{"id":5681,"date":"2011-01-10T10:35:03","date_gmt":"2011-01-10T14:35:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=5681"},"modified":"2011-01-10T10:35:03","modified_gmt":"2011-01-10T14:35:03","slug":"dashiell-hammett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/dashiell-hammett\/","title":{"rendered":"Dashiell Hammett"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Fifty years ago today, Dashiell Hammett died. He was certainly my favorite hard-boiled American novelist, and someone whose core books I like to reread every few years. I remember fierce discussions about his work in my younger days, for example in the early seventies with Fee Dawson<\/strong> at the bar at Max\u2019s Kansas City around notions of and differences between\u00a0 factual realism and psychological realism. A few years later other long discussions with Eric Mottram<\/strong>, for whom Hammett was nearly, if not quite, as important an American writer as William Faulkner, mainly around the\u00a0 progressive politics of the novelist. Unhappily, my detective novels are still in boxes in the U-Haul storage in Albany, or I would have wasted a couple hours today rereading pages from Red Harvest <\/strong>or from The Glass Key<\/strong>. I\u2019ll confess to be partial to Sam Spade, & always thought Nick & Nora a bit fay. Check out this fan\u2019s website<\/a>, and here\u2019s a bit from the Wiki article<\/a> on Dash:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2026Hammett turned to drinking, advertising, and, eventually, writing. His work at the detective agency provided him the inspiration for his writings.[9]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Known for his authenticity and realism, Hammett drew on his experiences as a Pinkerton<\/a> operative. As Hammett said: \u201cAll my characters were based on people I\u2019ve known personally, or known about.\u201d <\/sup>Raymond Chandler<\/a>, the writer often considered Hammett\u2019s successor, summarized his accomplishments:<\/p>\n

\u201cHammett was the ace performer\u2026 He is said to have lacked heart; yet the story he himself thought the most of [The Glass Key<\/a><\/em>] is the record of a man\u2019s devotion to a friend. He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty years ago today, Dashiell Hammett died. He was certainly my favorite hard-boiled American novelist, and someone whose core books I like to reread every few years. I remember fierce discussions about his work...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[918],"class_list":["post-5681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose","tag-dashiell-hammett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5681"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5687,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5681\/revisions\/5687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}