#dashell Hammett

[felicereviews]

The Thin Man (1934)

On February 10 TCM is having a Best Movie Dog competition between Lassie and the dog from The Thin Man, Asta,  I have no interest in Lassie so Asta wins, hands down.

But also The Thin Man is a hilarious movie and I cannot believe I had never seen it before.  

In the movie, a nice but grumpy scientist wants to give his daughter a wedding present but finds out his wife has stolen it - $50,000 in bonds.  His wife won’t give it back because she only has half left - she gave the other half to someone.

The scientist/husband goes after the accomplice and disappears.  That’s where Nick Charles, played by William Powell comes in.  He and his wife Nora banter about and she encourages him to take the case although he’d rather not.  Luckily Nora, played by Myrna Loy, has come into an inheritance and Nick hasn’t been working as a detective.  He’s been throwing parties and traveling and drinking and entertaining his wife.  It was not easy for him to give that up.

The Thin Man was nominated for 4 Oscars.  It didn’t win, comedies seldom do,  it lost all of its Oscars to It Happened One Night, which is a comedy.  My my.

A

[writergeekrhw]

My favourite novel is Catch-22, and my favourite (non-DS9 show) is M*A*S*H.

Would love to hear your favourites, as you're hands-down one of my favourite tv writers.

Those are both on my lists. I have a lot of trouble picking just one thing as my favorite, but five things worth reading/watching off the top of my head:

READ:

"Red Harvest" - Dashell Hammett

"A Wizard of Earthsea" - Ursula K. LeGuin

"Heart of Darkness" - Joseph Conrad

"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" - Robert Heinlein

"A Canticle for Leibowitz" - Walter M. Miller, Jr.

WATCH:

"The Wire" (the series not the DS9 ep)

"The Rockford Files"

"Breaking Bad"

"The Good Place"

"Episodes"

HONORABLE MENTION - READ AND WATCH:

"Closely Watched Trains" - Bohumil Hrabal

[howardhawkshollywoodannex]

Bebe Daniels and Ricardo Cortez had a pre-code relationship in the original version of The Maltese Falcon (1931) that was more in keeping with Dashell Hammett's 1930 novel. It was first published in Black Mask Magazine in serial form in 1929.

[berchtold]

Weekend Recipe: Pasta Noir

Weekend Recipe: Pasta Noir

DASHELL HAMMETT’S PASTA NOIR

“Thinking’s a dizzy business.” The Dain Curse

Ingredients:

1 egg yolk

1 egg

200 grams of flour

Salt and pepper

1 cuttlefish ink sack

4-6 ripe tomatoes

Parsley

Dry Vermouth

8 large shrimp

1 hot pepper

Serves 2 It had rained 4 straight days in the city. On Monday it had rained miniature Tabbies and Chihuahuas, on Tuesday Siamese and Boxers, by Wednesday Pumas and Artic…

[gaufry]

It is what it is

[cjsugarbaker]

I found it!!!!! I've wanted to see this plaque for 16 years.

[marginalgloss]

the noseless one

As far as I can tell from his bibliography, Our Lady of Darkness was Fritz Leiber’s last complete novel. It was published in 1977, a relatively late work for an enormously prolific author who had been putting out novellas and short stories since the early 1940s. The back cover of my paperback edition (dated 1978) describes it as ‘Leiber’s first new SF novel in years’, which might have been true as a promotional blurb, but it’s a fairly generous interpretation of that genre. Anyone picking this up expecting conventional science fiction would be fairly disappointed. 

The story follows Franz Westen, a writer living in San Francisco who earns a living writing cheap novelisations for a supernatural TV series. He is coming out of a period of depression and alcoholism following the death of his wife. He lives alone in his apartment block, though he has a handful of friends for company. And he has his books: instead of a partner, he shares one side of his bed with a heap of volumes that has, over time, come to vaguely resemble the figure of a woman. And then one day, looking out from his window over Corona Heights, he sees something strange in the distant parkland that catches his eye.

This novel is a paperchase of sorts. It is teeming with fictional references; it is perhaps one of the earliest books I’ve read which ties together a broad range of influences from horror and science fiction under a single theme, what is now sometimes called ‘weird fiction’. H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith are here, but there’s also cameo appearances from Jack London and Dashell Hammett. The title is taken from Thomas De Quincy; he’s in there too. Even M. R. James and Arthur Machen warrant mentions, the latter with reference to his membership of the notorious Order of the Golden Dawn. 

Mysticism is woven throughout the story, often in a way which leaves threads hanging. The literary aspects interconnect with the strange book Westen has found in a charity shop — a text on something called ‘Megapolisomancy’ which purports to be a guide to the strange geometries and secret meanings buried in the layouts of great cities — and, accompanying it, a handwritten diary by someone who may or may not have been the author of the same thing. All of this is taken extremely seriously; there are passages here which seem to splice Frankfurt School theory with the esotericism of Edwardian modernism. 

It should be noted that similarities between Franz Westen and Fritz Leiber are almost certainly intentional. Leiber’s own wife died, and he too suffered from a drinking problem — and in fact, readers have since shown that he lived in an apartment which is almost certainly identical to the one occupied by Westen. The most memorable feeling this book engenders is of wandering around San Francisco in a sort of haunted daze. The city is beautifully recalled in an amount of detail which often serves little inherent purpose relative to the plot. It’s like certain moments in Vertigo, or in Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Inherent Vice, where the camera seems to drift along according to a dreamy life of its own.  

When it comes, the apparition of the creature itself — the ‘paramental’ — is not entirely convincing, nor is it especially threatening. In part this is because we’re not given any real reason to feel it is dangerous. It never takes away from anything Franz holds dear. (Perhaps I had it also spoiled to some extent with the grotesque illustration on the front of my edition.) The writing is good in parts, but not great: it has a hurried, slapdash quality, one scene sometimes moving to the next a little too quickly. The ending is also a little ridiculous, with the author attempting to codify the logic of what happened in a smattering of brief disclaimers. The book is at its best when it allows itself to digress eccentrically over the odds and ends of Westen’s far-ranging literary knowledge.

I should mention that the most haunting thing in the whole novel is in Leiber’s evocation of his own apartment building. There are certain repeated images which seem to have a resonance, even though they bear no direct relation to the story. There is an insistent concern with something creeping in over the transom above his front door. He is preoccupied with windows which have been painted black, by the complex workings of the elevator, by the abandoned broom closets left over from when the place used to be a hotel. And in particular the little ports in the skirting boards for a centralised vacuum system somewhere in the basement. There’s something there which is reminiscent of the secret postal service in The Crying of Lot 49, or of the electric sockets in the third season of Twin Peaks: a hidden network, almost forgotten, but not entirely abandoned. 

[francisthegreat]

Hey! For the books ask: 3, 23, 33, and 50! xx

Hi, nonny! Thank you so much for asking these questions, you are so lovely!

Do you read books just because you saw them on tumblr??

I haven’t done such a thing yet, but that doesn’t mean I won’t! My job leads me to a lot of books. A LOT. Of books. But if Tumblr has suggestions for me - come at me y'all

How did you get into reading??

Since I was a little kid I’ve been reading. I started with the kiddo classics - Harry Potter, a Wrinkle in Time, stuff like that - and then had a period in middle school where I thought it wasn’t “cool” to read. And then in high school I got introduced to comics like Watchmen and Maus and realized graphic novels are AMAZING, then I found the Beat Generation, grew out of the Beat Generation when I realized they’re mostly super misogynistic and racist, found a lot of poets in college through friends (Anne Carson, Charles Simic, Li-Young Lee, Etc) and the rest is history.

How do you organise your shelves??

Alphabetically by authors last name. I have six very tall bookcases of fiction and nonfiction in my library and one bookcase of poetry, in a separate room. Also alphabetical by author.

Do you read classics?? If so, what’s your favourite??

Depends on what you mean! If you mean like ~The Classics, then yes! I love Euripides and Sophocles! And depending on the translator, Heraclitus and Aristotle.

If you mean ~~classic literature, then yes! But not as much. I’ve read a bunch but I’m not a huge fan. Emily Bronte is lovely, as is Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gillman. I like some Jane Austen. But I really start loving books from about the time of the Harlem Renaissance - Langston Hughes is my BOY. I LOVE Faulkner. I love Zora Neale Hurston. Huxley and Orwell. Dashell Hammett and Raymond Carver. Idk if you count that stuff as classics time period-wise, but I think they all count in the wider realm of classics in lit.

[biggoonie]

DISPLACED PERSONS OGN (RES)

story DEREK McCULLOCH

art & cover RANTZ A. HOSELEY

FROM THE WRITER OF THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED STAGGER LEE - NOMINATED FOR BOTH EISNER AND EAGLE AWARDS AND WINNER OF FOUR GLYPH AWARDS, INCLUDING BEST WRITER AND STORY OF THE YEAR!

In 1939, a detective in Dashell Hammett's San Francisco investigates the disappearance of an heiress while struggling to hold his family together. In 1969, twin brothers find themselves on opposite sides of the law as the Summer of Love gives way to the death of the Sixties. In 1999, a marriage explodes in violence under the strain of unsatisfied greed as the dot-com bubble reaches the bursting point.

Displaced Persons tells the story of a uniquely twisted and tragic family history spanning the most turbulent hundred years in the history of mankind: the twentieth century saw 99 wars, 16 famines, 19 pandemics, 14 genocides and one family lost hopelessly in time.

FEBRUARY 4 - 168 PAGES - FC - $19.99

[gogogogol]

via the monkey's paw

[iamaverystylishgirl]

The Thin Man

Nick & Nora Charles; solving crime for the fun of it all and spending quality time together between wise cracks and martinis.  Some might think this couple has a drinking problem with just how often a drink is mentioned or in hand.  Although Nick is reluctant to include his wife in the solving the case, he cannot do without her insight and cleverness.  He repeatedly tries to shield and protect her from potentially dangerous situations by locking her in a closet where it is safe or sending her on some random errand in search of a lead in the case.  All this running around ads to the hilarity of scenes. 

Dashell Hammett's book The Thin Man (1934) has been a favourite of mine for a long time.  Hammett's book, although never having had a sequel, spread into a series of films throughout many years. Now Johnny Depp will be cast at the lovable Nick Charles in the 2011 film version. I hope it will live up to expectations.