Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett - Hardcover

Hammett, Dashiell; Layman, Richard; Marshall, Josephine Hammett

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582430810 ISBN 13: 9781582430812

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2001

Synopsis

A collection of letters--to friends, lovers, family, and colleagues--by the legendary crime writer reveals the man behind the author as he discusses the craft of writing, his personal life, and his literary creations, Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles. 20,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) is the author of Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, and The Thin Man. Richard Layman is the author of Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett and the vice president of Bruccoli Clark Layman, a publisher of reference works in literature. Julie M. Rivett is the granddaughter of Dashiell Hammett, and Josephine Hammett Marshall his daughter.

Reviews

Biographer Layman (Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett) and Rivett, Hammett's granddaughter, offer a deeply involving anthology of the voluminous correspondence of Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), culled from more than 1,000 surviving letters. The result (aided immensely by detailed annotation and crisp biographical sketches) narrates Hammett's literary success and the conflicted, enigmatic life he led following publication of The Thin Man (1934), his final novel. The letters illuminate the amazing texture of Hammett's life (from his well-paid Hollywood years to the joyful patriotism of his WWII service to his searing decline due to Red baiting) and writing (from prolific pulp contributor to innovator of popular, violent novels like Red Harvest). They also limn his unusual and intense personal relationships, particularly with the women in his life his estranged wife, longtime lover Lillian Hellman and his daughters and the warmth and chivalry concealed within an oblique persona. While Hammett was not given to detailed meditation on his fictive innovations, his astute reportage of his era's literary gossip, his street-level life and his moral complexities (which, touchingly, he discussed via correspondence with his young daughter Josephine, who writes the introduction) make up for this deficit. Although this collection is richly satisfying, reading it is a bittersweet, saddening experience. One senses that Hammett was knocked about in his lifetime and undervalued, both as a writer and for his dogged pursuit of social justice. Layman and company offer an important touchstone of literary history and a book that will remain a solid backlist title for mystery devotees. Illus. not seen by PW.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Dashiell Hammett, who gave the world five groundbreaking mysteries (Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, and The Thin Man) in five years, also gave his family, lovers, and colleagues robust and revealing letters, chronicling his personal and writing life, from the end of World War I to just weeks before his death. The floodgates of Hammett's correspondence were opened in 1996, when Hammett's daughter (who writes a wonderful introduction of personal reminiscences about her enigmatic father) gave permission for more than 1,000 of Hammett's letters to be reprinted in full. Many of these are newly discovered (one treasure trove of love letters to Hammett's wife was found in a garage in Southern California). The letters are organized, with insightful introductions, into sections spanning roughly 10 years, ranging from Hammett's work as a Pinkerton detective to his boozy Hollywood heyday and his collapse. His voice emerges as funny, truthful, jaunty in the midst of troubles. Reading his letter submitting The Maltese Falcon for approval--"Herewith, an action-detective novel for your consideration"--raises goosebumps, as does his last letter to playwright Lillian Hellmann, Thanksgiving, 1960, in which he celebrates their 30-year relationship: "The love that started on that day was greater than all love anywhere, anytime, and all poetry cannot include it." Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

The more than 1000 lively, personal letters selected here, many hitherto unpublished, are addressed primarily to Hammett's wife; their two daughters; fellow writer Lillian Hellman, with whom he carried on a 30-odd-year liaison; and the classic crime writer's various loves. To these people, Hammett reveals himself to be, between 1927 and 1935, the hard-working inventor of both hard-boiled detective Sam Spade and delightful inebriate Nick Charles. During the war years, he comes across as a routine-loving member of the Signal Corps in the Aleutians; finally, for the last 15 years of his life, he is the tireless Communist sympathizer whose activities earn him a six-month jail sentence that wrecks his health beyond repair. Despite infrequent assertions that the mystery novel, in the right hands, might become "literature," these letters are striking for their unflagging sense that, to Hammett, writing was simply a trade to pay the bar bills and keep his little family afloat. His ebullient persona, even when he was sick and incarcerated, and his preoccupation with the homely details of living strongly suggest that behind Hammett's many letters hides a man who himself remains a mystery. Highly recommended for all libraries with extensive Hammett collections. Charles C. Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, MO
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1582430810
• ISBN 13: 9781582430812
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 672
• Editor: Rivett Julie