Oakley Hall essay

Scott Badger lupine at ncia.net
Mon Aug 28 19:27:11 CDT 2006


Don't know if this'll help, but....Chandler's comment is part of an essay 
that contrasts the parlor mysteries of writers like Agatha Christie, Doyle 
and Milne with the more 'realistic', street-wise, American mystery writers 
represented by Hammett. "Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that 
commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at 
hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish. He put 
these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in 
the language they customarily used for these purposes." Saying perhaps, that 
rather than elaborate puzzles, of no worldly sense, Hammett's realism 
carried with it all of the world, but no other meaning than that it simply 
is. "It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny 
that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the 
coin of what we call civilization."

On another note, has anyone seen the Tristram Shandy movie? I really enjoyed 
the parts taken from the book, but the movie-about-making-the-movie scenes, 
while, in a way, consistent with the book, were, I thought, completely 
wit-less in comparison. Made me wonder (as is asked several times in the 
movie), with so much material to choose from, why....? Could have been a 
great Monty Python production, me'thinks.

Scott


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Casseres" <david.casseres at gmail.com>
To: "Scott Badger" <lupine at ncia.net>
Cc: "Otto" <ottosell at googlemail.com>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 10:39 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Oakley Hall essay


> On 8/27/06, Scott Badger <lupine at ncia.net> wrote:
>> Chandler on Hammett:
>>
>> "[Hammett] had style, but his audience didn't know it, because it was in 
>> a
>> language not supposed to be capable of such refinements. [......] 
>> Hammett's
>> style at its worst was as formalized as a page of Marius the Epicurean; 
>> at
>> its best it could say almost anything. I believe this style, which does 
>> not
>> belong to Hamett or to anybody, but is the American language (and not 
>> even
>> exclusively that anymore), can say things he did not know how to say, or
>> feel the need of saying. In his hands it had no overtones, left no echo,
>> evoked no image beyond a distant hill."
>
> What in the everloving brown-eyed world does that mean?  It's not even
> pomo, for chrissakes.
> 





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