Poe invented the detective story when he set Reason (Auguste
Dupin) against the Murderous Ape (the dark, violent, criminal
side of the Id?) in the Rue Morgue.
The battle is always between Ratiocination & the
Murderous Ape.
>From Poe it goes to Charles Baudelaire ("Comes the
Charming Evening" and
opium) across the Channel to that Dandy Sherlock Holmes (who
stands for Pure Reason) & that other Dandy Oscar
Wilde.
Holmes solves chessbook puzzles or does cocaine. Oscar Wilde
creates the Theater and "Art for Art's Sake" which Hammett
gets pissed at, thus creating Joel Cairo.
Hammett sees the Murderous Ape in himself, as well as the
mean streets above the Stockton Tunnell, which scares the
bejessus outa him.
Holmes begets Agatha Christie's puzzles and all the cozys
with amatuer detectives.
Hammett jumps into the bottle and stops writing. (Too many
fallen beams.)
BTW, I'm teaching the Falcon. Not one of the 78 students in
two sections had ever seen the movie!! So I told them Sam
Spade is Gandalf and the Falcon is the Ring. ("Watch the
faces when people see the Falcon," I said.)
Ah well. Nobody still knows nothing about Mark Twain and
Brigid?
How about a hand-typed essay by Hammett about "Pace in the
Modern Novel"?
Best
Frederick Zackel
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