You missed my point. I didn't say Hammett was imitating Daly
or trying to be Daly, but I did feel he was reacting to Daly.
When I read Red Harvest it was my gut reaction that Hammett
was try to show the Black Mask audience how a Race Williams,
fight-fire-with-fire style plot should be handled or how it
would have been handled with the Continental Op at the
helm.
And yes, it is very clear that Shaw didn't like Daly's work,
which is probably a good thing. Shaw, to his credit, had
sense enough to know if don't understand it that you will
just mess it up.
Yes, Detective Fiction Weekly is a great pulp. Of course, I
can't think of it without seeing the face of Satan Hall. My
favorite detective pulp (back when I was reading pulps) was
Speed Detective. I also loved Hollywood Detective, its sister
zine. I was very partial to Robert Leslie Bellem and Roger
Torrey, its two regulars. I was also a fan of Max Plaisted's
artwork, particularly his stuff from the 1940's. Speed
Detective was no Black Mask, but it was a lot more fun.
Thanks and take care.
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "jimdohertyjr"
<jimdohertyjr@y...> wrote:
> George,
>
> Re your comments below:
>
> > My take on Red Harvest and The Dain Curse is
that they reflect
> > Joseph T. Shaw's overbearing editorial style.
The typical Shaw
> > edited Black Mask story is very linear with no
plot climax just a
> > series of violent events that bludgeon the
reader with hardboiled
> > images.
> >
> > I liked both of these books when I read them,
many, many years ago.
> > I remember thinking when I read Red Harvest
that this book is
> > Hammet's answer to Carroll John Daly or, in
other words the
> > Continential Op knee deep in a Race Williams
plot.
>
> In fact, it was not Daly that Shaw wanted his
writers to model. He
> hated Daly's work and only published him because he
was so popular.
> The writer he really respected, and wanted his
stable to emulate was
> Hammett. Sometimes it worked, as in Frederic Nebel's
Donahue
> stories. Sometimes it didn't (at least not as well),
as in Chandler's
> two Mallory stories.
>
> Hammett wasn't trying to emulate Daly in either RED
HARVEST or THE
> DAIN CURSE. He'd already been experimenting with
"town tamer" plots
> (i.e. "Nightmare Town" and the Op story
"Corkscrew"). And he'd
> certainly written more than his share of stories
about screwed-up
> families a la CURSE's Dains/Leggets ("The Gatewood
Caper" and "The
> Scorched Face" both come to mind).
>
> The fact is that Hammett, quite on his own, was just
as likely to use
> slam-bang action scenes as Daly, right from the
start. In fact he
> was far better at them than Daly. But, action
scenes
> notwithstanding, you can't read even the earliest,
rawest Op stories
> and really see any influence on Hammett by Daly.
Hammett was
> following his own muse right from the start. Daly
just had the good
> luck to get started around the same time as Hammett,
and the better
> luck to get "Three-Gun Terry" and "Knights of the
Open Palm"
> published before "Arson Plus" and "Slippery
Fingers." If he hadn't
> been first, it's doubtful he'd be remembered
today.
>
> In fact, it was Daly who, post HARVEST, emulated
Hammett by sending
> Race Williams to a small town in upstate New York to
clean out the
> gangster elements. The "connected stories" in which
he did this were
> reprinted some years ago in THE ADVENTURES OF RACE
WILLIAMS. I
> believe it may have been Daly's intention to publish
that "serial" as
> a novel. In fact, since the phrase "better corpses"
appears several
> times in those connected "town tamer" stories, I
suspect it may even
> have BEEN published as a novel, in England under the
title BETTER
> CORPSES, but I'm not absolutely sure of
this.
>
> > Does anyone have a favorite pulp other than
Black Mask? Dime
> > Detective, maybe? Detective Fiction Weekly? My
personal favorite is
> > Speed Detective.
>
> DIME DETECTIVE was an excellent pulp, but I have a
fondness for
> DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, partly because it
published so many cop
> stories (the founder, Bill Flynn, was an ex-cop who
wrote stories and
> novels based on his own law enforcement experiences;
for obvious
> reasons, that resonates with me), and because, being
weekly rather
> than monthly, it published so many serials that were
just serials,
> rather than ostensibly autonomous but connected
"short stories." For
> example, Cornell Woolrich's first novel, THE BRIDE
WORE BLACK, was
> first published in DFW.
>
> JIM DOHERTY
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