a tough man with ethics of steel* living in a gritty world and kicking the holy crap out of it.

* You know, except for using Della like some kind of pick-me-up. Oh, Della.

Okay, yesterday I got some good input on the best opening lines in fiction, music and movies from you guys. You did a good job providing me some great openings to books and songs and such. So today, I’m looking for the flip side, the B-side, the side nobody listens to.

What’s the worst line you’ve ever read in a piece of fiction? or scene from a movie? line from a song?

The worst thing you’ve run across. Something which made you groan, roll your eyes, heck, maybe even put the book, song, movie, whatever aside.

It doesn’t have to be the opening this time. Just something really bad you ran across somewhere in your experience. There are a ton of ‘em, I’m sure, and there are going to be some really fun examples given. But, as I did last time, I’m going to kick things off. For me, the worst line I’ve ever read comes from a classic book, written by Dashiell Hammett, in his hard-boiled novel The Maltese Falcon.

His eyes burned yellowly.

Okay, “yellowly” does a couple of great things for me. First, it’s an adverb. I hate adverbs. Second, it’s not even a real adverb. It’s so absurd and ridiculous, I actually laughed aloud when I read it. Then I had to read it to my wife. And she laughed, then groaned, then we laughed some more. I mean … c’mon, Dashiell. That’s bad.

So, that’s my entry. What’s yours?

Sound off and give me a giggle. I can hardly wait.

-JDT-

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.

The main reason I started this blog was to catalogue everything I wanted to remember. Primarily, I needed a way to remember my opinions on certain things such as why I did or didn’t like certain movies. I’ve been bad about it the last year or so, but I’m going to start doing quick micro-reviews of movies and books I’ve read each month. If you care, here are my opinions for the month of November.

As a prelude, these reviews are written in reverse order of being consumed. This is because I only started to write them up at the end of the month when I was already forgetting what I did and didn’t like about them!

Books
The Thin Man
I’ve been reading a lot of pulp noir recently, and have been working my way through the complete Dashiell Hammett. The Thin Man is Hammett’s fifth and final book, which is a pity. He was on a great run, almost all of his five novels being classics in hardboiled fiction – and then he just stops.

Anyway, The Thin Man is the story of a wisecracking (what else?) former detective on vacation in his old stomping grounds, New York City. Due to old acquantinces, he quickly gets caught up in the middle of a murder case. It doesn’t really fall to him to crack the case, but in between evening shows on Broadway, large dinners, and even larger numbers of drinks, the case is solved.

This is tied for my favorite of Hammett’s books (the other being Red Harvest). It displays all his greatest strengths – wit, pacing, and a complex but interesting story – without his weaknesses – the appearances of supercriminals, for instance. It’s worth a quick read through, though I’m not sure how “deep” it would be on rereading. But we don’t always need that, do we?

Oryx and Crake
When I started reading this book, I was a little wary. The only other book by Margaret Atwood that I have read is The Handmaid’s Tale which I considered badly written scifi trying it’s hardest to be deep – just amateurish, really, easily corrected had she read more scifi before writing it.

Oryx and Crake, however, is nothing of the sort. It’s a book that will grip you and leave you unable to put it down, with a complex and interesting (though not incredibly original) world. The novel follows one character – Snowman – as he lives in the shattered remains of a postapocalyptic world. Snowman was unfortunate to have been close to the events that caused the end of the world, and is the shepherd of a flock of humans genetically engineered to be, well, naive (although they quickly show signs of overcoming this). The world from before is one of rampant genetic manipulations, constant cyber attachments, and literal walls between the well-to-do scientists and the “pleeblands” (yes, they’re actually called that).

As I said, the book is gripping and interesting – definitely something I recommend reading. This leaves the flaws all the more unfortunate. I think Atwood aims for something loftier than plotboiler fiction, so the incredibly unsubtle ways she goes about that is irritating (see: pleeblands.) She also seems to forget about the possibility of evolution; the ‘genius scientist’ at the center of everything genetically designs creatures to survive after the apocalypse – which would work great, in a vacuum. Surely a genius scientist should know better than that? The book also sometimes felt like it was written straight through, leaving the continuity feeling a bit off (heightened by the next book). So overall: great to read, just don’t think too deeply about it.

The Flood
Captivated by Oryx and Crake, I quickly picked up the sequel only to be cruelly dissapointed. There’s nothing worse you can do in a sequel than change characters and past events. See, in this book you go through the same time period as in Oryx and Crake but seen through the eyes of other characters. And they manage to be intertwined with the characters in the previous book – but somehow never really mentioned there…

Anyway, the book suffers from a brief and infuriatingly boring character section written in a way to ensure the reader skips the passages. Atwood also changes major events and characters from the previous book, making a world previously devoid of people now suspiciously filled with them. And gone is the gripping read: even the characters that are non-boring are kind of uninteresting, and exploring the least interesting part of the world. I definitely would have liked it had Atwood stopped at the end of the last book, leaving the cliffhanger never to be resolved.

The Road
Last on the postapocalyptic novel extravaganza is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I’ve never read McCarthy before, but I started this book just after reading The Reader’s Manifesto. One of the main targets in the Manifesto is McCarthy, so I was all set to dislike The Road (note: I love Paul Auster, so the Manifesto doesn’t carry that much weight with me.)

But hey, I’m a convert. McCarthy has a poetic prose that manages to evoke a feeling of the scene with a brutal directness. I don’t know how else you’d write this book without his prose – as the movie disastrously tried to do and failed (see below). The Road is about a father and a son heading south for warmth in a dying world, encountering barbarism and canibalism and worse. But primarily, the story is about survival in a harsh world and the strained relationship between a dying father and a distant yet captivated son. Seriously every paragraph is dedicated to either searching for food, hiding, running, and attempting to bond, practically in that order of frequency.

What’s best about the book is what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say what happened to the world. It doesn’t say where they are most of the time. It doesn’t say what happened to them in the past. It’s just a story in the here-and-now, managing to communicate the feelings and emotions and sense of the situation these people are in. In case you can’t tell, this is really a great, great book. Which leads to…

Movies
The Road
I saw this movie the most recently but don’t have much to say about it. I’d read The Road the novel in the 24 hours before seeing the movie which created too much dissonance when I watched it; I just couldn’t get in to it. I will say, though, that everything I liked about the book wasn’t here. As I said, the book told a lot through what wasn’t said – the movie was pretty blunt. Also, I don’t know if this is a consequence of the difference in forms but there was a noticeable departure from the themes of the book. McCarthy emphasized the relationship of the father and son, as well as the struggle for survival. The movie emphasized the post-apocalyptic setting, which was not nearly as interesting.

A Serious Man
After watching this movie, my friends and I were taking the parking garage elevator when we overheard someone say, “You know, it was all about the story of Job.” Cue glances between me and my friends and a silent ooooh. Remember that when you go to see it and everything will make more sense. That’s not to say the movie doesn’t make sense when you watch it – you’ll just understand it on a deeper level if you do.

The movie is basically about being middle-class and Jewish in 1970s suburbia. You follow the main character as his life goes from normal to crap, dragging everyone else down with him. The Coen brothers bring their normal sense of dark humor to the absurdity of everyday life, while keeping everything somehow serious. The whole movie is a stylistic continuation of No Country For Old Men, which comes off in a very positive way. You can easily compare this to their earlier dark comedies (Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou, etc.) and see a definite progression; I’m unable to say how it’s progressing expect everything felt tighter and better placed together. Maybe they just got a better editor?

Fear(s) of the Dark
A French collection of short films by graphic artists from around the world, the theme here is, obviously, fear. Every short film is in black and white (with some splashes of red in one segment – cheater) and some are chopped up and woven between the others. Overall, it’s pretty good but it’s really uneven in quality.

Quickly, the highlights and lowlights: Charles Burns does his usual style, both in terms of illustrations and theme. I love the art, the rest was meh. Blutch has an amazing series of vignettes; his art really conveys the mood better than anyone else. Richard McGuire was the standout, both in terms of story and in terms of using pure blackness and whiteness to convey a story. Finally, Pierre Di Sciullo has a series of uninspired 2D animations combined with dumb, banal monologues.

Solaris
Solaris is one of my favorite books, and on my list of Greatest Science Fiction Ever. I’d heard that the Russian movie was supposed to be a masterpiece, and that the author of the book (Stanislaw Lem) derogatively labeled it ‘erotica in space’. Which it kind of is.

Solaris the book was one of the most creative and original descriptions of alien intelligence and environment that I’ve ever read, and is a meditation on man’s place in nature and the cosmos. Solaris the movie is a meditation on scientists as people, and does well at making the science fiction seem unartificial. Be prepared for a slow and fairly dry movie, but one well worth it. This is one of those intellectual pieces that can only be experienced, not really explained.

The Fly
Luckily, this movie has nothing to do with the original 1958 version of The Fly beyond the idea of a man’s transmutation into a human-fly hybrid. Cronenberg did a great job updating the concept using his signature 1980’s biohorror, with Jeff Goldblum giving a terrifyingly amazing portrayal of the descent from man to (brundle-)fly. Unfortunately, Jeff Goldblum’s meaningless incantations to his computer are typical of early movies that assumed their audience was ignorant of computers – something no longer true today. Overall, a great movie with minor flaws.

American Psycho
I don’t remember much of what I liked or disliked about this movie, honestly. I do remember that Christian Bale managed to bring a lot of character to the movie, even though the whole thing slightly bored me. Also, William Defoe was a detective who repeatedly interviewed Bale; each scene was filmed three times, where Defoe was supposed to either be sure that Bale was a killer, sure he wasn’t, or unsure. It added a lot of real-life uncertainty and unease to each interview, which worked wonderfully.

The Virgin Spring
A simple, solid tale of medieval Norway. I haven’t been sold on some Bergman in the past, but this was worth watching. I suppose what drew me in was the realistic feeling – people wore crappy clothes, lived far apart, and life generally sucked for everyone involved. The nihilistic and psychological undertones throughout the movie were what completed the sense of it being a really good movie.

The Company
The Company is essentially a faux-documentary of a theater company through a few performances. I get bored watching dance for more than a few minutes at a time, so the small dance scenes interspersed with dialogue kept my attention.

New York, I Love You
This is a collection of short films about New York; really, though, it should have been named, “Manhattan, I love you (and Coney Island is alright for old people)”. Some gems, a lot of meh films. It didn’t flow great and didn’t really convey a sense of the character of the city.

“We didn’t come to New York to stay sober.”

Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man (1934) follows retired detective Nick Charles and his wife, Nora, as they investigate the disappearance of a wealthy inventor and the murder of his secretary.  It is a departure both in tone and character from Hammett’s earlier work.  In The Thin Man, Hammett uses a lighter, comedic tone than in his previous novels.  At times, the case seems secondary to Nick and Nora’s social life.  Additionally, in contrast with the rough-hewn protagonists Hammett favored up this point, Nick and Nora breeze in and out of hotels and speakeasies, looking for leads and liquor.  Neither Sam Spade nor the Continental Op would feel comfortable in the Charleses’ social circle.

The novel, Hammett’s last, begins soon after Nick and Nora arrive from San Francisco for a New York vacation.  Nick enjoys the upper class lifestyle that came from marrying Nora, and he reluctantly joins the investigation.  His wife, on the other hand, is only too eager to involve herself.  The dynamic between Nick and Nora is as compelling as the mystery, which is filled with the deception and duplicity one expects from a Hammett novel.  Together, they make quite a mystery-solving team with Nora’s exuberance matching Nick’s experience.  Yet, their inquiry into the killing barely inhibits their alcohol intake.  Nick frequently requests a morning drink to “cut the phlegm,” and they often return home as the sun rises.  For the Charleses, parties and investigations seem to go hand in hand without detriment to either.

In many ways, The Thin Man is classic Hammett.  The prose is sharp, and the dialogue witty.  Yet, The Thin Man doesn’t hold up to the standard Hammett set with The Maltese Falcon (1930).  Hammett is better suited to the hard-boiled Maltese Falcon than he is the comedic Thin Man.  Although The Thin Man is certainly worth reading, this is one instance where the film adaptation surpasses the book.  Hammett’s novel is well-crafted, but it doesn’t match the style of Nick and Nora Charles as portrayed by William Powell and Myrna Loy.

Le dépoussiérage de Dashiell Hammett continue. Après Moisson rouge, dont j’avais déjà parlé ici, Gallimard regroupe dans la collection Quarto cinq des romans de l’auteur: Moisson rouge, Sang maudit, le Faucon maltais, la Clé de verre et l’Introuvable.

Il s’agit d’un travail de retraduction pour rendre aux textes leur authenticité puisque la traduction faite dans les années 50 s’en était beaucoup éloignée. Et pour ceux que ça intéresse, on peut écouter la traductrice Natalie Beunat expliquer son approche dans l’excellente émission Mauvais Genres consacrée à Hammett et cela, directement sur leur site. Comment retranscrire un langage pour qu’il soit compréhensible, qu’il sonne vrai et qu’il soit proche du texte original? Pas simple comme défi. Pour Moisson rouge c’était réussi, pas de raison pour ne pas se faire plaisir et relire les autres.

First Published: Liberty Magazine (3 instalments), 1933
Edition Read: Vintage Crime, 1989
ISBN: 0-679-772265-3
Subtitle: A Novel of Dangerous Romance

Though beautifully written, this novella is primarily interesting for what it says about the sort of hero Hammett thought he was creating in his writings. This time he incarnated that hero as a woman.

In “The Simple Art of Murder,” Chandler famously compared the hard boiled sleauth to a modern day knight. Hammett clearly thought slightly differently, because whatever Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon is, he isn’t a knight. He sleeps with his partner’s wife, after all, and has one of the most cleverly written suppressed mean streaks I’ve ever read. Where Chandler wanted to evoke the idealism in a man who understood just how far from ideal the world is, Hammett was more content to write about seriously flawed real people who did the best they could.

When he transfers those characteristics to a woman, he put in a number of characteristics that will certainly make people groan. Luise sells her body to get through life. Perhaps that’s not so different from the more traditional male protagonists of hard boiled novels who certainly seem to get beaten and tortured and generally subjected to considerable physical danger and violence on a regular basis. Still, for whatever reason, we’ve always thought of selling yourself for sex as quite different from selling yourself to take someone else’s beating. Whatever that reason is, I’m not convinced it’s a good one, but it’s certainly a true description of our cultural attitudes. However, like the male heroes, Luise has her limits. The action of the book is driven by the fact that Luise is trying to leave her current boyfriend/employer because she has decided that he is too low for her. The parallels here are pretty easy to draw. Spade won’t work for the man who killed his partner, not because that man is so much worse than others, but because a partnership means something even when you’re sleeping with the guy’s wife. Chandler’s Marlowe gets more beatings from the people he won’t help than from the people he will. Perry Mason and Nero Wolfe refuse to have guilty parties as their clients (with limited exceptions). The key to maintaining moral fibre in the world of the hard boiled novel isn’t that you don’t sell yourself, it’s that you choose who you sell yourself to. Your limits are imposed, not by the outside world, but by yourself on yourself.

Despite being a woman who sells sex, Luise is definitely a heroine. She’s tough and smart. It’s true that the the major male character – Brazil – tries to protect her but, for the most part, he fails. She succeeds at protecting him. I don’t want to read too much into a title, but the novella is called Woman in the Dark and I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to think that the Dark in this case is the world that Hammett and the other hard boiled writers of this era inhabited and struggled against. It’s very rare to read a book in which a woman is allowed into that world as a full participant.

I guess the only other thing I want to say about the book is that it is worth reading for some of the character sketches. When we first meet Brazil in his cabin, we get a wonderful picture of a hard and broken man without any description of him being necessary. It’s one of the best instances of evocation through sparse writing and distance you can find in such an identifiable moment. It’s artful and just glorious writing.

This month’s book club selection was The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett.  I have to admit I didn’t really enjoy this book.  I’m usually a person who complains about books that are in need of ruthless editors, but this book was so sparse that I never really cared about any of the characters.  This seemed to be the consensus among my book club as well.  We were all expecting to rip through it really fast because it is short and should be an easy read.  Everyone said that it took them much longer to finish than a 200 page book normally would because we just didn’t want to pick it up and read.

I think this is the first noir fiction I’ve ever read so I’m not sure if it’s this book or the genre that turns me off.  It did give us plenty to talk about in book club.  The depiction of women sparked quite a lively discussion.  Any time a woman wanted Sam Spade to forget what he was asking her, she kissed him or slept with him.  Gay men weren’t very nicely depicted either.  I can forgive a book these transgressions based on the time period, and they do provide a lot of discussion opportunities for a book club.

I was surprised to see that it averages 5 stars on Shelfari.  I wonder if some people are apt to like it just because they like the movie, which I haven’t seen but plan to Netflix soon.  Do any of my readers really love this book?  If so, tell me why in the comments.

Republic Pictures is the unassailable king of the cliffhangers after the silent era. Most of the best chapterplays of the ’30s and ’40s were Republic productions. Zorro’s Fighting Legion (1939), Adventures of Red Ryder (1940), Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941), Jungle Girl (1941), Spy Smasher (1942), Perils of Nyoka (1942), The Masked Marvel (1943), and Captain America (1944) are just a few of the more than sixty serials produced by Republic Pictures, most of which are still incredibly entertaining. The best Republic serials combined wild action and elaborate stunts with nicely paced stories that could be strung out over 12 to 15 weekly installments with a few subplots here and there, but nothing too complicated or that viewers couldn’t pick up with in the middle. Each chapter ended with a cliffhanger (like Captain Marvel flying toward a woman falling off a dam, or a wall of fire rushing down a tunnel toward Spy Smasher). The next week’s chapter would begin with a minute or two of the previous week’s climax and the resolution, and the cycle would repeat until the final chapter.

Columbia Pictures and Universal Pictures were the two other major producers of serials in the sound era. Universal ceased production of serials in 1946, leaving only Columbia and Republic to duke it out into the ’50s. One of the last serials made by Universal was Secret Agent X-9, first released into theaters starting in July 1945. It was based on a daily newspaper strip created by writer Dashiell Hammett (the author of The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man) and artist Alex Raymond (who worked on Flash Gordon). Both creators left the project soon after its inception, and the King Features strip continued under various hands, vacillating between espionage and private eye stories.

The first film serial featuring Secret Agent X-9 was made by Universal in 1937, and starred Scott Kolk as Agent X-9, a.k.a. “Dexter,” who sought to recover the crown jewels of Belgravia from a master thief called “Blackstone.” The second featured a boyish-looking 32-year-old Lloyd Bridges as Agent X-9, a.k.a. “Phil Corrigan.” Made toward the end of World War II, the 1945 iteration of the character focused on wartime intrigue and Corrigan’s cat-and-mouse games with Axis spies. Taking a cue from Casablanca (1942), the serial was set in a neutral country called “Shadow Island,” in which Americans, Japanese, Chinese, French, Germans, Australians, and the seafaring riffraff of the world freely intermingle. A fictional island nation off the coast of China, “Shadow Island” has a de facto leader named “Lucky Kamber” (Cy Kendall) who owns a bar called “House of Shadows” and has a finger in every pie, including gambling and espionage. Various German and Japanese military officers, secret agents, and thugs run amuck in this serial, but the one who most stands out is the unfortunately made-up and attired Victoria Horne as “Nabura.” In her role as a Japanese spymaster, Horne is outfitted with eyepieces that cover her upper eyelids, appearing to drag them down from sheer weight. She doesn’t look Asian, she just looks as if her eyes are closed.

While Nabura is played by a white actress in yellowface makeup, the main Chinese character is actually played by a Chinese actor, which was typical in World War II-era Hollywood. Keye Luke, surely one of the hardest working Chinese-American actors in Hollywood history, plays “Ah Fong,” Corrigan’s faithful sidekick. Corrigan is also aided by an Australian double agent named Lynn Moore, played by American actress Jan Wiley. Wiley does nothing to alter her accent, which was also typical for American actors who played Aussies in Hollywood productions during the war.

Secret Agent X-9 has good production values and special effects. The stock footage that shows up in nearly every serial is judiciously used, and integrated well into the newly filmed material. Where this Universal serial just doesn’t measure up to the best Republic offerings is in the pacing and action departments. Republic serials featured stuntwork that still impresses (e.g., Spy Smasher leaping through the air, landing on a mechanic’s creeper chest-first, rolling under a car, and grabbing a goon’s ankles before he can escape). Secret Agent X-9 features ho-hum shootouts, fistfights, and car chases.

Also, instead of a plot that evolves naturally over the course of the series, there is a simple story that seems as if it’s been stretched from a 90-minute feature into 13 chapters, most of which are longer than 20 minutes. Secret Agent X-9 also suffers from poor timing. When the first installment was released, V-E Day had already passed, but the United States was still at war with Japan. By the time the final installment was released, atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan had surrendered to the Allies, and a new phase in world history had begun. Secret Agent X-9 is set in 1943, so it’s never out of date, per se, but its MacGuffin, a substitute for aviation fuel called “722,” which everyone in the film is scrambling to secure for themselves, seems like small beer after the advent of the Atomic Age.

From the most recent issue of The Paris Review:

INTERVIEWER
You’ve called Dashiell Hammett “tremendously great” and Raymond Chandler “egregiously overrated.” Why?

ELLROY
Chandler wrote the kind of guy that he wanted to be, Hammett wrote the kind of guy that he was afraid he was. Chandler’s books are incoherent. Hammett’s are coherent. Chandler is all about the wisecracks, the similes, the constant satire, the construction of the knight. Hammett writes about the all-male world of mendacity and greed. Hammett was tremendously important to me.
Joseph Wambaugh was immensely important, too. He is a former policeman whose view of LA perfectly dovetailed with my minor miscreant’s view of LA. I also loved the quickness, the ugliness, the assured fatality of James M. Cain. That giddy sense that doom is cool. You just met a woman, you had your first kiss, you’re six weeks away from the gas chamber, you’re fucked, and you’re happy about it.

The Paris Review – The Art of Fiction No. 201

The Diaries of Osmond Finger, Ghost Detective

Monday

11:45 am.
Office.

She either pretends to not hear me or is hard of hearing. This dame sure knows how to play a game, I think to myself.

She sighs. She starts talking about her case, either to me or to herself. I tell her I’ll take it on.

My secretary walks in. She says I’ll take the case.

“But he doesn’t know what the case is yet.”

Needless to say, I don’t buy her story, but I tell her I’ll buy her a drink. Need to get to know her better. There’s more to this case than would meet my eye if I still possessed one. I follow her to a bar. We go out for a drink. I talk, laugh. She sits in silence. My drinks pour right through me. She wipes the table up like the seductress she is. She’s sexy, a little too sexy. Something’s amiss. I sense she might be cheating on her husband, if she has one. I decide to investigate.

We part ways. I follow her home.

Tuesday

6:15pm
Investigating the Walker case. Marital Infidelity.

Two cars parked in driveway; One Honda Civic, one Pontiac Firefly. Neither belong to Walker, who is at work. Suspicious. Front door is unlocked. Walk through door. House seems empty, but hear noises coming from above. Check  fridge for clues and grab a glass of milk to quench thirst. Milk passes through me, spills on floor. Liquor cabinet is empty, perhaps drained by nights of infidelity. Float upstairs. The noises appear to be coming from the bedroom, which is locked. Walk through door.

An unclothed couple are linked affectionately in bed. They do not appear to be engaged in any explicitly sexual act, but something about their embrace suggests they may be more than friends. Get positive I.D. on Mrs. Walker, and a young man who does not appear to be Walker. Move closer to the couple to scrutinize for transgressions. I recognize the young man immediately: he’s made a cuckold of a lot of men out there.

Mrs. Walker complains of sudden draft, and states that she has become very cold. Puts on sweater. Young man also puts on sweater, and picks up a duvet that had been carelessly left on the floor. They resume their possible copulation under the covers. Mrs. Walker states she is too hot. I move closer to the bed, thinking she may be using “hot” in the colloquial sense, which would indeed confirm she is cuckolding her husband and not simply stating her temperature.

Young man throws duvet into the air, landing on me. Can’t see. Wish I had brought scissors to cut eye holes.

I stub my toe on the nightstand. All intimate activity is suddenly halted, for reasons mysterious.

I leave. Sounds from upstairs resume. Evidence inconclusive.

9:45 pm
City Square

I spot a group of painted young girls, skirts as high as their minds will be after the 8 vodka and energy drinks they plan on drinking tonight. They hail a cab. I float into the back. The girls slide in on top of me. I’m embarrassed at first, but soon I relax. I relax a little too much. The girls don’t seem to mind. They’re singing along to whatever pop idol’s popular this week. Talking about boys they’re meeting. No matter. I’m the only boy with them now.

Downtown. They leave. I stay in the cab a few minutes longer. I float thru the door as we pass my client’s house. Light’s on upstairs. I knock a few times, perhaps a bit timidly because nobody answers. I let myself in.

I’m still excited from the young taxi girls, and my excitement reaches a fever pitch when I enter and find my lovely, lovely client, stripped down, all alone, going to town, as it were, using her fingers to write a first-person story made up entirely of climaxes.

I wonder if she senses that I’m with her, and if I might play a starring role in the picture show currently playing the silver screen of her mind’s eye. Probably not, she’s never even seen me. But I’ve seen her. All of her. A little movie of my own starts to unfold. I sense the end coming all too quickly. My credits roll all over her. She screams. If only my seed was as spectral as the rest of me. I’ll discount her when I compile my expenses. I float away.

Friday

8:23 p.m. Jones Residence. More marital infidelity. Women these days.

Ted Jones was a client from last year who called in about a work-related insurance claim, but I’ve been following up on some suspicions I’d had about his wife ever since I found out he had one.

Float upstairs to the now familiar bedroom, where the Jones wife is wrapped up in her evening knitting. She has a face you can trust, but if there is anything you learn in 350 years on the job, it’s that every woman has something to hide. And one of these days, I’m going to uncover her crimes.

The Jones wife looks good when she knits. Focused, determined, even angelic. Maybe she is on the level after all. I watch her weave. Her nipple slips out of her nightgown as she purls. She doesn’t even notice. I wonder what she looks like binding off. I can’t control myself. Her weaving is too seductive. Driven madly by impulse, I float towards her.

Well, If she was clean, she sure isn’t now.
Better mark it as a discount.

Saturday

9:20 pm Palmer Boulevard. Spectral Haunting Case.

Secretary passed a note onto me about this case. Haunted house case, how ironic. Is it really a ghost, or is it just a cat burglar treating this house like his own personal kitty litter? Hell, I’ll take it. I need the cash.

Arrive at house, float in. Been there for other cases. Guy upstairs in the bedroom. I recognize him right away. He made a cuckold of Mr. Walker. Same guy I caught doing the horizontal tango with Mrs. Walker, the guy who attacked me with the duvet.  Sitting there, monogrammed robe, he looks pretty relaxed.

No evidence of haunting yet. But I better stick around just to make sure. According to the report, the ghost only haunts the house when the guy is having sex. What a creep. What a Goddamned pervert. I float into the closet to keep my element of surprise in case the sex-obsessed specter decides to darken this door with his deviant ways.

I hear a knock on the door and in walks my beauty from before, the dame who wanted me to check on her husband. She smiles at the guy. This is looking like it might be a bit of a sticky situation.

I watch these two fornicators start living up to their name and doing what they do best: fornicating. They both look pretty happy.

I’m rushing to conclusions now. She wasn’t suspicious of her husband at all. Her husband’s probably a good guy, probably a guy like me, only guilty of falling for the wrong dames. Falling for dames that’ll use you, cuckold you, and maybe even kill you by battering your head with a candleabra the day you’re about to get your detective’s license. Poor guy.

“See, I told you the house wasn’t haunted”, says the dame.

“The ghost only comes when I’m having sex.”

How right he is. I explode with rage; I explode with something stickier than rage. In a throe of passionate anger I lose my footing, and crash through the closet door, making a thundering racket as I send a lamp to floorsville. The couple screams, and in a frenzy of excitement I’m brought back to our first encounter, only this time it is I who blanket them, with my own duvet — of translucent white.

Hell of a night.

Last sold in 2007 for $1,295,000, 33 Dashiell Hammett went on a resale campaign beginning in early 2008.

The 3BR/2BA Edwardian single-family home tucked on Dashiell Hammett between Pine and Bush/Powell and Joice sailed through list prices like there was no tomorrow: $1,995,000; $1,895,000; $1,795,00; $1,595,000; $1,490,000…And now, it’s officially a short sale with one of the previous listing agents, clocking in at $1,095,000.

There’s a lot of old-world clutter and a decked-out yard, plus one-car parking. In the end, though, will the list price fly with the lender? Only two other homes have sold in what is technically the “downtown” district, and both sold for around $2.3M. I’m betting any buyer who writes an offer at asking will end up being countered. Go to it!

” A Pale Green Mermaid Blog “

David Lambuth was a Professor at Dartmouth College, he and his colleagues compiled this book on “common sense “rules for writing.  Professor Lambuth stated that ” make a picture with the nouns and make that picture move with verbs.”

INITIAL ADVICE

“Use your eyes and ears. Think. Read . And then when you have found your idea, don’t be afraid of it – or of your pen and paper; write it down as nearly as possible as you would express it in a speech; swiftly, un-selfconsciously, without stopping to think about the form of it all.  Revise it afterwards – but only afterwords.

Clear thinking and not a mastery of rules makes good writing,  set down in simple natural speech and afterwards  revised in accordance with good usage.

The particular difficulties which always come up by the score have to be wrestled with as special problems by the man who is trying to capture his own ideas  and get them down on paper.

Read… read and still read.

Dashiell Hammett prose,

He came away from the telephone frowning. ”Wynant’s back in town,” he said, “and wants me to meet him.”

I turned around with the drinks I had poured. “Well, the lunch can–”

“Let him wait,” he said, and took one of the glasses from me.

“Still as screwy as ever?”

“That’s no joke,” Macaulay said solemnly. “You heard they had him in a sanatorium for nearly a year back in ‘29?”

“No.”

He nodded. He sat down, put his glass on a table beside his chair, and leaned towards me a little. “What’s Mimi up to, Charles?”

“Mimi? Oh, the wife–the ex-wife. I don’t know. Does she have to be up to something?”

“She usually is,” he said dryly, and then very slowly, “and I thought you’d know.”
He came away from the telephone frowning. ”Wynant’s back in town,” he said, “and wants me to meet him.”

I turned around with the drinks I had poured. “Well, the lunch can–”

“Let him wait,” he said, and took one of the glasses from me.

“Still as screwy as ever?”

“That’s no joke,” Macaulay said solemnly. “You heard they had him in a sanatorium for nearly a year back in ‘29?”

“No.”

He nodded. He sat down, put his glass on a table beside his chair, and leaned towards me a little. “What’s Mimi up to, Charles?”

“Mimi? Oh, the wife–the ex-wife. I don’t know. Does she have to be up to something?”

“She usually is,” he said dryly, and then very slowly, “and I thought you’d know.”

Bye,  ” She ran her nails through her blonde red hair as she pulled the knife from her stocking top, placing it underneath the telephone.”

Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. from wikipedia

First Published: Harper Collins, 2007
Edition Read: Harper Collins, 2007
ISBN: 978 0 00 714982 7
*** Random Book ***

You have to be at least somewhat impressed by a book that creates an alternate history in which atom bombs dropped in Europe and Marilyn Munroe Kennedy as the First Lady are mentioned in a totally off-hand, background manner.

This book is teeming with alternate history exploration. Jews vs Native Americans for control of a portion of Alaska that has been partitioned. Grand global schemes involving a Holy Land that the Zionists were driven out of by the Arabs before Israel could come to be. And so on.  It’s very well written and the murder mystery which drives the action of the book is a nice canvas on which Chabon can draw his theories of Jewish and human identity. But that’s not really what I want to talk about.

This is not a hard boiled novel in the way that Chandler or Hammett write hard boiled novels, but it reminded me very much of that genre (possibly because I read way too much of it, but anyway). Specifically, the protagonists are eerily reminiscent of the gritty, downtrodden but ultimately idealistic detectives that populate the best of the hard boiled genre.

For me, there is something endlessly seductive about that combination. A character who has seen and lives with the worst part of human nature and who has a knowledge of what people and the world are capable of that borders on cynicism but who still, ultimately, believes in their own personal honour is the best kind of hero I know. These characters are rarely, if ever, happy. Sometimes life offers them glimpses of happiness, but for the most part they harden their hearts to it. Their heroic nature isn’t in their ability to overcome the evil of the world, it is in their ability to live in and not be overtaken by the evil of the world. The dour, rude, confrontational attitude that these characters drag around with them is their armour. More often than not, they have no sword. They have no true hope of winning and yet the world is undeniably better for their being in it.

Given that the characters in Chabon’s novel fit this description pretty well, I’m not completely sure why I resist the characterisation of the book as as hard-boiled. My best explanation is that a typical hard boiled novel is written in a voice that, though not identical to, very closely resembles the protagonist’s voice. In other words, it is not just the character that has to hide his realistic idealism behind a mask of terse prose but the author as well. The authors seem to be saying that the world is as bad and debased and irredeemable as their characters believe and so offer us their detectives as way of being better than the world without leaving it. Chabon doesn’t do that. His voice in the book is not the voice of his characters. Instead, Chabon adds humerous touches to the background and sly observations that gently mock his characters. Though he never gets explicit, the narrator suggests that though his characters see the world as it is to them, the world needn’t seem that way to us.

‘I deserve all the love you can spare me. And I want a lot more than I deserve.’

–Dashiell Hammett

(You know, Hardboiled/Noir)

/Kenneth Tangnes

Bogart and Astor on the poster, not Lorre and Greenstreet. Duh. Uploaded by content.artofmanliness.com.

Dashiell Hammett wrote the book. John Huston directed the film. And Humphrey Bogart made it memorable.

The Maltese Falcon, which premiered in 1941, is usually considered the first entry in the film noir genre. It was Huston’s directorial debut, and also marked the first film appearance of the corpulent Sydney Greenstreet. Also in major parts were the lovely Mary Astor and the supremely creepy Peter Lorre.

Uploaded to Flickr by SonomaPicMan.

The movie was made with three variations from typical filmmaking techniques that would amaze the modern movie maker. First, the entire film was shot in sequence, which the actors loved. Second, production was so meticulously planned that almost no lines of dialogue were cut. And third, much of the dialogue was taken directly from the novel. Imagine that, respecting the source material.

The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, but didn’t win. It battled for Best Picture against Citizen Kane (Great American Thing No.: 110), Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Suspicion, and the winner, How Green Was My Valley. The American Film Institute named it the number 32 Greatest Movie of All Time, and number 6 in the Mystery genre.

Dashiell Hammett nació en Maryland (USA) en 1894 y murió en 1961 en Nueva York a causa de un enfisema que derivó en cáncer de pulmón.  A los 13 años había dejado la escuela para vivir una vida sin duda intensa e interesante.
Hammett se alistó durante la Primera Guerra Mundial para servir en Francia en el American Field Service, unidad de voluntarios que tenía como misión proporcionar servicios sanitarios y de transportes a las tropas aliadas. Al parecer, fue asignado al cuerpo de ambulancias, pero no llegó a prestar servicio por causa de una tuberculosis. Fue hospitalizado en Estados Unidos y se licenció por razones de salud en menos de un año. En el hospital se enamoró de una enfermera con la que se casó y tuvo dos hijas, aunque no tuvieron un matrimonio feliz. Hammett padecería problemas de salud el resto de sus días, problemas que se manifestaron como esporádicos brotes de tuberculosis y que se agravaron por su afición al alcohol.Después de la guerra, Hammett ocupó diversos empleos de carácter esporádico, como vendedor de periódicos, repartidor o mensajero. Trabajó también en publicidad antes de enrolarse en la famosa Agencia Nacional de Detectives Pinkerton. El fruto de sus experiencias se plasmó en su carrera como escritor. Tuvo diversos empleos, trabajó en publicidad y, finalmente, se dedicó a escribir. Participó también, aunque de forma tangencial, en la Segunda Guerra. En el terreno político, militó en la izquierda y se afilió al New York Civil Rights Congress, que fue considerado organización comunista, lo que le acarreó una pena de 6 meses de prisión y ser incluido en las listas negras de la caza de brujas liderada por el Senador McCarthy en los años 50.
Su primer cuento se publicó en 1922, y ganó fama literaria por las novelas que publicó entre 1929 y 1931. Las dos primeras, Cosecha roja (Red Harvest, 1929) y La maldición de los Dain (The Dain Curse, 1929), le proporcionaron una rotunda popularidad, aunque su novela más famosa (aunque no haya sido considerada de forma unánime la mejor) fue El halcón maltés (The Maltese Falcon, 1930).
He leído la versión en inglés que he indicado en la cabecera de este post, y es una de las mejores cosas que he leído en un tiempo. La prosa en esta novela es como un látigo y, en muchos momentos, la acción es electrizante. La trama huele a humo de tabaco, a Johnie Walker y a pólvora.
Los personajes están descritos con riqueza de detalles que resulta muy cinematográfica, pero Hammett huye de los estereotipos tan típicos de la novela comercial. Sam Spade no es un detective al uso: no es físicamente agraciado ni empuña un arma en ningún momento de la trama, aunque tiene un éxito notable con el sexo opuesto. Su carácter frío, ácido y escéptico le permite sobrevivir en un mar de traiciones, disimulo y ocultación.
La trama se construye en torno a lo que unos personajes ocultan a otros, y en lo que el autor oculta al lector. Leer este libro me ha despertado las ganas de ver de nuevo la adaptación cinematográfica, primera obra del magnífico John Houston, y de leer más cosas del autor.
Cuando veo tanta gente enganchada a ese escritor sueco, pienso que podrían disfrutar tanto como yo de esta lectura…

First Published: Farra & Rinehart, 1940
Edition Read: Bantam Books, 1992
ISBN: 0 533 76301 6
Series: Nero Wolfe 8

Don’t be taken in by the atrocious title. If you write as many books as Rex Stout did, you’ll eventually use a title that crap too. It’s actually a really good book … if you like that kind of thing. Which you should.

I love hard boiled detective fiction. For one thing, any genre that can start by being called “pulp fiction” and rise to sufficient heights of literary genius that really pretentious people want to read it enough to start calling it “roman noir” has got to be good. I mean, that’s French. In fact, it’s two French words. That makes it twice as pretentious as film noir. Reminds me of Neil Gaiman’s comment that every time someone says he writes graphic novels he feels like a prostitute who just got called a lady of the night.

Admittedly, Nero Wolfe books are not Raymond Chandler (the greatest writer ever) or Dashiell Hammett (the greatest named writer ever) level brilliant, but they’re pretty damn good. The heroes of these books are smart, disenchanted, gritty and wonderfully effeminate. Nero Wolfe’s two great passions are gourmet cooking and orchids. And Archie can pretend that he’s too-cool-for-school, but you know he loves it.

Since I complained about the sexism in The Space Vampires, I should probably say something here. There are two big reasons why the sexism in these books doesn’t bother me nearly as much. First, this book was written in 1940 and set in the 30s. Not being sexist would be bizarre. Second, the sexism in these books is overt and not implicit. Women do have character, do have fire and intelligence and do do things. The characters are sexist and the world is sexist but the women are people with minds and passions – not background drudges like in Space Vampires. I admit that the women are sillier or less capable than the men as a rule, but I offer two defences. One, there are definite exceptions to that rule. Two, because of the world they were raised in and the confines put upon them, only an exceptional woman would have broken out of that rule. The same would have been true of men if men had been in that situation. Anyway, this makes the sexism that is there more palatable to me.

But never mind that. If you’re not enthralled by the glorious mix of macho stoicism and effeminate preferences seasoned with worldly disenchantment and personal idealism then … well, I don’t even know what to say. Keep reading Chandler until you get it.

Tous les essais sur la littérature policière le soulignent: les premiers polars américains n’étaient pas particulièrement bien traduits et c’est un euphémisme. Détectives privés américains parlant comme des titis parisiens, argot local, on voulait se rapprocher du lecteur. On peut donc saluer l’initiative de Gallimard qui a fait retraduire entièrement Moisson rouge de Dashiell Hammett pour la Série Noire. Une bonne manière pour ceux qui avait déjà lu cette référence du roman noir de se rapprocher du texte original et pour ceux qui ne la connaissait pas de la découvrir.
Je ne l’avais pour ma part jamais lu même s’il était depuis longtemps sur ma liste de lectures à venir. Je n’ai pas été déçue, c’est exactement ce que je m’imaginais, le ton encore plus juste.
Une petite ville des États-Unis, Personville, surnommée Poisonville bien sûr. Un vieux magnat qui possède la presque totalité de la ville. Des truands mafieux qui l’aident à faire régner l’ordre en prenant leur part. Le décor est planté, il ne manque définitivement que le détective privé aux méthodes bien personnelles pour terminer le tableau. Et une fille, of course, on ne pourrait faire sans.
C’est classique, bien sûr. Mais avant lui, ça ne l’était pas. Il s’agit du premier roman noir tel qu’on le connaît aujourd’hui. Hammett installe une atmosphère malsaine par touches lentes. Au début, tout va bien, enfin presque, une simple enquête dans une petite ville, mais la tension monte et la violence augmente. Dans la société capitaliste des années vingt aux États-Unis, la fin justifie les moyens et le détective privé n’est pas le dernier à utiliser la méthode. Société sans morale, justice corrompue, appât du gain, pouvoir par la violence, tout y est. Et face à cela, un héros sans nom, qui va devenir le modèle du polar et de roman noir, le détective privé, défenseur de la veuve et l’orphelin mais selon ses propres termes, pas toujours très moraux non plus.
Difficile de dire plus sur Dashiell Hammett et Moisson rouge, d’autres l’ont décortiqué bien mieux avant moi et les amateurs l’avait lu il y a longtemps. Mais il n’est jamais trop tard pour ceux qui ne connaissent pas encore!

Et pour mieux faire le tour de l’auteur et en découvrir une autre facette, on peut aller du côté de chez Allia qui vient de publier les interrogatoires que celui-ci a subi sous le maccarthysme. En tant que président du Civil Rights Congress de New York, une organisation communiste, il sera convoqué deux fois dont la deuxième devant McCarthy lui-même et condamné à 6 mois de prison. La seule défense qu’il envisage est claire, il ne sera pas un délateur: «  Je refuse de répondre à cette question car la réponse pourrait me porter préjudice. Je fais valoir mes droits garantis par le Cinquième amendement. »
Il y a beaucoup d’émotions dans cette simple phrase.

Dashiell Hammett, Moisson rouge, Série Noire, 2009 (nouvelle traduction) (Red Harvest, 1929) traduit de l’anglais par Natalie Beunat et Pierre Bondil.
Dashiell Hammett, Interrogatoires, Allia, 2009, traduit de l’anglais par Natalie Beunat.

” A Pale Green Mermaid Blog “

For the next three months I will be posting excerpts from a book I picked up at a library sale fro a quarter, written in 1923.  It is called ” The Golden Book On Writing ” by David Lambuth a professor at Dartmouth College. 

It is a great little book ( 79) pages that gives you an option on how to THINK about writing since no one can honestly teach you how to write, or as Professor Lambuth would say, ” Writing must be instinctual and un-selfconscious before it is of the slightest value.”

After each excerpt I will include a small section of prose from Dashiell Hammett.

‘” The thing spoke, though I could not say that I actually heard the words: It was as if I simply became, through my entire body, conscious of the words:

“Down enemy of the Lord God: down on your knees.”

I stirred then, to lick my lips with a tongue drier than they were.

FROM “The Dain Curse ” One of Five Novels by Dashiell Hammett

Bye, ” She closed the refrigerator with a slam.  His eyes watched her as she put her coat on and walked out with his gun in hand.”

Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett
Born	Samuel Dashiell Hammett May 27, 1894(1894-05-27) Saint Mary’s County, Maryland, United States
Died	January 10, 1961 (aged 66) New York City, New York, United States
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	American
Writing period	1929–1951
Genres	Hardboiled crime fiction, detective fiction