Saturday, April 03, 2004
Dashiell Hammett's "The Dain Curse"
Having recently read too many modern 500-page mysteries that are
padded out with kinky sex, bloodthirsty insanity, and protagonists
crippled by angst, I found it a pleasure to pick up "The Dain Curse"
again (the other four Hammett novels will follow in quick
order). 160 pages or so of beautifully contrived workmanship. If
you'll allow the analogy, it is like the old mechanical Timex watch I
had for twenty years as compared with my new answering machine. The
watch that never failed vanished into the hands of a mugger many years
ago -- one does not sentimentally hang onto something like that when a
knife is being held to your throat by a drug-addicted kid who'd kill
for a Big Mac hamburger. The answering machine, bought to replace the
one that recently died of old age at the age of five, which is about
the life expectancy of modern miracle machinery, is about the size of a
paperback book and has one button that does all (meaning it does
nothing any reasonable person would expect it to do -- the Timex, of
course, only needed to be wound, and adjusted when the clocks changed
for summer time); I've persuaded it at least to answer messages, but
at the expense of having a working telephone that can be used when the
machine is on: compromise deal with it now is to disconnect it when
I'm home, put it on when I go out, which means unplugging and
replugging all the different connection wires each time, now done with
ingenious if sloppy operational skill, making sure all those carefully
set out wires are covered up to keep the cats from playing with them.
Is that business about 'technology' a pointless diversion? No, I don't
think so. "The Dain Curse" is both thriller and mystery, and
hard-boiled of course. The difference between hard-boiled and
traditional detection becomes a moot point when dealing with great
writers like Hammett and Chandler who purposely denigrated 'cosiness'.
You will find the same literary elements and narrative skills in both
approaches to mystery writing when they are well done -- and quite a
lot of overlap when it comes to fair clueing and a reasonable level of
erudition. But what I most admire about Hammett is the stripped-down
and straightforward narrative, spiced with excellent dialogue of a
terse and often witty sort. Yes, the plot might be absurd, as is
"Silence of the Lambs" as a modern example, yet works not by
overwhelming the attention span by long passages of obfuscation and
psychology but by punching and jabbing like Ali in his heydey. The
'rope-a-dope' style of detection. Within the first hundred pages you
get a full murder mystery, solved with improbable but perfect logic by
the Continental Op (whether modern police methodology would allow a
private eye to walk all over procedure these days the way he did is a
matter of societal and cultural changes); then follows the aftermath,
two more murder mysteries involving the poor 'cursed' Dain girl, all tied together
by the overriding plot involving a superbly rendered villain, with excellent
provision of clues. The economy and complexity of this process is inspiring,
everything that needs to be said is said or presented, there's no
nonsense or unnecessary diversion. Characterization? Bah! Enough is
presented to make the people live, even poor old Leggett, the French
escapee from Devil's Island who has made a new career in San Francisco
as a research chemist, but is all too soon a murder victim. Gabrielle,
the morphine junkie with the elfin, foxlike face, who thinks she is cursed,
is a marvellous character.
A comment on customs: As we all know, sex, drug addiction, passion,
and greed have existed throughout human history. That they are not
presented graphically in this book is a matter of the editorial policy
of the time -- any adult reader can fill in between the lines. What is
more interesting for people with an interest in such things is the
'periodicity', for example, the Op having to take a ferry from San
Francisco to Berkeley because the Bay Bridge hadn't been built then
(let alone BART). Prohibition was in full swing and the casual flouting
of the law taken for granted. This adds appeal in the way the Philo Vance
books do for New York. Then of course there is always the behavior of the cops,
and also what would be considered blatant racism these days -- Civil
Libertarians would have a fit now. I know some NYC cops, and their
attitudes are really no different from what they would have been in
the 1920s; it's just the procedures and the way of expressing opinions
that have changed.
Appearance: The Continental Op is the anonymous precursor to Pronzini's
Nameless Detective. But little things leak out. Did you know, for
example, that he was only five-feet-six tall, but weighed in at 190
lbs.? Somehow one's first impression is that he's the Incredible Hulk, the way
he comes across (but doesn't behave, always being very polite), but he is
actually a generic version of George Smiley or Father Brown. Lorre, not Bogart.
This was intentional on Hammett's part, I think, before Sam Spade. He was just
trying to represent a 'real' detective of the Pinkerton sort, not Sherlock. I
have never met a private detective, but in reality they probably
resemble bank clerks. Seedy, but not excessively so, plodding but not
jerks by any means. Inconspicuous, but capable of displaying power
when needed. This would fit the times -- likely nowadays a PI would
more resemble a computer nerd with goggle glasses and a dirty T-shirt.
(Apart from the boss of the agency, of course, who would dress like a
professional basketball coach to impress the customers.)
padded out with kinky sex, bloodthirsty insanity, and protagonists
crippled by angst, I found it a pleasure to pick up "The Dain Curse"
again (the other four Hammett novels will follow in quick
order). 160 pages or so of beautifully contrived workmanship. If
you'll allow the analogy, it is like the old mechanical Timex watch I
had for twenty years as compared with my new answering machine. The
watch that never failed vanished into the hands of a mugger many years
ago -- one does not sentimentally hang onto something like that when a
knife is being held to your throat by a drug-addicted kid who'd kill
for a Big Mac hamburger. The answering machine, bought to replace the
one that recently died of old age at the age of five, which is about
the life expectancy of modern miracle machinery, is about the size of a
paperback book and has one button that does all (meaning it does
nothing any reasonable person would expect it to do -- the Timex, of
course, only needed to be wound, and adjusted when the clocks changed
for summer time); I've persuaded it at least to answer messages, but
at the expense of having a working telephone that can be used when the
machine is on: compromise deal with it now is to disconnect it when
I'm home, put it on when I go out, which means unplugging and
replugging all the different connection wires each time, now done with
ingenious if sloppy operational skill, making sure all those carefully
set out wires are covered up to keep the cats from playing with them.
Is that business about 'technology' a pointless diversion? No, I don't
think so. "The Dain Curse" is both thriller and mystery, and
hard-boiled of course. The difference between hard-boiled and
traditional detection becomes a moot point when dealing with great
writers like Hammett and Chandler who purposely denigrated 'cosiness'.
You will find the same literary elements and narrative skills in both
approaches to mystery writing when they are well done -- and quite a
lot of overlap when it comes to fair clueing and a reasonable level of
erudition. But what I most admire about Hammett is the stripped-down
and straightforward narrative, spiced with excellent dialogue of a
terse and often witty sort. Yes, the plot might be absurd, as is
"Silence of the Lambs" as a modern example, yet works not by
overwhelming the attention span by long passages of obfuscation and
psychology but by punching and jabbing like Ali in his heydey. The
'rope-a-dope' style of detection. Within the first hundred pages you
get a full murder mystery, solved with improbable but perfect logic by
the Continental Op (whether modern police methodology would allow a
private eye to walk all over procedure these days the way he did is a
matter of societal and cultural changes); then follows the aftermath,
two more murder mysteries involving the poor 'cursed' Dain girl, all tied together
by the overriding plot involving a superbly rendered villain, with excellent
provision of clues. The economy and complexity of this process is inspiring,
everything that needs to be said is said or presented, there's no
nonsense or unnecessary diversion. Characterization? Bah! Enough is
presented to make the people live, even poor old Leggett, the French
escapee from Devil's Island who has made a new career in San Francisco
as a research chemist, but is all too soon a murder victim. Gabrielle,
the morphine junkie with the elfin, foxlike face, who thinks she is cursed,
is a marvellous character.
A comment on customs: As we all know, sex, drug addiction, passion,
and greed have existed throughout human history. That they are not
presented graphically in this book is a matter of the editorial policy
of the time -- any adult reader can fill in between the lines. What is
more interesting for people with an interest in such things is the
'periodicity', for example, the Op having to take a ferry from San
Francisco to Berkeley because the Bay Bridge hadn't been built then
(let alone BART). Prohibition was in full swing and the casual flouting
of the law taken for granted. This adds appeal in the way the Philo Vance
books do for New York. Then of course there is always the behavior of the cops,
and also what would be considered blatant racism these days -- Civil
Libertarians would have a fit now. I know some NYC cops, and their
attitudes are really no different from what they would have been in
the 1920s; it's just the procedures and the way of expressing opinions
that have changed.
Appearance: The Continental Op is the anonymous precursor to Pronzini's
Nameless Detective. But little things leak out. Did you know, for
example, that he was only five-feet-six tall, but weighed in at 190
lbs.? Somehow one's first impression is that he's the Incredible Hulk, the way
he comes across (but doesn't behave, always being very polite), but he is
actually a generic version of George Smiley or Father Brown. Lorre, not Bogart.
This was intentional on Hammett's part, I think, before Sam Spade. He was just
trying to represent a 'real' detective of the Pinkerton sort, not Sherlock. I
have never met a private detective, but in reality they probably
resemble bank clerks. Seedy, but not excessively so, plodding but not
jerks by any means. Inconspicuous, but capable of displaying power
when needed. This would fit the times -- likely nowadays a PI would
more resemble a computer nerd with goggle glasses and a dirty T-shirt.
(Apart from the boss of the agency, of course, who would dress like a
professional basketball coach to impress the customers.)
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