CONVERSATIONS
(CwHD) is a weblog about words and language and other nonsense. CwHD
began May 1, 2017. Besides thematic essays, the site provides a
vehicle for sharing my own words and language. In July, 2017, I
opened The Bookstore. This page provides an overview of my published
work. Print and ebook copies are available through my publishing
website (link in sidebar):
majikwoids
Previously,
I listed the six most influential author's of detective stories. This
week's post continues the biographies of those writers.
Dashiell
Hammett
(1894
- 1961)
Samuel
Dashiell Hammett was born near Baltimore, Maryland, on May 27,1894.
His family was plagued with poverty. At 14 he left school and began
working to help support the household. At 18 he wrangled a job with
Pinkerton's Detective Agency. Eventually, he was sent to Montana to
help mine owners suppress striking workers. He found his sympathies
were with the miners. He had served briefly in the ambulance corps
during the first world war, but was discharged due to tuberculosis.
This disease and his childhood poverty would haunt the remainder of
his life.
He
wrote only four novels, the last in 1936. The Glass Key
was considered his best work, though The Maltese Falcon and
The Thin Man were more
successful commercially. Hollywood purchased the rights to both of
the latter novels, and Hammett moved to Los Angeles to work on the
scripts.
The
remainder of his life until his death in 1961 was a matter of
drunkenness, bouts of tuberculosis, irresponsibility, some serious
efforts to effect political change, and a spell in prison for his
support of left wing and communist organizations. He contributed to
the plays of his partner Lillian Hellman, did some movie and radio
work, but no more books were forthcoming despite a consistent nagging
from his publishers.
Sam
Spade, the main character in The Maltese Falcon,
would serve as the model for the hard boiled detective for decades to
come. Hammett's journalistic style also became de rigueur. The
protagonist in The Thin Man
became associated autobiographically with Hammett himself.
Ironically, the title referred to the murdered victim in the novel,
not Nick Charles, the detective; but a series of films based on the
novel fixed the notion that the thin man was the detective. The
lifestyle of Nick and Nora Charles was taken wholesale from the
lifestyle of Hammett and playwright Lillian Hellman.
In
the end, Hammett came to regret his creation of Sam Spade. Writers of
various abilities were churning out copy after copy. Few were as
compelling as the original.
