Finally finished Hammett's Red Harvest. Since I took the time
to read it, I'd still like to post a few comments -- even if
I'm a couple days late.
For some reason, I had decided Red Harvest would be a bit
more literary! I was actually a surprised at just how true to
the pulps it was. First, it had the ultra short sentences and
tiny paragraphs that helped make pulp magazines accessible to
the working class.
Also, it appears the "novel" was a collection of 4 short
stories. For instance, the first 50 pages or so (I have the
200 page Vintage paperback edition of the book) are pretty
much a self-contained murder mystery. Then we have 50 pages
which end up with McSwain -- well, I don't want to spoil it.
The third 50 pages involve the Op's detached manipulation of
the town's leaders. The last 50 pages feature another murder
mystery. That was fairly typical for the times. Pulp editors
liked to have stories start and end in the same magazine, so
they'd only buy novelettes and short stories. However, short
story collections were a real tough sell in the hardback book
market. Many pulp writers tried to get the best of both
worlds (and two paychecks) by writing stories which could
later be pasted together and remarketed as a novel. As little
as the pulp writers got paid, some went to great lengths to
accomplish this. Probably the worst example of this practice
I've read was a Hopalong Cassidy western novel where Clarence
Mulford assembled a dozen very short stories, labeled them as
chapters and didn't even bother to write connecting
sentences. I think the publisher even got a few out of order!
Anyway, these novels are a strange experience if you're
expecting one long story. The pacing is a bit odd as the
stories gain speed, then rest for a while, then gain speed
again. Anyone know for sure if Hammett wrote Red Harvest as a
series of 4 shorts?
There's not much characterization, of course. People kind of
walk on and walk off stage with only their names to really
differentiate one from the other. That's ok if you're short
term memory is good and you can remember names well. As an
aside, these stories pre-date tagging, an ALTERNATIVE to
characterization which later became all the rage in pulp
writing. (Tagging involves giving a character one or two odd
properties and referring to them incessantly. Lester Dent was
one of the "best" practitioners. Doc Savage has flake-gold
eyes and trills. Monk is hairy and carries a pig(!)
everywhere he goes. Ham is dapper. In fact, I see the
defective detective fad as one aspect of this larger tagging
phenomenon.)
I did note what might be a departure from standard pulp fare:
In the first 150 pages our hero was never really in all that
much peril. I don't recall running across too many early pulp
stories in any genre from the 20s and early 30s where the
lead character wasn't menaced in some way. For instance,
Carroll John Daly's Race Williams was almost always in peril.
But then, I've argued that Daly wrote adventure stories, not
detective stories.
Red Harvest was also plot heavy without much in the way of
description or atmosphere, which is another hallmark of
fiction from the pulp period. I wonder if part of that was
because newspaper men so dominated the pulps? And was Hammett
a newspaperman? Sure seems like it. Hugh Cave, a long-lived
pulp writer, tells of how one of his attempts at writing a
paperback original in the 1980s was returned with a note
saying something like "great outline! can you make it into a
story?"
Unfortunately, I'm not much of a mystery buff so I don't
appreciate really, really complicated plots which must be
puzzled out. I tend to lose interest, which probably tells
you how much I enjoyed the book -- without me having to come
out and say it.
All-in-all, I found it to be a nice piece for its period. If
I'd been reading Nick Carter mysteries all my life, this book
would have blown me a way. In the year 2000, though, it's not
a novel I'd recommend to someone I was trying to interest in
hardboiled fiction. Instead, I'd probably go with one of the
first few Lawrence Block Scudder books, which are still quite
tough but much more accessible to modern readers.
Greg Swan
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