Kaze: A Dashiell Hammett Dinner Party

Dashiell Hammett—inarguably the greatest detective writer—did a million things well, but there’s something he always did that nobody I’ve read does better. I’ve just reread his five novels, and I could find just one character, out of dozens and dozens, whose introduction was not accompanied by a precisely drawn, and fully evocative, physical description. The exception, surprisingly? Nora Charles, wife of sophisticated man of leisure, unrepentant alcoholic, and sleuth nonpareil, Nick Charles, in The Thin Man. (No harm done, of course. Just picture—pleasurably—the young Myrna Loy, who was born to play her.)

“I saw her eyes first. They were enormous, almost black, warm, and heavily fringed with almost black lashes. They were the only live, human, real things in her face. There was warmth and there was beauty in her oval, olive-skinned face, but, except for the eyes, it was warmth and beauty that didn’t seem to have anything to do with reality. It was as if her face were not a face, but a mask that she had worn until it had almost become a face. Even her mouth, which was a mouth to talk about, looked not so much like flesh as like a too perfect imitation of flesh, softer and redder and maybe warmer than genuine flesh, but not genuine flesh. Above this face, or mask, uncut black hair was tied close to her head, parted in the middle, and drawn across temples and upper ears to end in a knot on the nape of her neck. Her neck was long, strong, slender; her body tall, fully fleshed, supple; her clothes dark and silky, part of her body.”

This is a writer taking delight in delighting the reader. How do I know? Aaronia Haldorn is just a minor character in The Dain Curse, but Hammett gives her the full treatment. And yet it’s Aaronia Haldorn’s dinner guests who convince me of Hammett’s generosity and concern for our reading pleasure. He introduces the dinner party:

We can picture—c’mon, we feel as if we’ve met—every one of these people . . . none of whom we ever encounter again!

There was no reason when at the typewriter to describe them at all, let alone in such concise, concisely evocative terms. It took time and imagination and a little bit of the writer’s capital, but he introduced us to each of Mrs. Haldorn’s dinner guests because it would be fun to read.

Hammett’s novels are milk and honey. Read them if you haven’t.

(The illustrations here are by California artist Owen Smith, whose series of posters based on Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon were commissioned for the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Art on Market Street 2008 Program.)