Unearthing Solomon's Vineyard

Jonathan Latimer is sadly forgotten today. There was a time when his screwball private eye series featuring the rarely sober Bill Crane were bestsellers and even made the transition to the silver screen in the late 1930s courtesy of Universal Pictures in a fun trio of B-movies. Latimer was a respected Hollywood screenwriter of the 1940s who crossed over to television from the 1950s through the early 1970s writing for such series as Perry Mason and Columbo. He also achieved instant notoriety as the author of the hardboiled detective novel, Solomon’s Vineyard which was banned almost upon publication in 1941 and remained unavailable in its original form in the U.S. for decades. The general consensus is with Solomon’s Vineyard, Latimer turned up the heat on hardboiled detective fiction and blurred the line between pulp and pornography. Most critics will claim that even today, readers would be hard-pressed to find a tougher or more shocking private eye novel. While public domain copies riddled with typos are easy to come by, I finally tracked down an affordable copy of an earlier edition and read the book for myself. I was shocked as well, not by the content, but to learn the book is clearly intended as yet another of Latimer’s laugh-out-loud farces despite its reputation. TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, PLEASE VISIT THE BLACK GATE.

HAMMETT UNDONE

No writer enjoys receiving a bad review of their work. Sometimes the reviewer pinpoints a genuine weakness and the writer benefits from constructive criticism. Many times, the writer is left feeling the reviewer was influenced by petty jealousy or an unspecified bias or just fond of exercising the power of the pen to tear others down and amuse their own regular readers. I don’t enjoy receiving bad reviews and I can’t say I enjoy writing them either. If I take the time to read a book, I want to walk away having felt it was time well-spent. I am not a fan of "Hammett Unwritten" by Gordon McAlpine writing as Owen Fitzstephen. McAlpine is a good writer. I do not have much in the way of constructive criticism to offer. I disliked his book because I am biased. I considered dropping the review entirely. After all, why make an enemy of the author or his friends? Nothing is worse than typing the title of your book in a search engine only to find some hack tearing you to shreds for no good reason. It was the recognition of my bias against the book that I felt justified in sharing why it rubbed me the wrong way. I revere the work of Dashiell Hammett. Beyond the books and short stories, I’ve read every Hammett biography and critical analysis I could find. I’ve read his published letters. I’ve read works of fiction involving Hammett as the principal character. Some, such as Joe Gores’ "Hammett" and Ace Atkins’ "Devil’s Garden," were brilliant works that rang true in their portrayal of Hammett the man and their evocation of Hammett’s writing style. Others, such as William F. Nolan’s "Black Mask Boys" series and McAlpine’s "Hammett Unwritten," left a bad taste solely because I wanted to love the books but walked away disappointed. TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, PLEASE VISIT THE BLACK GATE ON FRIDAY

Of Joe Gores, Ace Atkins and Wrestling with Hammett’s Legend

The recent passing of veteran mystery writer Joe Gores on the anniversary of Dashiell Hammett’s own death set me thinking about Hammett’s enduring legacy and continuing influence on detective fiction. Gores was born too late to fight for a place in the Holy Trinity of hardboiled detective fiction alongside Hammett’s immediate heirs Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, but the influence of the man who did so much to transform hardboiled fiction was no less strong in Gores’ work. While most commentators would agree that the DKA series was Gores’ crowning achievement, my own preference was for his 1975 novel, Hammett and his last book, 2009’s Spade & Archer.

Gores’ death led me to pick up Ace Atkins’ 2009 novel, Devil’s Garden. Atkins’ book is a semi-fictionalized account of Hammett’s real-life involvement as a Pinketeron operative gathering evidence for the scandalous Fatty Arbuckle trial in 1921. Thirty-five years earlier, Gores had likewise fictionalized Hammett’s Pinkerton days when he immersed himself in real and imagined political corruption in Roaring Twenties San Francisco in his novel, Hammett. When granted the honor of penning a prequel to The Maltese Falcon, Gores later drew heavily on Hammett’s own experiences as a Pinkerton to fill in Sam Spade’s back story.

Atkins has much in common with Gores in that both men are natural writers who can easily make one envious of their prodigious talent and, at times, frustrated that they aren’t quite as perfect as you wish them to be. No matter how many times I’ve read Hammett’s five novels and the posthumous collections of his short fiction, I never cease to be amazed at his perfection. Chandler’s remark that Hammett repeatedly wrote scenes that struck readers as wholly original is not mere hyperbole; it still rings true today despite the endless parodies and imitations. It is also what makes following in his footsteps so difficult.

Hammett sprang forth fully-formed like some real-life Athena. There was no evidence that Edgar Allan Poe’s seminal Dupin stories or Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries or even Carroll John Daly’s cartoonish exploits of Race Williams had the slightest influence on what Hammett wrote. He fictionalized his own experiences as a private investigator and idealized his Pinkerton boss and surrogate father figure as the nameless Continental Op, hero of most of Hammett’s short fiction and his first two novels, Red Harvest (1928) and The Dain Curse (1929). Hammett’s own self-image began to crystallize in the form of Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1930) and the three short stories that followed and as Ned Beaumont in his masterpiece of crime and politics, The Glass Key (1931) until finally emerging in a scathing self-parody as Nick Charles in The Thin Man (1934). Hammett lost his moral battle and his creative well ran dry, but he blazed out in a glory that still inspires readers to this day and keeps his fiction fresh and involving nearly a century after it was first published.

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SAM SPADE AND THE PURSUIT OF EMPTY DREAMS

SAM SPADE AND THE PURSUIT OF EMPTY DREAMS

Much of what has been written about Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon focuses on the novel as groundbreaking in its realistic portrayal of detective work. More in-depth literary studies tend to focus on the significance of Hammett’s shift in protagonist from the incorruptible and nameless Continental Op of his earlier work to the jaded self-portrait of the author as Sam Spade. In my view, this transition is primarily noteworthy in that Hammett’s protagonist changed from an idealized conception of the man he might have become had he remained a Pinkerton Operative (the Continental Op is based on Hammett’s boss during his stint with the Pinkerton Agency) to a more self-reflective portrayal of a man mired in moral conflict. Hammett’s own moral crisis would color his fiction from this point until he resolved his dilemma and settled into a life alternating his celebrity status with reclusiveness - a life whose one constant was Hammett’s complete lack of creative output for remaining 27 years.

Many have speculated why Hammett’s creativity dried up when he and his muse and mistress Lillian Hellman had settled comfortably into something approaching unwedded bliss as the Nick and Nora Charles of the real world. My own opinion has been that once freed of the conflict of whether or not to walk a path of integrity or give in to the encroaching corruption that constantly assailed his world, Hammett had nothing further to draw upon for inspiration. Resolution was tantamount to becoming a spent force and Hammett was finished as a writer. The fact that he realized this fact was inescapable lies at the heart of both The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key in their pursuit of empty dreams incapable of satisfying the characters whose lust is so great they are willing to die for or kill in their futile quests.

Hammett’s characters are marked as slaves of their appetites by their very names from Casper Gutman, the silver-tongued Fat Man of The Maltese Falcon to the murder victim who leant his moniker to The Thin Man. Hammett’s Fat Men and Thin Men are doomed by insatiable appetites for the empty objects of their desire. Whether starved or bloated, their hunger for that which will never grant them the sustenance they seek is unending and proves to be their undoing. The Maltese Falcon’s prized Black Bird with its mythological history is nothing but a worthless forgery beneath its shiny exterior. Those who have pursued the bird and have not forfeited their lives or liberty in its pursuit by the book’s conclusion do not learn from their folly, but simply continue to follow the next false trail.

What of Sam Spade and his moral dilemma? Surely, the detective protagonist is above such base temptations? While Spade is embroiled with those who seek the Black Bird, his own conflict is dealing with the murder of his partner, Miles Archer and dealing with Archer’s wife, Iva. Spade has been sleeping with her behind Archer’s back and she expects Sam to make an honest woman of her now that her husband is no longer around to stand between them. What most literary critics miss in focusing on the gritty realism of Hammett’s story is that Iva Archer represents Spade’s own Black Bird, his empty object of desire that threatens to be his undoing. The novel begins and ends with Sam and Iva. There is no mistake that the book’s opening description of Spade as a blond Satan (Hammett is describing himself at the time of the book’s writing) and the story concludes with Spade finally ready to face Iva and make the decision that will determine his fate for better or worse. That Hammett keeps Spade’s ultimate choice outside the story’s parameters is essential to a book built on moral dilemmas.

It is the role of the detective in mystery fiction to identify the root cause of the chaos that has set the story in motion and to restore order to an unjust world. The police in hardboiled fiction are stereotyped as corrupt or stupid (and frequently both), so the best hope for the few honest victims out there lies in the form of the private detective who eschews the organizational corruption of both City Hall and the Mob and chooses instead to live hand-to-mouth from one client to the next. This is how Hammett the union-buster for the Pinkerton Agency is the same Hammett who did a prison term for refusing to testify against his fellow Communists during the McCarthy witch hunts while still staying true to himself throughout his adult life.

Spade, like his creator, knows right from wrong every time unless it involves his libido. Miles Archer isn’t as smart or as trustworthy as Spade, but Spade still feels he has wronged his partner by sleeping with his wife and that makes him even more determined to see that Miles’ killer is brought to justice. When Archer’s murderer turns out to be Brigid O’Shaughnessy, the client Sam has been sleeping with, the central point that Sam’s libido is the source of the chaos in his world is brought home to him again and makes the book’s final scene where Sam faces Iva Archer all the more powerful as Spade has no choice but to accept that his own lust has made him a morally destructive force comparable to Casper Gutman, the Fat Man he so understandably despises.

As is the case with any true classic, this is but one aspect of what makes The Maltese Falcon a contender for the finest detective novel of all time and a book whose literary merit will make it the subject of discussion and a source of influence for decades to come. I remain a dedicated follower of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer stories, but like Hammett’s own subsequent Sam Spade stories (“A Man Called Spade,” “Too Many Have Lived,” and “They Can Only Hang You Once”) or Joe Gores’ recent prequel novel (Spade & Archer) or even John Huston’s classic 1941 film adaptation with Bogart, none of them are the Black Bird we’re seeking.