Your roving San Francisco reporter here with a quick note on
the Hammett Exhibit at the SF public library.
The exhibit is made up of Hammett letters, photographs and
other personal effects. The most interesting bits (for me, at
least) were these items:
- The only known proof copies of any Hammett work: to wit,
the proofs for
_The Dain Curse_. It was interesting to see that his
corrections were more than just punctuation, spelling, etc.
On the pages displayed, he was still reworking whole
sentences. The other funny thing is that one of his daughters
had drawn all over several of the proof pages with
crayon!
- One of his typewriters. Looked fairly modern, so I'm sure
it wasn't THE machine used to write the Falcon or anything
like that.
- His dog tags from WWII. He put his daughter Mary's address
on them.
- Originals for a number of the photographs in the book of
letters, including Peggy O'Toole (the model for Brigid
O'Shaughnessy).
- Pencil drawings by Hammett and of Hammett by others. All
the drawings of Hammett show bottles of booze next to
him.
There were also a number of the letters included in the
book.
I don't know if the exhibit is going to move around the
country, but its definitely worth checking out if you get the
opportunity.
That's it.
--MC
--- Mark Coggins coggins@immortalgame.com http://www.immortalgame.com
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