The primary, essential difference lies in the two writers who
created these
characters.
Hammett had seen and worked in the underworld as a Pinkerton.
He knew from
firsthand experience how the people in that world acted and
reacted. So he
instilled Spade with that cynical edge he needed to survive
in that
relatively ugly world. True, Hammett also added some literary
touches to
his work to make it appealing to readers -- he "glamorized"
his characters
a bit, so that even the crooks appealed to the reader as
colorful
characters worth reading about.
Chandler came to the work strictly as an artificial, literary
world, which
is clear even in the way he depicts Marlowe as a knight
representing some
sort of chivalry in a fallen world. Marlowe's world is based
on literary
artifice and entertainment, while Spade's world is based on
the actual
criminal investigations that Hammett had undertaken. For
Chandler, the
artifice was an initial ingredient. For Hammett, the artifice
was added to
the initial ingredient -- the criminal underworld -- to glaze
the ugliness
with the gloss of entertainment.
Does that make sense, or have I mixed too many metaphors? --
Duane
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