I too noticed Hammett's constant use and re-use of "Ned
Beaumont" every
time he refers to his hero in "The Glass Key." I liked it,
though; I see
it fitting into Hammett's general take on class and
ethnicity.
"Beaumont" sounds sophisticated, and Ned certainly is that.
He's a master
of cultural niceties; he's the one who recommends the kinds
of clothes that
Paul Madvig ought to wear, and he's the one who's
sophisticated enough for
Janet Henry actually to fall in love with.
There's something upper-class sounding about the name, and I
think it
reinforces the idea that Ned is in a seedy place, living by a
code that
probably belongs somewhere else.
I also think "Beaumont" sounds French enough, sounds
exotically WASP
enough, that the other various ethnic types -- the Madvigs,
the Shad
O'Rorys, and the Packy Floods -- seem all the more foreign
and all the more
unfit to be running American politics.
I'm still working out for myself how I think Hammett actually
feels about
that sort of class/ethnic critique. I think there's a certain
amount of
irony in almost all of Hammett, so I imagine he is responding
to the way a
lot of other writers (fiction and nonfiction) tended to
characterize the
gangster and the political boss as lower-class ethnic. It
doesn't square
with what I know of Hammett's personal politics to see him
using ethnicity
(in both extremes: as the immigrant or as the American
Puritan boss) as
code for the bad guy, but then it's hard to escape that
equation in "The
Glass Key" or in "Red Harvest."
Then there's the other possibility. "Beaumont" is close
enough to the
French for 'beautiful world' that "Ned Beaumont" becomes
almost a mantra:
'not beautiful world.' It's a stretch, but I can imagine
Hammett amusing
himself at slipping that cynical observation into his novel
over and over
again.
Joe Kraus
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