Jack,
Re your comments below:
> I have always thought the Hammett wrote the
most
> influention hardboiled novel with "The
Maltese
> Falcon" and that Chandler the most
influential
> body of hardboiled work with Marlowe.
I might put it that Hammett wrote the best-known hard-boiled
novel with FALCON, and that Chandler created the most
influential character, but I think we're on the same page
there, if not necessarily on the same paragraph.
> That being said, I am one of the few people
I
> know who thinks that most of Hammett's
potboiler
> work--his long stories, his pieced
together
> novels--are inferior in quality to many of
those
> writers who came later--the MacDonalds, JDM
and
> Ross, and the early Parker stuff--and
also
> inferior to his work written as novels, like
"The
> Glass Key," and "The Maltese Falcon."
Actually, THE GLASS KEY, like the three Op novels, was also a
"pieced-together novel," in the sense that the serial
installments that had appeared in BLACK MASK were written so
that they could stand on their own as a short story.
Hammett's only BLACK MASK serial that was written as a
single, straightforward novel was FALCON. It's just that the
seams are so expertly concealed that it's not nearly as clear
as in, say, THE DAIN CURSE.
I like the Op novels despite their episodic nature. And each,
in their way, have had almost as great an influence on the
hard-boiled PI genre as FALCON. HARVEST was the first and
best of the "town-tamer" PI novels, initiating a plot that is
almost as common in PI fiction as the "detective avenges his
murdered partner," "legendary historical object as
Macguffin," or "detective falls in love with woman who turns
out to be a murdereress" plots from FALCON. Halliday's A
TASTE FOR VIOLENCE, Parker's PALE KINGS & PRINCES,
Prather's THE SWEET RIDE, and Spillane's THE TWISTED THING
all show the influence of HARVEST.
THE DAIN CURSE, with the Op trying to untangle the
long-buried secrets of a seriously disfuntional family, of
course prefigures the work of Macdonald and so many other
tough PI's who made family therapy their particular
specialty.
> Chandler, even in his stories was cool
and
> methodical, working from a premise to a
solution.
>
> Hammett was just bang, bang, shoot 'em up, with
a
> cozy like gimick that solved all the
problems.
Now there I have to seriously disagree with you. Reasonable
arguments can be made over whose style was superior, but
Hammett was clearly far better at plot construction, both in
short stories and in novels, than Chandler. As for the "cozy"
gimmick that solved everything, I take that to mean that the
Op and Spade actually deduced solutions from the available
clues, and I don't see that as a weakness.
> Reading "Red Harvest" was like a bumpy ride on
a
> safari--sound and fury signifying nothing
except
> a lot of dead things, in Hammett's case,
people.
I'd say more like a bumpy ride on a rollercoaster, and again,
I don't see that as a weakness, but as a strength.
JIM DOHERTY
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