Sunday, September 16, 2007

Thoughts on Dashiell Hammett

I recently started re-reading Dashiell Hammett...
Dashiell Hammett - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "'[Hammett] took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley... [He] gave murder back to the kind of people who do it for a reason, not just to provide a corpse; and with means at hand, not with handwrought dueling pistols, curare, and tropical fish.' Raymond Chandler, in The Simple Art of Murder"
The surprise was that "The Maltese Falcon" still reads well after having read it and seen it so many times. Even in spite of Sam Spade being a sexist bum, he comes across as a sympathetic character. Now I'm ready to go back to the movie... I'm thinking the novel was used word for word in most of the movie, & I'd like to check that.

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