Sunday, April 21, 2019

Dashiell Hammett - The Thin Man

Rereading The Thin Man (1933) I struck how unique it is compared to Dashiell Hammett's other works. The Thin Man is light and funny and looks at semi-high society New York and touches very little on the seedy side of society compared to, let's say, Red Harvest or The Glass Key. The Thin Man is known for all its references to drinking cocktails by the charming and gay (happy) couple, Nick and Nora Charles.

Nora sighed. "I wish you were sober enough to talk to." She leaned over to take a sip of my drink.

"How do you feel?"
"Terrible. I must've gone to bed sober."

Nora decided that she wanted to go home early and sober, ...

"Why don't you stay sober today?"
"We didn't come to New York to stay sober. Want to see a hockey game tonight?"

The mystery involves a missing eccentric, Clyde Wynant, whose family and lawyer want to find him. Nick Charles, a former detective, has no interest in finding him... until there is a dead body.

There is a lot of dialogue in The Thin Man and Hammett's narratives are brief and concise. He does not go in for long or detailed descriptions, or the similes and metaphors for which Raymond Chandler is known.

She was small and blonde, and whether you looked at her face or at her body in powder-blue sports clothes the result was satisfactory.

He was a big curly-haired, rosy-cheeked, rather good-looking chap...

He was a plump dark youngish man of medium height, broad through the jaws, narrow between the eyes. He wore a black derby hat, a black overcoat that fitted him very snugly, a dark suit, and black shoes, all looking as if he had bought them within the past fifteen minutes. The gun, a blunt black .38-calibre automatic, lay comfortably in his hand, not pointing at anything.

In my book A Piece of Work, I used plenty of references to the time it takes place; 1959. I found Hammett did the same in The Thin Man.

Nora and I went to the opening of Honeymoon at the Little Theatre ...

He  may have been referring to The Honeymoon (1930) movie directed by and starring Eric von Stroheim, or the play Almost a Honeymoon (1930) by Walter Ellis.

The Little Theatre was built in 1921 on 240 W. 44th St.

Nora could not sleep that night. She read Chaliapin's memoirs until I began to doze...
Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin (1873-1938) was a Russian opera singer. In 1932 Chaliapin published a memoir, Man and Mask: Forty Years in the Life as a Singer. 

Nora almost mentions the  famously infamous Lindbergh kidnapping case of 1932.

I said, "but right now I'd swap you all the interviews with Mayor-elect O'Brien ever printed..."

John P. O'Brien was the 98th mayor of  New York from January 1933 to December 1933.

When we returned to the living-room, Dorothy and Quinn were dancing to Eadie Was a Lady.

Eadie Was a Lady was a very popular song from the Broadway musical Take a Chance (1932).

Though the story takes place during the Great Depression there is no mention, however, of  the Wall Street Crash of 1929, mass unemployment, breadlines and soup kitchens. Like those Busby Berkeley movies of the 1930s, Hammett wanted to take people's mind off the Depression.

Nick and Nora help keep things light and airy with a good deal of wisecracking.

She [Nora] grinned at me. "You got types?"
"Only you, darling--lanky brunettes with wicked jaws."

Nora stopped drinking to ask: "Did Wynant really steal it?"
"Tch, tch, tch," I said. "This is Christmas Eve: try to think good of your fellow man."

I kissed her. "Don't you think maybe a drink would help you to sleep?"
"No, thanks."
"Maybe it would if I took one." 

"Whatever you're giving me," she said, "I hope I don't like it."
"You'll have to keep them anyway, because the man at the Aquarium said he positively wouldn't take them back....

"You like Nick a lot, don't you, Nora?" Dorothy asked.
"He's an old Greek fool, but I'm used to him."

"Tell me the truth, Nick: have I been too silly?"
I shook my head. "Just silly enough."
She laughed, said, "You're a Greek louse," ....

I have read all five novels by Dashiell Hammett and some of his short stories. The Thin Man is by far the must fun and entertaining.

A Piece of Work and other books by Stephen Gaspar are available on Amazon. Click here!




No comments:

Post a Comment