2 posts tagged “dashiell hammett”

I stayed away from the computer last weekend and spent most of my extra time reading.  It's amazing how much I could get through when I wasn't checking my e-mail every twenty minutes.  I finished up Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, read McSweeney's #25 in its entirety, and then read the majority of Robert Coover's A Child Again (which I finished up today).  I usually do my "Stuff I've Been Reading" post at the end of the month, but I have horrible recall for the things I read, so I've decided to cover these three books while they're still fresh in my mind.

BOOKS READ:

Red Harvest--Dashiell Hammett

Red Harvest was the third and final novel in my Dashiell Hammett collection.  The other two, The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, were good, but I thought Red Harvest was much better than either of them.  Not only did the book add the phrase "blood-simple" into our lexicon and partially inspire the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing, but it also featured one of the highest body counts of any novel I've read.  In fact, one of the chapters was actually called "The Seventeenth Murder".  There were still a lot to go, too.

Red Harvest sees the Continental Op (we never find out his real name) arrive in Poisonville only to discover that the man he was supposed to meet has been murdered.  The detective quickly solves that crime, but he's annoyed by the locals in the process, so he decides to stick around and rid the town of its criminal element.  The criminal element in Poisonville consists of bootleggers, loan sharks, heads of industry, hookers, hitmen, thugs, bookies, crooked boxers, and just about the entire police force.  Why does the Continental Op stick around when he could just as easily head home?  For "fun", of course.  He's a bad-ass...and something of a criminal himself.  Before the book ends, he's breaking laws left and right, planning murders, playing sides against each other, and even taking hits of laudanum.

I understand that the Continental Op appeared in a number of Dashiell Hammett short stories.  I'm definitely going to look for a collection.  I'm not usually interested in the crime genre, but I've been very impressed with everything I've read by Hammett, and I think I'd enjoy the further adventures of his character. 

McSweeney's #25--Dave Eggers (editor)

I'd been putting off reading this collection because it featured a short story by David Hollander.  He wrote a novel called L.I.E., which was, by far, the worst book I have ever read in my life.  I hated it so much that I ripped it in half and threw it in the garbage when I finished.

Fortunately, David Hollander has improved a bit since 2000.  His story in McSweeney's #25 was actually one of the highlights.  That's not saying a whole lot, though, as this issue was something of a dud.  Like many recent issues of McSweeney's, it looked pretty (ahh, shiny gold and silver!), but didn't offer much worth reading.

In addition to the Hollander story, the only other highlights were "The Ape Man" by Alexander MacBride and "A Death in Custody" by Chloe Hooper.  The former was a brief look at the darker side of the Tarzan legend.  The latter was a non-fiction piece about Australian police brutality; it was an update to a story originally published in McSweeney's #21.

A Child Again--Robert Coover

A Child Again is a collection of short stories that update some of our most enduring fables and fairy tales.  In "Sir John Paper Returns to Honah-Lee", Robert Coover looks in on the characters from "Puff the Magic Dragon".  Jackie Paper, who long ago lost interest in his dragon friend, has grown up and become a famous orator.  Puff, on the other hand, spends most of his time setting towns on fire and eating virgins.  In "The Invisible Man", the titular hero gets sick of fighting crime and becomes a thief and a voyeur.  In "Alice in the Time of the Jabberwocky", Alice tires of Wonderland and grows old, fat, and grumpy.  I don't even want to think about the sordid activities Prince Charming engages in with his wife's little friends in "The Dead Queen".

My personal favorite was "The Return of the Dark Children".  That story revisits the town that refused to pay for the Pied Piper's rat-removal services.  Years have gone by and a new generation of children has replaced those lost to the Piper.  Everything is gradually getting back to normal...and then the rats return.

All of the stories mentioned above were inspired and a lot of fun to read.  There were a couple in the collection, however, that I could've done without.  I didn't know the story revisited in "Playing House", so I didn't get much out of that one.  There was also one called "Suburban Jigsaw" that didn't seem to fit in at all.  Still, as a whole, A Child Again was a great collection and one I'd recommend to anyone interested in new takes on some old childhood favorites.   

CURRENTLY READING:

• The Apocalypse Reader--Justin Taylor (editor)
• The Pillars of the Earth--Ken Follett (audiobook)

BOOKS BOUGHT:

• The Adventures of Augie March--Saul Bellow
• The Pillars of the Earth--Ken Follett (audiobook)
• If on a winter's night a traveler--Italo Calvino

BOOKS READ:

Tree of Smoke--Denis Johnson

If you know me in the real world, I've probably creeped you out by giving you a copy of Denis Johnson's Already Dead as a gift.  If not, just wait awhile.  I've bought every used copy I've ever found and you'll get yours soon enough.

Denis Johnson is one of my favorite contemporary authors.  I've read all seven of his novels, his short story collection, his book of travel writings, his collected poems, and four of his plays.  Tree of Smoke is Denis Johnson's Vietnam novel.  It follows the twisted adventures of CIA operative, William "Skip" Sands, the Houston brothers, and about 40 other characters who drift in and out of the sprawling 600+ page book.  I thought it was a tough read, but ultimately rewarding.  The main issue I had with it was the sheer number of characters.  Had I known there were going to be so many, I would've kept a list of them from the beginning to help avoid confusion. 

Tree of Smoke won the 2007 National Book Award. 

Zeroville--Steve Erickson 

Steve Erickson is another of my favorite authors.  The writing he deletes or shreds is better than the best published work of Chuck Palahniuk.  I've read all eight of his novels and can honestly say they're all amazing.  Zeroville is probably my favorite so far. 

Zeroville tells the story of Vikar, a man with the image of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor (from A Place in the Sun) tattooed on his shaven head.  He arrives in Los Angeles on the day of the Manson Family killings.  Over the course of the book, Vikar gets involved in the movie industry and ends up becoming a successful film editor.  His duties in the field eventually lead him on a search for the original version of the 1928 silent film, La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc.  (If you've never seen this movie, drop what you're doing and go find a copy.  It'll change the way you see.)

I would highly recommend this book to people interested in the history of cinema.  There are hundreds of movie references in the book and real-life actors and directors appear thinly-veiled throughout.  On top of that, it's just a fantastic book.   

The Invention of Everything Else--Samantha Hunt (audiobook)

I'd been having a lot of trouble reading since February.  Something happened to my brain and I lost my ability to read in the middle of Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else.  I finished the book, but struggled with the second half.  I switched over to graphic novels and started listening to the occasional audiobook.

One of the first audiobooks I picked up turned out to be The Invention of Everything Else itself.  I felt that I had to give the book a second try.  I'm glad I did.  It made a whole lot more sense the second time through. 

As mentioned in my original review, The Invention of Everything Else is about the last days of inventor Nikola Tesla.  He lives in the Hotel New Yorker and befriends a maid named Louisa.  They bond over a mutual love of pigeons.  Who doesn't love a book about an eccentric inventor, pigeons, and...time travel?

I can now publicly announce that there's nothing wrong with Samantha Hunt's book.  The problems I initially had were mine alone.  I would like to officially declare my adoration for everything Samantha Hunt has ever written (or ever will write) and my growing respect for the criminally neglected Nikola Tesla.  Now gather your book club friends and read this book!

Please.

The Thin Man--Dashiell Hammett

I found the Everyman's Library edition of this Dashiell Hammett collection for $2 at a Friends of the Library sale.  I don't even have much of an interest in Dashiell Hammett, but the book was too beautiful to leave on the shelf.  I couldn't resist buying it.  I'd already read The Maltese Falcon, so I started in on the second book in the collection, The Thin Man.

The Thin Man was originally published in 1934.  It was tremendously popular and eventually spawned a series of movies and television shows.  The book is famous for introducing the characters of Nick and Nora Charles, a married couple with a prodigious thirst for alcoholic beverages.  In between benders, they occasionally solve a crime or two.  The book seemed kind of quaint in places, but it was refreshing to read a mystery where the author didn't rely on the character's cell phone or internet access to solve the crime.  I also found it interesting to see how much of Robert B. Parker's writing style was copped from Hammett's. 

Drunk by Noon--Jennifer L. Knox

The owner and operator of the world's most disturbing poetry/digital arts blog recently told me about Jennifer L. Knox and suggested that I'd like her book, Drunk by Noon.  I'll read any book named after a Handsome Family song, so I ordered it from the library, walked up to get it a few days later, took it into my bathroom (the only place in my house approved for the reading of poetry--I always read poetry aloud and the bathroom has the best acoustics), opened the book up at random, and proceeded to read a poem called "Music to Watch Girls By in the Mysterious Perfect Infinitive".  The poem ends with the following line, a line so brilliant that the poem itself automatically leapt into fourth place on my All-Time Favorite Poems list (yes, I have a list):

How could I have known true love would come, briefly, on one leg, after 56 Jell-O shots in an upstate fraternity basement listening to Ted Nugent's "Wango Tango," so drunk I'd just fucked a pile of phonebooks?

I don't know anything about poetry, but I know what I like, and I like that a lot.  The complete published works of Emily Dickinson don't touch me half as much as that one demented line.  I will admit it; there were a couple duds in Drunk by Noon, but that's to be expected in any collection.  I'm happy to say that the vast majority of the poems in the book were very enjoyable.  This was the perfect poetry book for me.  Not only did it have the Handsome Family reference, but one of the poems was even dedicated to Denis Johnson himself.  I'm definitely going to need my own copy of Drunk by Noon.  I'll also keep my eyes open for the author's other book, A Gringo Like Me.  

CURRENTLY READING:

• Red Harvest--Dashiell Hammett
• The Pillars of the Earth--Ken Follett (audiobook)