RARA-AVIS: Re: Hammett and... Henry James

From: Dick Lochte ( dlochte@gmail.com)
Date: 25 Nov 2007


Patrick King wrote:

>Hemingway cited Hammett as an influence on his sparse,
>discriptive sentence structure. It may be in A
>MOVEABLE FEAST, but Hemingway's specific quote on
>Hammett is not hard to find.

To which Brian Thornton replied:

Show, don't tell, Patrick. If it's so easy to find, please show it to us. I've read A MOVEABLE FEAST twice and I don't recall any specific reference along those lines at all. I suppose it's possible that I missed it, but being the big Hammett fan that I am, I doubt I'd have missed a reference like that one.

The only reference I recall is in one of the last of the posthumously published Hemingways, probably True at First Light. The author and one of his wives are on safari and, at his request, she reads Hammett to him by firelight. I do not recall any specific comment on the quality of the work or its influence, but the assumption is that he liked it.

Dick Lochte



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