{"id":1066,"date":"2013-04-18T07:58:56","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T14:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=1066"},"modified":"2013-04-18T07:58:56","modified_gmt":"2013-04-18T14:58:56","slug":"dashiell-hammett-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=1066","title":{"rendered":"Dashiell Hammett, revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

What could be better for a fan of hard-boiled detective stories than a novel about the daddy of them all: Dashiell Hammett? Bob Moyer writes that the book itself is a bit of a mystery.<\/p>\n

By Robert Moyer<\/p>\n

HAMMETT UNWRITTEN. By Owen Fitzstephen. Notes and Afterword by Gordon McAlpine. Seventh Street Books. 176 pages. $13.95.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Books about Dashiell Hammett, author of THE MALTESE FALCON and other hard-boiled classics, lionize, criticize, idolize, even demonize the man who created the genre. Few books do what this charming, tight little novel does \u2013 humanize him. The premise here is that this book by \u201cOwen Fitzstephen\u201d was found in Lillian Hellman\u2019s papers (she was Hammett\u2019s paramour for many years). According to Gordon McAlpine, Owen Fitzstephen was the name of a writer\/character in Hammett\u2019s The Dain Curse<\/em>, and, quite possibly a doppelganger <\/em>for Hammett. He suggests we take this book as (possibly) autobiographical.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s title is most fitting \u2013 most of Hammett is unwritten. He quit writing novels in the 1930s. According to the conceit of the book, he quit writing after he gave away the Maltese Falcon.<\/p>\n

The book opens as a terminally ill Hammett sets out in 1959 to burgle a bourgeois household on Long Island. It turns out to be the home of none other than the \u201creal\u201d Brigid O\u2019Shaughnessy, the femme fatale of The Maltese Falcon<\/em>. Hammett had modeled the novel after a real case involving the \u201cfalcon,\u201d and he had purportedly kept the \u201cfake\u201d falcon that was the object of everyone\u2019s desire both in the case and the book. Now, 27 bookless years later, he\u2019s come for the falcon.<\/p>\n

Before he gets it, however, we jump back all those years to the day he gives it to \u201cBrigid,\u201d at the height of his success. She confronts him with\u00a0the story that the \u201cfake\u201d falcon was the real one, that it contains a force that gives power to whoever has it. Hammett wants her out of his hotel room, out of his life. He gives it to her.<\/p>\n

And never writes another book. The convening narrative covers the poignant agony of massive writer\u2019s block, and a series of events that seem to verify \u201cBrigid\u2019s\u201d version of the falcon\u2019s value. A passel of period detail and dashing dialogue bring us through the years, right up to the end of Hammett\u2019s life, and of the book. With a couple of nice twists in the final confrontation back on Long Island, the conclusion leaves room for the reader to wonder: Was it true??<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What could be better for a fan of hard-boiled detective stories than a novel about the daddy of them all: Dashiell Hammett? Bob Moyer writes that the book itself is a bit of a mystery. By Robert Moyer HAMMETT UNWRITTEN. By Owen Fitzstephen. Notes and Afterword by Gordon McAlpine. Seventh Street Books. 176 pages. $13.95. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[422,423,27,424],"class_list":["post-1066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mysteries","tag-dashiell-hammett","tag-hard-boiled","tag-mystery","tag-owen-fitzstephen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1066"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1068,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions\/1068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}