Dashiell Hammett's the Maltese Falcon

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July’s Murder Mystery Book Club Selection: Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon “The Maltese Falcon is not only probably the best detective story we have ever read, it is an exceedingly well written novel.” –The Times Literary Supplement (London) ~ “Hammett’s prose [is] clean and entirely unique. His characters [are] as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction.” –The New York Times ~ “Dashiell Hammett . is a mas- ter of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer." –The Boston Globe A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man named Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyal- ties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the in- gredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted generations of readers. - From The Maltese Falcon book cover THE MALTESE FALCON Think about the following while reading the novel: 1) The significance of Sam Spade’s “Tale of Flitcraft.” 2) Spade’s various relationships with the novel’s 3 female characters (Effie Perine, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and Iva Archer), and how each of these women are portrayed. 3) Spade’s code of ethics, if any. 4) The concept of “manliness”, and how Spade’s masculinity compares to the novel’s other male characters; specifically, Joel Cairo, Miles Archer, and Wil- mer Cook. 5) The way in which homosexual characters are treated in the novel. 6) The way in which the characters, primarily Spade, regard authority. 7) The characters’ use of deception as a means to an end. 8) Spade’s character development during the course of the novel, if any. 9) Whether any character can truly be referred to as “trustworthy.” 10) The novel’s final scene. 11) The effect of the author’s unerring 3rd-person point of view on the novel as a whole. 12) What the falcon symbolizes, if anything. .

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Before Bogart: SAM SPADE
Before Bogart: SAM SPADE The Maltese Falcon introduced a new detective – Sam Spade – whose physical aspects (shades of his conversation with Stein) now approximated Hammett’s. The novel also originated a fresh narrative direction. The Op related his own stories and investigations, lodging his idiosyncrasies, omissions and intuitions at the core of Red Harvest and The Dain Curse. For The Maltese Falcon Hammett shifted to a neutral, but chilling third-person narration that consistently monitors Spade from the outside – often insouciantly as a ‘blond satan’ or a smiling ‘wolfish’ cur – but never ventures anywhere Spade does not go or witnesses anything Spade doesn’t see. This cold-eyed yet restricted angle prolongs the suspense; when Spade learns of Archer’s murder we hear only his end of the phone call – ‘Hello . Yes, speaking . Dead? . Yes . Fifteen minutes. Thanks.’ The name of the deceased stays concealed with the detective until he enters the crime scene and views his partner’s corpse. Never disclosing what Spade is feeling and thinking, Hammett positions indeterminacy as an implicit moral stance. By screening the reader from his gumshoe’s inner life, he pulls us into Spade’s ambiguous world. As Spade consoles Brigid O’Shaughnessy, ‘It’s not always easy to know what to do.’ The worldly cynicism (Brigid and Spade ‘maybe’ love each other, Spade says), the coruscating images of compulsive materialism (Spade no less than the iconic Falcon), the strings of point-blank maxims (Spade’s elegant ‘I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble’): Sam Spade was Dashiell Hammett’s most appealing and enduring creation, even before Bogart indelibly limned him for the 1941 film.
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The Eternal Detective
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Stalking Sam Spade by FRITZ LEIBER London Has Its Sherlock Holmes, Permanently South of Market, the Remedial Loan Installed at 221 B Baker Street
AS YOU TRIVIA freaks know, Sam Spade, in Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon," lunched often at John's Grill on Ellis. Then why is it an item that the new owner of the Grill, having purchased it from Mike Cawley, is Gus Konstaninides? Right! Because in the book, The Fat Man talks about "a Greek dealer, Charilaos Konstantinides, who found the bird" - the falcon -"in an obscure shop in Paris"• .. The two Konstantinides are not related, so far as is known. Now that I have your attention, at last, Falcon Freak Robert Pettier challenges trivia players to repeat the last line from the Bogart-Lorre-Greenstreet film. The usual answer is "The stuff that dreams are made of," uttered by Spade as Brigid O'Shaughnessy is led off to jail, but right after that, as the film fades, Detective Sergeant Polhaus, played by Ward Bond, says "huh?". •. AII of you who said "Huh?" in the first place, head of the class. Stalking Sam Spade By FRITZ LEIBER London has its Sherlock Holmes, permanently South of Market, the remedial Loan installed at 221 B Baker Street. Paris has Maigret; Association, where Spade advised Brigid to hock her New York, Nero Wolfe; Los Angeles, Philip Marlowe. jewelry, is still at Mission and Mint. San Francisco's immortal detective is Sam And at 85 F"rfth is the Pic:kwick Hotel Spade, forever in residence at his comfortable old the parcel room of the Pickwick Stage termina:l apartment of Geary and Hyde and his dingy office at gone) that Spade checked the package with the Sutter and Montgomery.
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Maltese Falcon (Huston 1940/Hammett 1930)
Chapter Three—Maltese Falcon (Huston 1940/Hammett 1930) pirates! you’ve got brains! yes you have! curses, foiled again the mickey finn shot samuel spade, confidential investigator you kill me! don’t bogart me According to noted 19th Century author Henry James (1843-1916), novels are “large, loose baggy monsters.” The monstrous size and looseness of the genre demands serious adaptation to the time-bound scope of cinema, often by fusing several characters into one, eliminating major sections of plot, and crystallizing what elements remain, favoring dramatic moments over those more mundane. John Huston’s directorial debut is the exception to the adaptation rule in that it transfers nearly all of Hammett’s novel to screen with very little editing or rewriting. Except for the character of Gutman’s daughter and Spade’s existentialist monologue regarding the Flitcraft episode, Huston basically follows Hammett’s plot to a T, relying on the novelist to provide most of the dialogue. The only other glaring departure from the novel is the Shakespearean paraphrase Humphrey Bogart allegedly suggested to Huston for inclusion at the end of the film, in answer to Tom Polhaus’s question about the nature of the falcon. Spade, misquoting Prospero from The Tempest, says it is: "The stuff that dreams are made of." Many film historians point to Huston’s Maltese Falcon (the novel had been filmed twice before) as the first example of film noir. French film critics writing in Les cahiers du cinéma codified the genre-linked features of this particularly American creation, including the femme fatale, the existential perspective on the individual and fate, the hard-boiled tradition, and the stylistic use of light and shadow, dubbing the genre “black film” or film noir.
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The Maltese Falcon Read by Eric Meyers
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On the Maltese Falcon.Htm
On The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett (http://www.poetsforum.com/papers/261_1.html) To fully appreciate a novel, a brief biography of the author is helpful. Dashiell Hammett was born in 1894 in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. After an irregular education, he enlisted in the army during World War I, where he was discharged with tuberculosis. Hammett married and had two children whom he abandoned, and chose a career as a writer after a flare-up of his tuberculosis. Before he began writing though, Hammett held several odd jobs, but it was his experience as an operative for the Pinkerton Detective Agency that inspired him. After a relatively short career, Hammett spent World War II in the Army. After the war, he was caught up in the ‘witch hunt’ of Joseph McCarthy because of his relationship with Lillian Hellman, also a writer, who had associated with radical left-wing causes. Hammett’s career ended in 1961 with his death, having spent time in prison for his refusal to testify in the McCarthy hearings. He left unfinished his final work entitled Tulip. (West) Hammett’s career in writing began in 1929 when his story Red Harvest was published by Black Mask magazine. It was in pulp fiction that most of his early novels found their readers. The Maltese Falcon was also published by Black Mask as a five part serial from September 1929 through January 1930. Published after Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, it falls almost in the middle of his most widely published years, followed by The Glass Key and The Thin Man.
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Expressions of Modernity in Dashiell Hammett's Pulp Fiction
Scorched Earth: Expressions of Modernity in Dashiell Hammett's Pulp Fiction The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:37799762 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Scorched Earth: Expressions of Modernity in Dashiell Hammett’s Pulp Fiction Anna P. Kelly A Thesis in the Field of English Literature for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Harvard University November 2017 Abstract Samuel Dashiell Hammett (“Dash”), American author and activist, is today best known for one of the novels he published 1930, The Maltese Falcon. My thesis presents evidence that a close study of a selection of Hammett’s short stories and novels published between 1925 and 1930 (“Dead Yellow Women,” “The Scorched Face,” “The Gutting of Couffignal,” Red Harvest, and The Maltese Falcon) exposes his personal struggle with modernity in America, through a discussion of three motifs. In his stories and novels, Hammett explores the fluctuating treatment of immigrants, and changing social spaces for newly independent women in post-World War I America. He also questions the consequences of increasing mechanization in cities, through everyman detectives Sam Spade and the Continental Op. As Hammett’s career progresses, he continues to passionately challenge the benefits of conservative cultural values, while urging caution against the unreserved embrace of modernism.
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The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett 1 Table of Contents The Maltese Falcon About the Book.................................................... 3 About the Author ................................................. 4 “I’m one of the few— Historical and Literary Context .............................. 6 if there are any Other Works/Adaptations ..................................... 7 more—people Discussion Questions............................................ 9 moderately literate Additional Resources .......................................... 10 Credits .............................................................. 11 who take the detective story Preface seriously.” Some people were surprised when The Maltese Falcon, a detective novel, appeared on The Big Read list. Yes, it is a detective novel—one of the best ever written. It’s also a brilliant literary work, as well as a thriller, a love story, and a dark, dry comedy. The only criticism one could offer Hammett’s private-eye classic is that it is so much fun to read, it might be hard the first time through to realize how What is the NEA Big Read? deeply observed and morally serious it is. A program of the National Endowment for the Arts, NEA Big Read broadens our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book. Managed by Arts Midwest, this initiative offers grants to support innovative community reading programs designed around a single book. A great book combines enrichment with enchantment. It awakens our imagination and enlarges our humanity. It can offer harrowing insights that somehow console and comfort us. Whether you’re a regular reader already or making up for lost time, thank you for joining the NEA Big Read. NEA Big Read The National Endowment for the Arts 2 About the Book Introduction to The Maltese Falcon is a bomb that starts ticking in the first chapter, ticks faster as it goes, and doesn't detonate until the Book the last pitiless page.
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