I’ve been picking up lots of books by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett lately at the used book stores. Don’t quite have the complete catalogs yet, but I’ve got enough to start diving in.
The question becomes: which should I do first? From my passing acquaintance with the stories (mostly from movies), I am not aware of any particular differences. But I’m assuming there are. Is one cleverer? Funnier? Darker? More thought provoking? Is one more deserving of serious analysis and one best reserved for vacation reading?
Basic questions, I guess, are: how do you sum up their differences, and which should I devour first?
Thanks, all!..TRM
MODERATOR COMMENTS: This thread is from April 2013, revived in November in Post #26. – CKDH
They are two very different writers (even though they’re grouped together).
Hammett is a meat and potatoes type writer. His stories are all clearly plotted with a resolution in the end. His philosophy is that justice can be found, even if it’s a difficult path.
Chandler is a stylist. His prose is unique in the most restrictive sense of the word: no one else can do it without coming off as a second-rate imitator. His stories often have murky and convoluted plots (one story was that he reread The Big Sleep and couldn’t figure out who he mean to be one of the murderers), but their secondary to the outre characters and mood. His philosophy is that you can’t always get justice no matter how much you try.
I think that Hammett might be a better introduction, since it’s easier to follow his stories. But both are great writers – just in different ways.
Hammett first; he basically created the hard-boiled genre, with a basically amoral protagonist. Then Chandler, to see how he brought back the detective as a white knight, working for justice.
I think that Chandler is the more interesting writer overall, but Hammett wrote a handful of stories that are amazingly fantastic.
When I was going through my hardboiled detective reading phase, I read all of Chandler’s works I could find back to back. I got tired of Hammett after a story or two, and would have to read something else for a while. But the stuff that Hammett wrote that I love, I love much much more than Chandlers stuff. The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon in particular get re-read every couple of years. I don’t think I have gone back for a second reading of any of Chandler’s stuff other than The Big Sleep, and then only once.
So…start with Hammett I guess? But move quickly on to Chandler and dive back into the Hammett pond periodically.
There is more things in Heaven and Earth, zoid, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I find myself in agreement with RealityChuck and NAF1138 that Chandler is the better stylist but Hammett is more adept at plotting. However, when you grow beyond plot and style and are ready to move onto stories that really get to the heart of the human condition and the depths of desperation and tragedy, pick up James M. Cain, especially The Postman Never Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce. Check out the better works of Jim Thompson, in particular The Grifters.
If you want to start with the “atomic building blocks” of hard-boiled detective fiction, you should probably start with Red Harvestby Hammett. It features his “man with no name” hero, The Continental Op, and sets up a scenario that became the standard for Clint Eastwood/Sergio Leone, Kurosawa and countless others…his other books can be wonderful, but this is the stripped-down essence.
…and I agree with **Stranger **about authors to investigate next and would add David Goodis and Chester Himes along with Cain and Thompson…
I further support the idea of moving from Hammett to Chandler. I prefer Chandler’s writing, but he is very uneven. The guy was basically a drunk who had a book forced out of him every so often. Sometimes absolute genius, sometimes not.
That said, he wrote my absolute favorite novel, The Long Goodbye. I don’t think I have ever seen someone more adept at using the English language. The plot is so-so, but the writing style and the sense for the language is unmatched.
I don’t see a need to read one author before the other - just jumble them up. You will be better able to compare their styles that way, if that’s what you want to do, and they’re both good, so you won’t be suffering.
As someone currently in the midst of a bit of a Hammett/Chandler phase after having been away from them for some years - I’m midway through The Dain Curse at the moment - I’ll concur with the general trend of opinions so far. I will say that I find it difficult to believe that someone could seriously hate one of them, while loving the other. So I wouldn’t worry too much about being put off both by reading the “wrong one” to start with.
It has already been said but I will repeat it - Hammett and Chandler are both great writers but for very different reasons. Hammett knows how to propel the plot forward and is great at depicting action, among other things. Chandler’s great gift, in my opinion, is in developing characters and creating atmosphere. His stories and characters are morally ambiguous in ways Hammett’s aren’t.
I would also recommend you check out Jim Thompson and James Cain.
An often overlooked hard boiled writer from this period I would suggest is Jonathan Latimer, particularly his novel “The Lady in the Morgue”.
I love both of these authors, and think others have done a better job summarizing than I could. But I did want to post one of the great opening paragraphs of fiction, from Chandler:
This. Some years ago I was reading “The High Window” on the terrace of a bar. I came across a line toward the end of the story that made me put the book down and exclaim “Oh, wow!” aloud. A girl at a nearby table looked up and said, “That must be some book!” I told her it certainly was.
The line: “But I couldn’t give her what she had coming to her. That would take the whole Yankee outfield with two bats each.”
If you consider that between them they only wrote 12 novels and the final Chandler is pretty dubious, I would just get them all and have fun with them. They’re not War and Peace. One or two days away from other distractions will get you through any of them.
Well, I just got back from a lovely beach vacation, and thanks to the suggestions on this thread, I started with a couple of Chandler novels. First up, “Farewell My Lovely.”
Overall, I liked this novel a lot. But not until I reached the end! It started off pretty much random; the story and plotting and characterization seemed to be going nowhere, meandering hither and thither without regard for any sort of arc. And his metaphors and similes, while amusing, lacked insight and inspired mostly shrugs on my part. They seemed so random that I wondered if the generation gap was just too great to bridge. After all, it was written about 70 years ago, and he didn’t shy away from contemporary slang. So I figured I was probably doomed to never getting what he was driving at.
But… (and there had to be a “but,” didn’t there?) the payoff at the end, when everything tied together in a nice neat bow and in a way that I should have anticipated - but didn’t - made me decide that the story was awesome indeed, and excellently planned from the start! I had to shout out a loud “Bravo!” as I turned the final page.
So much so, that I immediately grabbed “The High Window” out of my bag and dug right into it.
More news as it develops. Once again, THANKS to the SDMB community for helping in my continued development…TRM
