In a message dated 12/17/03 4:01:14 AM Eastern Standard Time,
owner-rara-avis@icomm.ca writes:
<<
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 09:09:12 -0800
From: Kevin Burton Smith <
kvnsmith@thrillingdetective.com>
Subject: RARA-AVIS: Re: Chandler, Hammett,
etc....
I think you guys are baying up the wrong tree -- I
wasn't suggesting
that Hammett was a wuss or anything, merely that Chris'
friend
statement:
>"Chandler's atmospherics mesmerize, but Chandler's
sense of evil is,
>at best, window-shopping. Dash has seen the
furnace."
... ignored the fact that Chandler had indeed seen just
as much, if
not more, of "the furnace" as Hammett ever did. And in
fact I find
Chandler in many ways more concerned about evil than
Hammett was --
partly because Marlowe was a sensitive guy, more easily
prone to
introspection, or at least more so than Spade and the
Op, who barely
had time to catch their breath, much less
philosophize.
And Richard wrote:
>But I think we can fall prey to putting on the
authors the sins of their
>admirers. While much may have been made of the
Pinkerton past of Hammett by
>Captain Shaw and others, lets face it, this was
inevitable. I do not recall
>(although I have not researched this by rereading
biographies) that
>Hammett overly
>harped on this.
I don't know that Hammett "overly" harped on it
(certainly many of
his admirers did -- and do) but he did write that 1923
article. "From
the Memoirs of a Private Detective" for SMART SET
(located, for your
convenience at http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/hammett2.htm
), so he did contribute at least partially -- and
knowingly -- to his
own myth.
It's a goofy little article, a collection of true
anecdotes, tall
tales and probably a few whoppers, that probably took
him six minutes
to write.
Oh, and Richard also wrote:
>Chandler was turned down for health reasons in the
US and went up to Canada
>to enlist--
I never heard he first applied to the American Army, or
that he was
rejected for health reasons (what were they?). In Tom
Hiney's
biography of Chandler, which goes a little deeper into
his war
experience than the McShane book, there's no mention of
him applying
to the U.S. Army at all, but it's suggested that he
joined the
Canadian army because he was more likely to see action
(the U.S. had
only just entered the bloody fray while the Brits and
Canadians had
already been fighting for a couple of years); that he
felt strong
ties to the Commonwealth; that it was, in Hiney's
words, an
"honorable way out of Los Angeles" and that they
offered an allowance
to dependents (in Chandler's case, his mom).
>>
I still don't see anything wrong or worthy of criticism with
admirers of Hammett discussing his real world experience as a
detective and certainly not with Hammett turning out an
article on the same way back in 1923 when he was scrambling
for every buck he could manage. I rather think he had his
next meal on his mind more than "mythmaking." Given the
(especially back then) unusually
"on-point" experience that directly transferred to the
Continental Op stories, it is hard to imagine it not being a
subject of some discussion. For Shaw and editors of the other
magazines publishing his stories, they had a vested interest
in such promotions because they were thought to attract
readers. The pulps are full of bylines that include military
rank because editors thought it signified realism that would
impress the, mostly male, readers.
As for his attempt to join the American Army before going to
Canada, that is covered in the MacShane biography. MacShane
says Chandler made this statement to friends after the war
but from his phrasing MacShane leaves open the possibility
that Chandler was not being truthful. Here is the
quote:
"Yet whatever tranquillity Chandler may have felt was
disrupted by America's declaration of war in 1917. As an
American, he had not joined up in 1914, but in August 1917,
together with Gordon Pascal, Julian's son, he went up to
Victoria, British Columbia, and enlisted in the Canadian
army. After the war he told some of his friends that he had
tried to join the American Army, only to be rejected for bad
eyesight; but it is more likely that he preferred the
Canadians because, as he admitted, "'it was still natural for
me to prefer a British uniform,' which his dual nationality
permitted. Moreover, the Canadian army paid a separation
allowance to his mother, which the American would not do, and
this was an important consideration."
Looking at the Tom Hiney biography, I don't see the statement
that joining the Canadian army was a quicker way to the
front, although at war for three years by 1917 that is
certainly true. Hiney does make a good case that Chandler was
restless as a 28 year old accountant living with his mother
and joining the army was an honorable way for him to leave
his mother alone in L.A. without feeling guilty about
it.
Chandler's occasional mentions of his service are powerful as
when he noted that after leading a platoon into direct
machine gun fire "nothing is ever the same again."
Richard Moore
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