Word: hammett
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...woman stared at Nunheim dully and said, "I don't like crooks, and even if I did. I wouldn't like crooks who are stool pigeons, and even if I liked crooks who are stool pigeons. I wouldn't like you." Dashiell Hammett, The Thin...
...Dashiell Hammett was boru in Saint Mary's County, Maryland, in May of 1894 and died 67 years later a few hundred miles north in New York City. In the intervening years he was a detective, an invalid and one of Faulkner's drinking partners. He annoyed Hemingway, raised the wrath of the McCarthyites, fought in two wars, went to jail and revolutionized the now well-known genre of detective fiction. From Red Harvest through The Maltese Falcon. The Thin Man and a hundred more short stories, he developed and became the epitome of the hard-boiled but literate writer...
...served his country during World War II, enlisting as a private at age 48 and ultimately running a camp newspaper on the island of Adak in the Aleutians. The postwar climate grew chilly to Hammett's politics. Ordered to testify before a federal judge in 1951, he appeared but refused to cooperate and was sentenced to six months in jail for contempt. When he got out, his income had dried up, and he faced claims for more than $110,000 in back taxes...
This approach inspires both trust and a question: What kind of man, finally, was Hammett? A satisfactory answer may be impossible Shadow Man tells a fascinating and tantalizing story. It also suggests just how cleverly the old detective covered his tracks. -By Paul Gray...
...given up attempts to regenerate his writing career, and he complained to an acquaintance that most days he saw no reason to get up in the morning. Though he enjoyed solitude, at other times Hammett craved the sense of camaraderie that alcohol gives. Just after he returned to New York, he learned that a woman who had served in the U.S.O. on Adak was living in Manhattan. He asked her out for dinner and nightclubbing. They began the evening in midtown and drank their way to Harlem. As Hammett got drunker, he became louder, ruder, and more talkative. Finally...