<< I am late coming to this discussion, but I must say
that I have
never found a lot of resemblence between Chandler and
Hammett. Chandler
was in large part responsible for my early infatuation with
the "genre"
and I will always love his books. But having said that I
must
acknowledge that, by almost any standard, Hammett is the
superior
writer.>>
Hammett was probably superior at telling a certain kind of
story, but a
general endorsement over Chandler is unwarranted. His
characterization
and themes are very narrow compared to Chandler's (or to
Hemingway's).
Hammett gives a lot of satisfaction within his chosen
territory - and so
does Chandler. As an aside, a good midpoint between these two
is Raoul
Whitfield, who could turn on and off the ultrahardboiled
machine, and
who generally worked in a more enigmatic vein.
It's interesting to read the astute review by Dorothy Parker
of
Hammett's _The Glass Key_. She generally praises the book but
points out
its weaknesses very accurately (and, by extension, some
weaknesses of
the dry harboiled style that Hammett founded and represents
to this
day). For those who have the Portable Dorothy Parker Reader
(Viking
Press, 1973), the Hammett review, titled "Oh, Look =96 A Good
Book!" is o=
n
pp. 538-540.
It starts thus:
"It seems to me that there is entirely too little screaming
about the
work of Dashiell Hammett. My own shrill yaps have been
ascending since I
first found Red Harvest, and from that day the man has been,
God help
him, my hero....
This sounds almost like the beginning of an extemporaneous
Ellory
tirade.
Regards,
mt
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