- The dedication. Who's Jose?
- The style. Pretty spare, but not like _The Glass Key_.
Also, the
pulpiness of it shows through sometimes, like when Hammett
mentions
Spade's muscled arms bulging through his sleeves.
- The banter. Some good lines: "What do you want me to do?
Learn to
stutter?" "When you're slapped, you'll take it and like
it."
- I don't think Spade is gay, or that Elsie's intuition is
very good.
- The book and the Bogart movie are all jumbled up in my
head. I
can't read it without remembering Bogie, Mary Astor, Lorre,
Greenstreet
and Elisha Cook. This messes me up a bit on the physical
descriptions
of Spade, because Bogart looks nothing like him. Greenstreet
wasn't
fat enough, either.
- What's the "Baumes rush"? Spade mentions this when talking
to
Wilmer. Is it some homosexual thing?
It's fun reading this. I know it well, but it's always nice
to go back
to a good book you've read a lot, but not recently.
Bill
--
William Denton | Toronto, Canada | http://www.vex.net/~buff/ | Caveat lector.
"It is better to incur a mild rebuke than to perform an onerous task."
-- "Uncle" Oswald Hendryks Cornelius
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