Writing about the "Thin Man" novel and films made me think about Dashiel Hammett again, particularly the urge that some American commentators have to "clear his name", fallout from the McCarthy era accusation that he was a Communist. When called to appear in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee he refused to co-operate. Since then a number of crime writers, notably the late, great Robert B. Parker, have seemed a bit embarrassed by the fact that Hammett's political affiliation isn't clear. (Which in turn reminds me that there is a very good article on Hammett's Pragmatism at the always excellent "Thrilling Detective" site.)
Much as I love a great many things about America the fact that words like "liberal" and the politics of the Left are often met with such vitriol leaves me feeling uneasy. When it comes to writing then an author should be judged on their work. Knowing about their politics shouldn't be a factor.
(Digression time again : I once had to struggle to finish a private eye novel by an author whose name escapes me. The first person narrator, an ex-cop turned security guard / P.I., kept coming out with the most amazingly right wing discourses. I almost flung the book at the nearest wall when he discovers that a towel has been used as a weapon in a case of murder by strangulation. At this point the P.I. hero goes off on a diatribe about gun control and how the Liberals are wrong: guns don't kill people. people kill people.
"Anything can be used as to take a life !", he declaims.
Well, "D'uh! Glad you told me that,Pal, but the crux of the matter is when is someone ever going to go postal in a mall or a high school while potential victims run away screaming: "Oh, no! He's got a beach towel!"?
The guy must have been a helluva storyteller because I actually went on to finish that book.)
To me, Hammett is one of the greatest American crime novelists of the 20th. century. Full stop. That's all I need to know. Maybe that's part of growing up in Glasgow from the mid '50s to the early '70s. This is a city where one of your uncles could take you to see a John Wayne film in the afternoon while another took you along to see the Red Army Choir on tour in the evening. Seamless and without any dichotomy, you could take in the entertainment without having the faintest clue about any underlying political philosophy.
Part of the appeal of the classic private eye, at least for me, is the underlying humour that goes along with their cynicism and worldweariness. In Hammett's writing humour is there as an undercurrent, in spades (if you'll pardon the pun,Sam.). But Hammett's best joke ever is this one:
In Football, or Soccer as Americans call it, one of the best tricks a skillful player can perform is to slip the ball through the legs of an opposing defender and carry on with their run. This is known as a "nutmeg". Hammett manages the literary equivalent of this feat twice in "The Maltese Falcon".
In the days when Hammett was testing the limits of the field editors were alert to any sign of sexual innuendo in a writer's work. At one point the young ,would-be tough guy working for Caspar Gutman, better known as the Fat Man, is referred to by Sam Spade as a cheap "gunsel". Today the word is synonymous with a hired gunman simply because Hammett slipped it past the censor's red pencil. It's actually a Yiddish word meaning a "gosling" or young goose. Legend has it that it was also used as an underworld term and among hoboes to refer to a "kept man" who was "looked after" by an older partner. As a former Pinkerton man Hammett would certainly have known this as he nutmegged the editor.
He works the trick again later in the book when Spade, with surprising erudition, calls the same charcter Gutman's "catamite". Check that out in any dictionary and the meaning is unambiguous. It means exactly what "gunsel" implies; it just doesn't sound as dirty.
Even if he wasn't a giant among crime writers Hammett gets a lot of smartie points for taking the time to slip these "naughty" words past the censor. It marks him as a man with a playful sense of humour with an eye for the ridiculous. I dare you not to smile when you next read a novel or see a film where some supposed hard-case is referred to as a gunsel........
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