Today I celebrate the Samuel Dashiell Hammett's birthday. If EA Poe is regarded as the pioneer of the black gender With his detective Dupin, Hammett has been called the father. He worked in the famous detective agency Pinkerton in the beginning and later became a writer of novels, short stories and screenplays. It was also a great political activist.
He created such emblematic characters of the genre as Sam spade, but also to the detective couple Nick and Nora Charles or agent of the Continental. I review his figure and his work and highlight those most famous phrases from titles such as The Maltese Falcon o Red harvest.
Dashiell Hammett and his work
He began his literary career with some short novels, published since 1924 and collected under the title of The big hit. In 1929 he published Red harvest, a great success that culminated in The Maltese Falcon and continued with The slender man o The crystal key, Among others.
Hammett wrote works that laid the foundations for a new and then considered literary subgenre, the crime novel, specifically, that of the popular hard boiled. This is distinguished from the crime novel by presenting many scenarios in which components such as extreme violence or sex intervene.
Influences and style
Su influences is recognized in writers as Ernest Hemingway or Raymond Chandler, another great of his style. It is also that particular style that accompanies the creation of the iconographies, characters and plots of his novels. Laconic and impressionistic, select few but very significant details so that the reader can give shape to those characters and environments.
Another fundamental aspect of his work is his realism. Hammett knows exactly what he is writing about. Know the corruption American society in environments as turbulent as those that were created after the 29 crisis and the Great Depression, contexts in which he published his main works. That atmosphere exudes and inspires the deep pessimism that invades his characters in general.
And something that distinguished him from other colleagues of the genre, especially those of the more Saxon school, is that he is not interested in the machinery and the steps of crime investigation, but the ethical and the social that surrounds it or is behind it. That taste for the "human" of the criminal component but also its mix with romantic feelings it is what most characterizes Hammett's work.
Some titles
- Red harvest
The curse of the Dain
The Maltese Falcon
The crystal key
The slender man
Bloody money
The agent of the Continental
Several were taken to the cinema in memorable versions like that of The Maltese Falcon, that a young man directed John Huston in 1941. They starred in it Humphrey Bogart like the tough and ironic detective Sam Spade, Mary Astor y Peter lorre. One year later Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake they starred The crystal key by director Stuart Heisler, whose script Hammett also signed.
But before, in the thirties, William Powell and Myrna Loy They gave life to that eccentric and millionaire couple who together with their dog Asta are dedicated to solving cases. They were characters Hammett created in his novel The slender man. A series of films were made that began with The dinner of the accused, by WS van Dyke.
Some phrases
De The Maltese Falcon
- He just disappeared ... Like a fist when opening his hand.
- But, understand, if a child is lost, it is always possible to have another; instead, there is only one Maltese falcon.
- I am not afraid of them and I know perfectly how to handle them. It's what I'm trying to tell you. The way to handle them is to provide them with a victim, someone they can carry the owl on.
- I distrust the man who sets limits. If you have to be careful not to drink more than necessary, it is because when you drink, you cannot be trusted.
- When a man is killed by his partner, he is supposed to act in some way. It doesn't matter what opinion you might have of him. He was his partner, and he must do something. Add to that that my profession is that of a detective. Well, when a member of a detective society is killed, it is bad business to let the murderer escape. It is bad business from all points of view, and not only for that particular society, but also for all the policemen and detectives in the world.
De Red harvest
- Money is not the problem. They are the principles.
- To have what you wanted, you had to give others what was yours.
- Whoever saves wins. I could help you save money and trouble.
- He'd been honest, straight as a poker straight from ace to five, until he hit the jackpot. He became one of them. His wife ran out of patience and left him.
- I did not know, nor could I imagine the matter at hand, I had come to this city by chance and I found you. Old friends, and all that is said, had not stopped questioning me when the shooting started.