If I Had A Hammett by Gabriel Valjan

 

Which author(s) (living or dead) would you like to meet one-on-one to talk about the writing craft? What is it about their writing or life that most interests you?

 

No disrespect intended, but I dislike talks on craft. I can tell you what I was thinking when I wrote X or Y, why I did this or that, but, ultimately, I can’t describe how I write. As for my answer to this question, it would have to be Dashiell Hammett, but not for the obvious reasons.

 

I would like to discuss with him Poetry, Humor, and Cancel Culture.

 

POETRY

 

Like me (and most writers) Dash read broadly, but our first love was verse. We were quick to learn Poetry doesn’t pay. I should note that both Hammett and Raymond Chandler adored poetry, but they each took the poetic use of language in different directions. Chandler’s prose is more pyrotechnic and replete with similes and metaphors, and lyrical turns of phrase. Hammett’s style is stark, shaped by the patois heard on the street. Speech in Hammett’s work moves forward and with menace. In Marlowe’s world, speech stops, contemplates the scene and provides commentary. Chandler’s dialogue is witty at best, snark at its worst.

 

Herein is the fundamental difference between Dash and Ray. For all that Spade says, you ‘see’ how he thinks but never how he ‘feels’ about the world or the people in it. His slice of the hard-boiled perspective borders on anonymity, and the ‘Just the facts’ mentality annihilates emotions. The Op and Spade are perhaps realistic and predatory, but it’s always the job and nothing more. Marlowe is idealistic, philosophical, romantic, and the opposite of the Op and Spade. He is sentimental.

 

HUMOR

 

Hammett wrote one Thin Man novel that inspired six movies. Hollywood’s penchant for milking sequels until the cow runs dry soured Hammett. He would call Nick and Nora “insufferably smug.” Read his Thin Man and watch the first movie to see what Hollywood could not put on the screen. The Thin Man was banned in Boston and Canada because Nora Charles asked Nick, “Tell me something, Nick. Tell me the truth: when you were wrestling with Mimi, didn’t you have an erection?” [end of Chapter 25].

 

Hammett’s prose and setup in The Thin Man are risqué, sexy, and funny. It’s a social comedy, a popular film genre in the 30’s, but it’s really a mishmash of war between the sexes and a murder-mystery, with all the frenetic pacing Hammett packed into his crime novels.

 

Writing comedy is harder than you think. I’ll tackle this topic on April 19 on Career Authors.

 

POLITICS

 

We call it Cancel Culture today, but its name yesterday was being Blacklisted. Details, however, matter. Hammett didn’t say or do anything offensive in public. He simply refused to kowtow to Joe McCarthy’s committee. Dash invoked his right not to incriminate himself. Hollywood celebs fast to cite the privileges afforded to them under the First and Fifth Amendments quickly relented. Dash stood his ground. Unlike Arthur Miller who also wouldn’t name names, Dash paid the price. He would serve five months in jail for contempt of court and be humiliated while incarcerated: assigned to clean toilets. He never complained.

 

Once freed, the final insult came at him like twins: first, the US government barred publishers from paying him royalties; and second, the IRS ordered him to pay $100k in back taxes. Asked to pay fines with money he didn’t have or access to, he was forced into poverty. Always in frail health throughout his life due to TB and other illness—he drank to combat chronic pain, though he had quit Drink in 1948. Dash, like most men of his generation, smoked. Lung cancer claimed him in 1961. A veteran of both world wars, the battle with Joe McCarthy had left him a pariah and dependent on the largess of Lillian Hellman for the last decade of his life. If he were still here, how I would’ve loved to hear his take on Cancel Culture and the current political landscape. Literary talent and hedonism and poor decisions are not new in the literary pantheon. Dashiell Samuel Hammett is more than that. He is a reaction to the rotund and baroque prose of the nineteenth century. He is also a cautionary tale of governmental overreach and a victim of the malignant virus in American politics and society: conformity.