John,
Re your comments below:
> Surely the relevance thing is essentially the
old
> Hammett/Chandler divide.
> That's to say that Hammett's crimes occur in
a
> political world in a context
> of organised corruption - and ultimately offer
at
> least an implicit critique
> of American/western/capitalist society,
while
> Chandler locates corruption
> in individuals and is much less interested
in
> political context.
I think your premise is flawed.
I don't think Hammett is more politically oriented or more
concerned with implicit criticism of the status quo than
Chandler.
In fact, I think a lot of the political baggage that
Hammett's work has been saddled withis retroactively imposed
on the basis of the political stands he took later in life,
after he'd given up writing fiction.
In fact, it could be argued that his growing political
consciousness-raising was what led to his inability to write,
since he began to see what he had written as irrelevant
precisely BECAUSE there was no political component.
At the same time, Chandler comments, at least as much as
Hammett, and often more overtly (though perhaps not as well,
but that's in the eye of the beholder), one societal
corruption in stories like "Spanish Blood" and "Finger Man"
and novels like FAREWELL, MY LOVELY and THE HIGH
WINDOW.
Ultimately, however, what they were both after was what you
dismiss as nothing more than "the good story well
told."
JIM DOHERTY
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