Now reading...

[BruceH]

Now reading The Maltese Falcon. Amazing how closely the Huston movie version followed the book...

[jazzbo]

Yes, that's true. Quite a book.

[BruceH]

Maybe next I should read The Thin Man.

[ghost of miles]

Now reading The Maltese Falcon. Amazing how closely the Huston movie version followed the book...

Medjuck might be able to confirm this, but I think there's a story behind that. Supposedly an early bare-bones treatment--basically a secretarial typing up of the book--accidentally made its way to one of the studio heads, who responded so enthusiastically that Huston & co. felt compelled to work off the treatment. I'll have to go back and check on that story; read it in either a Bogart or Hammett bio years ago.

Lots of praise for RED HARVEST, but I'd still try THE GLASS KEY next... it's the book that Hammett wrote after THE MALTESE FALCON. And I even have a soft spot for THE DAIN CURSE, what with its prescient portrait of a druggy, cults-in-California culture.

[7/4]

I read this last week.

[7/4]

And I'm a few pages into this.

[Dr. Rat]

I'm reading Iain Pears new book The Portrait.

It's a long monologue by an artist spoken to an old friend/enemy who is a prominent art critic.

I'm about halfway through and I am really happy with the way pears deals with a lot of the issues surrounding aesthetics that have very little to do with art itself--rivalry, in-groups and out-groups, fashion, Oedipal feelings, salability . . . a lot of the stuff we end up talking about here quite a bit, presented with a generous (but far from non-judgemental) understanding.

A short and fast read, to boot.

Pears is the author of a series of art history mysteries and of Instance of the Fingerpost (mystery set amongst the scientists and spies of seventeenth-century England. Like Stephenson's Quicksilver, but better written) and of Dream of Scipio, which I haven't been able to finish yet but which seems to be about the parallel declines of a) Roman Culture b) Medieval Christianity c)the French Third Republic and d) Us.

Anyhow, so far I can give this one a strong recommendation.

--eric

[jazzbo]

7/4. . . . wow. . . good stuff.

Re: the Falcon: Anyone else feel that perhaps Guttman (right name?) (the sinister fat man) and his gunsel were sort of used as a springboard in the imagination of Rex Stout for Nero and Archie?

Edited May 9, 2005 by jazzbo

[Kalo]

ghost of miles Posted on May 4 2005, 03:28 PM

  QUOTE (BruceH @ May 3 2005, 01:08 PM)

Now reading The Maltese Falcon. Amazing how closely the Huston movie version followed the book... 

Medjuck might be able to confirm this, but I think there's a story behind that. Supposedly an early bare-bones treatment--basically a secretarial typing up of the book--accidentally made its way to one of the studio heads, who responded so enthusiastically that Huston & co. felt compelled to work off the treatment. I'll have to go back and check on that story; read it in either a Bogart or Hammett bio years ago.

Lots of praise for RED HARVEST, but I'd still try THE GLASS KEY next... it's the book that Hammett wrote after THE MALTESE FALCON. And I even have a soft spot for THE DAIN CURSE, what with its prescient portrait of a druggy, cults-in-California culture. 

Funny, I just finished The Glass Key a while back. Though I saw the movie many years ago, as far as I can recall it also followed the book quite closely, except for softening the ending. Good book and a good overlooked movie, one of the best of the Alan Ladd/Veronica Lake pairings.

The Dain Curse struck me as a mite too pulpy in a bad way when I read it, unlike Red Harvest, which is the uncut essence of pulp in a good way. Not so sure that Dain was "prescient" about druggy California cults as merely observant. They didn't just arrive full-blown in the 1960s. California's always been a haven for nuts (I was born in the bay area, so I know).

I still haven't read the Maltese Falcon or The Thin Man. I've been reading a lot of crime fiction of late, so maybe it's finally time to get to them.

As for movies of Hammett books, the Coen Brothers Miller's Crossing is clearly an homage to Hammett, a pastiche/conflation of Red Harvest and The Glass Key.

[king ubu]

Parts of Samuel P. Huntington's "Who Are We?" - some creepy shit... some good observations.. some paranoia... all put through a nationalist popularization and over-simplification programme...

[BruceH]

Couldn't stop myself from moving on to The Thin Man next. Oddly, while reading Nick Charles's dialog I DON'T picture William Powell...I wouldn't have predicted that.

(BTW: "Miles Archer"--"Lew Archer" What's up with that?)

[Jazzmoose]

As for movies of Hammett books, the Coen Brothers Miller's Crossing is clearly an homage to Hammett, a pastiche/conflation of Red Harvest and The Glass Key.

Yeah, there was so much of The Glass Key in that movie, I was somewhat offended that they didn't credit the story to Hammett in the movies.

On a related note, I just found a copy of Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers by Jo Hammett today for fifty cents. Don't know if it's any good yet, but I figure the phots are worth more than that at least!

[Jazzmoose]

As for reading, I just finished Ever Since Darwin, a collection of essays by Stephen Jay Gould that I highly recommend for non-science majors like myself. Entertaining and educational.

[Kalo]

BruceH Posted: May 17 2005, 02:04 PM

(BTW: "Miles Archer"--"Lew Archer" What's up with that?)

I'm absolutely sure that that was an intended tip of the fedora from Macdonald to Hammett.

BTW: if you haven't read the Macdonald Archer's yet, then what are you waiting for? Start with The Galton Case, The Chill, or The Zebra-Striped Hearse. Then read the rest in any order. They're all good, though of course some are better than others.

Thomas Berger, one of my favorite 20th Century America authors and not generally lavish with compliments, praised Macdonald sdpecifically for his voice, "for the purity of his American language, for his keeness of eye and precision of ear."

He was a master.

And unlike many authors confined to the Mystery ghetto, he's eminently re-readable. It's the characters and the writing that count.

To paraphrase Edmund Wilson: who cares whodunit?

[Kalo]

jazzbo Posted: May 9 2005, 10:35 AM

Re: the Falcon: Anyone else feel that perhaps Guttman (right name?) (the sinister fat man) and his gunsel were sort of used as a springboard in the imagination of Rex Stout for Nero and Archie?

Interesting theory, Jazzbo.

It seems simpler to observe that Nero Wolfe and Archie are a variation on Holmes and Watson.

[jazzbo]

Sure, they are, so many are (Muldar and Scully being most recent famous imitations) but. . . Reading the Falcon through about six years ago for the third time or so gave me this suspicion.

[jazzbo]

Bruce H, talk about movies that followed the book, how about "The Grifters." Man much of that was word for word!

[kinuta]

Loved ' The Grifters', the movie that is. haven't read the book.

Currently at the end of Donna Leon ' Friends In High Places'.

[Chrome]

Loved ' The Grifters', the movie that is. haven't read the book.

All of that classic Jim Thompson stuff is excellent ...The Killer Inside Me, After Dark My Sweet (that was a decent movie, too), Pop. 1280, The Getaway (another pretty good movie [the Peckinpaugh/McQueen version]), A Hell of a Woman, etc.

[jazzbo]

I've read nearly every Thompson piece. . . . That guy amazes me; excellent writer. (Oddball, but that's part of the appeal).

[Dr. Rat]

BruceH Posted: May 17 2005, 02:04 PM

(BTW: "Miles Archer"--"Lew Archer" What's up with that?)

I'm absolutely sure that that was an intended tip of the fedora from Macdonald to Hammett.

BTW: if you haven't read the Macdonald Archer's yet, then what are you waiting for? Start with The Galton Case, The Chill, or The Zebra-Striped Hearse. Then read the rest in any order. They're all good, though of course some are better than others.

Thomas Berger, one of my favorite 20th Century America authors and not generally lavish with compliments, praised Macdonald sdpecifically for his voice, "for the purity of his American language, for his keeness of eye and precision of ear."

He was a master.

And unlike many authors confined to the Mystery ghetto, he's eminently re-readable. It's the characters and the writing that count.

To paraphrase Edmund Wilson: who cares whodunit?

Speaking of Berger I just read Who Is Teddy Villanova? which at one time was in every used book store in the country. Crazy, slightly surrealistic book, seemingly lightweight, but for some reason it sticks with you.

I'm a big Chandler fan, and have now read through all the Library of America volumes on both Chandler and Hammett, but can't seem to get around the cliches in MacDonald.

But I used to hate the tough-guy cliches in Hammett, as well.

And if you were to keep on with Wilson, all of these authors would be consigned to the rubbish heap, not just the plots!

--eric

[Dr. Rat]

As for reading, I just finished Ever Since Darwin, a collection of essays by Stephen Jay Gould that I highly recommend for non-science majors like myself.  Entertaining and educational.

These essays are really good, and you can keep on with them through I Have Landed. The one possible annoyance is that they were written for a periodical, and Gould, over the course of hundreds of essays sometimes returns to the same points and makes them using quite similar examples and arguments.

I'd also recommend the collection of Gould essays from the New York Review, Urchin in the Storm, which gives you more of his fiesty, argumentative side.

The beauty of these essays is that Gould was truly a well-educated man, unlike someone like Steven Pinker who's taken his spot at Harvard. Gould sometimes liked to show that education off too much, but I'd rather have Moses Mendelson in the original than have someone quoting Huck Finn who hasn't read it.

But at least Pinker's on the side of the angels on homosexuality.

--eric

Edited May 18, 2005 by Dr. Rat

[Chrome]

But at least Pinker's on the side of the angels on homosexuality.

--eric

Is the implication that Gould wasn't? (Not trying to argue, just curious.)

Also, as an FYI, David Quammen does the nature/science thing pretty well, too, especially in The Song of the Dodo.

[Dr. Rat]

But at least Pinker's on the side of the angels on homosexuality.

--eric

Is the implication that Gould wasn't? (Not trying to argue, just curious.)

Also, as an FYI, David Quammen does the nature/science thing pretty well, too, especially in The Song of the Dodo.

Oh, no. Just trying to say something nice about Pinker. He's just published a piece on the matter in the NYT:

May 17, 2005

Sniffing Out the Gay Gene

By STEVEN PINKER

Cambridge, Mass.

IT sounds like something out of the satirical journal Annals of Improbable Research: a team of Swedish neuroscientists scanned people's brains as they smelled a testosterone derivative found in men's sweat and an estrogen-like compound found in women's urine. In heterosexual men, a part of the hypothalamus (the seat of physical drives) responded to the female compound but not the male one; in heterosexual women and homosexual men, it was the other way around. But the discovery is more than just a shoo-in for that journal's annual Ig Nobel Prize - it raises provocative questions about the science and ethics of human sexuality.

Scientists and perfume marketers who believe that humans, like other mammals, respond sexually to chemical signals called pheromones were cheered by the news. But we are a long way from dogs in heat. The role of pheromones in our sexuality must be small at best. When people want to be titillated or to check out a prospective partner, most seek words or pictures, not dirty laundry.

The difference in the brain responses of gay and straight men does not, by itself, prove that homosexuality is innate; after all, learned inclinations, like innate ones, must reside somewhere in the brain. But in this case nature probably does trump nurture. Gay men generally report that their homosexual attractions began as soon as they felt sexual stirrings before adolescence. And homosexuality is more concordant in identical than in fraternal twins, suggesting that their shared genes play a role. Homosexuality is a puzzle for biology, not because homosexuality itself is evolutionarily maladaptive (though no more so than any other sexual act that does not result in conception), but because any genetic tendency to avoid heterosexual opportunities should have been selected out long ago. Perhaps "gay genes" have some other compensating advantage, like enhancing fertility, when they are carried by women. Perhaps the environments that set off homosexuality today didn't exist while our genes were being selected. Or perhaps the main cause is biological yet not directly genetic, like differences in hormones or antibodies that affect the fetus while it is developing.

Just as puzzling is the existence of homophobia. Why didn't evolution shape straight men to react to their gay fellows by thinking: "Great! More women for me!" Probably the answer lies in a cross-wiring between our senses of morality and disgust. People often confuse their own revulsion with objective sinfulness, as when they dehumanize people living in squalor or, in the other direction, engage in religious rituals of cleanliness and purification. An impulse to avoid homosexual contact may blur into an impulse to condemn homosexuality.

Cultural conservatives like the talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlesinger ostensibly condemn homosexuality for another reason - that it is a "biological error." Actually, it is she who has made the biological error. What is evolutionarily adaptive and what is morally justifiable have little to do with each other. Many laudable activities - being faithful to one's spouse, turning the other cheek, treating every child as precious, loving thy neighbor as thyself - are "biological errors" and are rare or unknown in the natural world.

It's not just anti-gay commentators who see a moral coloring in the biology of homosexuality. Some gay groups condemn such research because it could stigmatize gay people as defective and lead to a day in which parents could selectively abort children with "gay genes." Others welcome the research because it shows that people don't "choose" to be gay and hence can't be criticized for it, nor could homosexuals convert the children in their classrooms or Scout troops even if they wanted to.

It may not be a coincidence that the new discovery came from researchers in Europe. In America, the biology of homosexuality is a politicized minefield that scares away scientists (and the universities and agencies that pay for their research). Which is a pity. Regardless of where homosexuality resides in the brain, the ethics of homosexuality is a no-brainer: what consenting adults do in private is nobody's business but their own. And the deterrents to research on homosexuality leave us in ignorance of one of the most fascinating sources of human diversity.

Steven Pinker, a professor of cognitive science at Harvard, is the author of "How the Mind Works" and "The Blank Slate."

[Kalo]

Dr. Rat Posted on May 18 2005, 08:39 AM

Speaking of Berger I just read Who Is Teddy Villanova? which at one time was in every used book store in the country. Crazy, slightly surrealistic book, seemingly lightweight, but for some reason it sticks with you.

For some reason, I just can't get enough of Berger. I've read most of his books several times. Something about his deeply ironic, seemingly cynical but actually quite principled world-view just speaks to me. He's also an amazing prose stylist, as well as deeply funny. He specializes in what I might call "serious parody," for lack of a better term.

Villanova is great fun, sort of a screwball hardboiled novel. And he goes all-out with the language on this one.

For the uninitiated, Little Big Man is the place to start.

I'm a big Chandler fan, and have now read through all the Library of America volumes on both Chandler and Hammett, but can't seem to get around the cliches in MacDonald.

But I used to hate the tough-guy cliches in Hammett, as well.

Funny, because, if anything, Lew Archer, especially in the novels of the 60s and 70s, has been criticized as being too sensitive and not tough enough, sort of the lefty-liberal's hardboiled dick, as compared to Mike Hammer and such. Actually, what I find most interesting about Archer is that, though you do learn stray facts about him throughout the series, for the most part he functions as almost a window for the reader, a consciousness through which you perceive the other characters in the story with clarity, while he remains mostly a blank.

It's an interesting effect, quite unlike most detective fiction, where the detective's relationships, tastes, and the trappings of his or her life often takes center stage.