Hammett and Chandler

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

Adam writes:
" Hammett is, as far as I can tell, pretty much what he's
advertised as. . . . Chandler's books
are amazingly overwritten, and it's quite intentional that Marlowe went to
college before becoming a private investigator.  Just recall the
conversations on Eliot with the chauffeur in _The Big Sleep_.  Chandler has
a self-conscious irony about him that Hammett, as I recall (I've read
Chandler much more recently), lacks."
 
 
Chandler is certainly a more self-conscious writer, but it's easy to underestimate
Hammett, who depends much more on dramatic irony than verbal.  Spade in THE
MALTESE FALCON and in some short stories is more hard-boiled than Marlowe
but becomes a catylyst that provokes the very actions that he winds up
investigating--and never s
"solves" the case by ratiocination (to use Poe's term) but by his lived
experience--a point Chandler freely used himself.
 
Don't forget that RED HARVEST inspired Kurosawa's YOJIMBO (and, in turn,
A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS and LAST MAN STANDING)!
 
Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)