The Art of Manliness - #156： Lost Detective - The Life and Times of Dashiell Hammett

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well if you enjoy

00:00:19.300 shows like the wire or true detective or law and order or if you enjoy film noir there's one guy

00:00:27.520 you can thank for that his name is dashel hammett and he was a writer during the 1920s and 30s and

00:00:33.840 through the 40s and he is the guy who created the modern detective he was the man who created

00:00:40.400 one of the most iconic masculine antiheroes sam spade who uh started off in a book later became

00:00:47.440 a movie hero played by humphrey bogard and the maltese falcon but dashel hammett he yeah he

00:00:54.280 created uh he took the detective genre and brought it into the modern era and and the reason he was

00:01:00.940 able to do that was that he himself was a detective before he became a writer he was a private eye

00:01:06.480 for the pinkerton detective agency in his early days and a lot of the uh the stories that he he

00:01:13.720 published and wrote were inspired by his own experience or the experiences of other pis that

00:01:19.620 he knew and about but the thing is there's not that much out there about dashel's hammett time

00:01:24.980 as a pinkerton detective um so my guest today he wanted to find out all about this career and what

00:01:31.580 made dashel hammett dashel hammett and his name is nathan ward he wrote a book called the lost detective

00:01:36.860 becoming dashel hammett and had to get on the podcast because i'm a huge dashel hammett fan i'm a huge

00:01:42.460 detective novel fan from that time raymond chandler all those guys and today on the podcast we're going to

00:01:48.460 discuss how dashel or dashiel we'll talk about that how you pronounce his name in a bit became

00:01:54.800 dashel hammett and how his experience as a pinkerton detective paved the way for the modern american

00:02:03.160 detective novel and modern america detective television and cinema if you love this sort of

00:02:08.020 thing this genre of literature and movies or cinema you're going to love this podcast without further

00:02:12.460 ado nathan ward the lost detective all right hey nathan ward welcome to the show thank you thank you

00:02:28.660 good to be here well uh your your book is about it's called the lost detective it's a biography of

00:02:33.660 dashel hammett and we just started having this interesting conversation uh before we got on here

00:02:39.800 on how do you pronounce this i always pronounce it dashel um but there's controversy about that

00:02:45.640 well it's not controversy so much as like the family says the shield he said the shield and it's

00:02:52.240 originally a french name the shield who came over um in the 18th century on his mother's side but um

00:03:02.060 i just grew up saying dashel saying it the wrong way and so i you know when i remember to if there's

00:03:06.920 you know if his family's in the audience i'll say the shield but i normally i just say dashel like

00:03:12.480 everyone else all right so yeah i'm gonna say dashel too i was like going into this thing that's fine

00:03:16.720 we can dumb it down all right i like that i like your style all right so dashel hammett uh is one of

00:03:22.140 the most influential american writers but a lot of people don't know who he is but they probably know

00:03:27.000 who his creations are for example sam spade uh you know he wrote the malt he wrote the maltese

00:03:33.020 falcon introduced sam spade to the american uh uh icons of american masculinity uh the thin man

00:03:40.680 but the thing is he he's really highly influential but there's not that much out there about dashel

00:03:46.260 hammett's life why is that well there are several uh full biographies uh one of which the official

00:03:56.060 one by dan diane johnson was you know commissioned by uh lillian hellman his longtime companion uh

00:04:03.440 and in that book which is the longest one um there was an agreement that lillian hellman herself had to

00:04:10.640 appear pretty early in the book so poor diane johnson had to get to get him to his early 30s where he met 0.98

00:04:20.100 lillian hellman in order for their life together to be take you know the rest of the book and so

00:04:26.140 there's uh then there's a very very good book by richard layman that does his whole life but these

00:04:31.720 are like they're like um i compare it to cross-country trains and uh his early life as a detective is just

00:04:40.560 like one stop where you could get off and that's what i chose to do is is uh uh is to really get

00:04:48.180 immerse myself in this early period of his life and see if there was anything uh still to be found

00:04:55.240 out about what kind of detective he really was because that was potter his authenticity was

00:05:01.060 that he had been an actual pinkerton detective before he became the consummate detective america

00:05:07.540 writer well that's what separates him from all the other ones right none of the other really famous

00:05:11.460 detective novelists weren't detectives themselves i'm thinking like raymond chandler or any of those other

00:05:15.920 guys that's right but i mean it helps that those guys i mean he he wrote better better than most of

00:05:22.440 them too i mean you wouldn't have heard of him if he was just a pinkerton who tried writing about his

00:05:27.320 his uh pinkerton adventures and he couldn't write you know it's uh the the talent was there from

00:05:33.360 somewhere else yeah so let's talk about this pinkerton agent because this is something that i've

00:05:37.660 you know you've heard about the pinkertons i remember i mean i you talk about them and um you hear

00:05:42.240 about them in when you study like labor unions and things like that in school and i remember the

00:05:46.140 pinkerton showed up in butch cassidy and the sundance kid but i didn't know much about what

00:05:50.260 they did why did the pinkerton agents detective agency exist i mean it seems like they took on cases

00:05:56.680 that law enforcement should have done but why was it that pinkerton that did this well it wouldn't 0.99

00:06:02.960 have been able to grow as it did uh in europe it uh alan pinkerton was a scottish immigrant

00:06:09.120 came over here he was a barrel maker and uh one day he solved a smuggling ring i mean i broke a

00:06:17.140 smuggling ring uh uh in illinois and the local merchants then i tried to hire him to solve other

00:06:24.540 cases and he um eventually the chucked his his barrel making business for um starting his own agency

00:06:31.560 he was the first american uh detective agency uh and it grew because you had all these

00:06:41.180 emerging towns around you know rural america and one of the last things you can add is a real

00:06:51.260 police department you might have a sheriff you might have a marshal who visits sometimes but you don't

00:06:58.080 have a full uh police department as we now understand it um so that the pinkertons would would be hired 1.00

00:07:07.620 to come to your town take care of this gang that was bothering the local businesses and they could

00:07:14.040 they could follow them over uh city or state lines in a way that a that a local uh a local agency could

00:07:21.460 not and that was a one once the towns uh you know along the west had to had established had grown up

00:07:29.000 a little bit they didn't need the pinkertons as much for that kind of stuff and the pinkertons uh got

00:07:33.680 into um railroad work um you know they would uh put a guy in your um the cafe car of your of your train

00:07:45.080 and watch for pilferage among the employees and they got into that's when they got into more of the

00:07:50.580 labor stuff um they would uh insert a guy secretly onto the strike committee at your factory and tell

00:07:58.080 you what the plans were for the strike you know day by day uh and then increasingly that's where the

00:08:04.840 they followed the money and that's where it got it where it was within the big corporate accounts

00:08:09.420 like that uh strike breaking uh you know the the ugly uh world war one era stuff that people

00:08:18.380 associate with the pinkertons now people usually know that the the strike breaking era stuff or they

00:08:25.760 know it from butch cassidy but but the the earlier um uh the earlier uh rural kind of uh cases are less

00:08:34.960 familiar and i was it was fun it was fun to go read through the pinkerton archives and you know they

00:08:40.400 just have all the op reports um that they wanted you to see uh from the 19th century you can see them

00:08:47.000 all the outlaw cases all the uh bank robber cases and that kind of stuff it's uh it's enormously fun

00:08:52.700 to read yeah and why did the pinkertons go away was it because the fbi like national that didn't

00:08:58.120 exist yet and yeah it didn't exist but that's what is that kind of what contributed to its demise

00:09:01.920 well uh it i mean they didn't they didn't go away they they're they're sort of uh i think they're

00:09:09.240 owned by a swedish company now and they just do sort of security work international corporate

00:09:15.220 security work uh and they don't answer letters from scholars that's the two things i know about

00:09:21.100 them you learned okay they've never acknowledged that that hammett worked for them uh and his his

00:09:27.540 actual reports that he would have written as as an operative have never emerged anywhere and i mean

00:09:34.820 they were written under aliases i mean uh not aliases uh you know you would be op number seven or op

00:09:40.980 number 20 or you know uh and and i my theory is um i mean it's if it wasn't a fire which is what

00:09:49.320 people always say when something disappears uh i think that uh the client was the owner of these

00:09:59.520 reports in especially in your uh delicate labor cases and i'm sure uh that if he did that kind of work

00:10:08.580 um this you know my secret hope is that his reports are in some corporate archive somewhere

00:10:15.480 and nobody knows who wrote who wrote them uh but they wouldn't be still with the pinkertons that's

00:10:22.300 what i'm that's what i'm trying to get at gotcha they would be the client yeah so i mean if there's

00:10:27.620 if you weren't able to like access the reports that hammett uh wrote or and the pinkertons disavow that

00:10:33.620 hammett ever worked for him i how did you research this well they yeah they won't say one way or the other

00:10:38.260 they just won't confirm it i don't know legally why that's to their advantage but they just uh have

00:10:43.780 left it uh i guess they can't prove it one way or the other that's maybe maybe why i mean they're

00:10:49.060 the the the papers from the specific offices that he worked at the baltimore office the spokane office

00:10:55.780 the seattle office um and the san francisco office uh those are not among the collected papers

00:11:03.780 the national archives that they donated so it is very hard to um you know uh prove certain things

00:11:12.180 that he said yeah so how did you what was the research involved how did you figure out that he

00:11:16.340 worked in certain places was it just diary entries letters that hammett wrote uh how did you what was

00:11:21.700 your research process like well there were there were letters but um he didn't save uh his letters

00:11:29.220 the way you would want him to he moved a lot in his life uh and he lived in a lot of hotels and he

00:11:36.340 pitched them you know so there's letters if someone kept the letters he wrote then that that's great

00:11:42.740 and he there was a book of his letters um that you know his wife kept and various girlfriends kept

00:11:47.780 and um that's good but you don't get a lot of correspondence back and forth uh

00:11:54.420 uh the the surest way i had of knowing where he lived when was his um his army medical file because

00:12:05.540 he got tuberculosis in the army um a nurse would have to come by and and um give him an examination

00:12:15.940 every few months to determine his the amount of disability he should get so sometimes he's 40 percent

00:12:22.980 disabled and sometimes he's 60 percent disabled so that you could see his health go up and down

00:12:29.780 throughout um the 20s uh and you'd know that he was getting less money when when his uh when he was

00:12:37.460 healthier and more money when he was uh near death and you could sort of track well if he claimed to

00:12:46.100 have worked a certain uh very physical uh very physical case you could say well how could he have

00:12:53.220 climbed uh the mast of a ship and found and recovered the stolen gold if he was you know 60 percent disabled

00:13:02.580 and tubercular and so that i would get little you know indications of of what was possible when uh but

00:13:10.260 i have to say uh he showed up at a lot of jobs for a guy who should have just been in bed for

00:13:19.380 you know months and months at a time i mean he was really impressive the way he just kept

00:13:24.740 trying to earn money for his family yeah that's what surprised me the most because you know when i

00:13:29.380 imagine okay he's a pinkerton detective i thought okay he's gonna be this big kind of burly you know

00:13:33.700 humphrey bogard type guy but he was actually not i mean yeah he said he had tuberculosis uh and then he was

00:13:39.940 actually pretty small i think he weighed 130 pounds or something like that but when he was

00:13:44.340 sick when he was sick he was 130 pounds yeah he should have been he should have been 150 160 he was

00:13:49.860 you know six feet uh plus and uh but but rail rail thin as they say yeah so i mean how long did he

00:13:58.260 work at the pinkertons um what's the time frame we're talking here well he he uh he started when he

00:14:05.060 was 21 in 1915 and it's not a you know he didn't work straight through 1922 uh you know he he he uh

00:14:17.460 he did a couple years then he entered the army right at the end of world war one at the end of 1917

00:14:24.420 then he got the um uh tuberculosis in the army first the uh he got the influenza and then that weakened him

00:14:33.300 and then he was in this uh you know hospital army hospital where all the cots were about two feet

00:14:40.180 apart from each other and so he easily caught tuberculosis in there um and then he went back

00:14:48.340 to part-time pinkerton work uh the northwest and then he went to a uh uh hospital for um for cases uh for

00:15:01.300 for two to be cases and that's where he met his wife who was his nurse um then he moved to san francisco

00:15:10.100 uh and he once he learned by letter that she was pregnant he asked her to come join him and uh get

00:15:16.420 married in san francisco and then that's where he he that was his last um that's 1921 the fall of 1921 so

00:15:25.780 the the the most influential part of his life would be the six to eight months he worked as a

00:15:33.300 part-time pinkerton in san francisco that's where he learned the town that's where he created his first

00:15:39.780 stories the the pink of the continental op stories and that's where ultimately you know he created sam

00:15:46.500 spade and who lived in the apartment that he was living in as he wrote it yeah so i mean do we know

00:15:51.860 anything about the type of work or missions i guess quote unquote mission we'll call them mission jobs

00:15:56.340 he got like you mentioned the you know he found he said that he found the gold on top of a mast

00:16:01.300 is that are we pretty safe to say that was a lot of fabrication he was embellishing the truth

00:16:07.380 oh yeah people loved these stories later when he was he was known as an ex-detective you know

00:16:12.660 the stories just got better and better because he would be surrounded by literary people who hadn't

00:16:17.540 done anything like that and he would just be so they would eat it up uh and of course it helped you

00:16:24.660 know um uh solidify his legend if that's possible as a verb and um uh and and made him more even more

00:16:35.620 authentic uh and he liked telling stories that's what that's what he would fold fundamentally is he's a

00:16:41.220 great great great storyteller there's a there's a school of thought that he has to have been

00:16:47.060 the greatest detective ever in order to be as great a detective writer as he became and i don't

00:16:53.540 believe that's true i think you have to have learned enough to exploit it masterfully which he did

00:17:02.180 you know he doesn't have to have been the greatest detective of all time but i think he was a pretty

00:17:07.700 good one and he was a very observant person and it it was the first job he had had that rewarded being

00:17:13.780 an observant person um you know he he was fired from a whole lot of menial jobs before he entered

00:17:21.380 the pinkertons uh and it was the first one that stuck uh then he uh he got tuberculosis and and once he

00:17:31.700 finally was too uh sick to to you know even get to the office anymore uh he started sending out

00:17:40.340 stories to make money the way the way i know that is because the nurses that visited him would file

00:17:48.260 reports you know first of all that's how you know where he was living at certain months and at one point

00:17:53.940 he bragged to the nurse that was visiting him that he was making uh some extra money as a short story

00:18:01.540 writer and you know i don't think it was in his interest to say that because you know you want

00:18:07.540 her to say that you should get the maximum uh disability right so he but he but he obviously

00:18:14.180 was so uh giddy about his new success that he he told her about it and and and so there you could

00:18:21.860 exactly date you know when he was writing what and uh and so on it was uh you know if i didn't have

00:18:28.980 the the army medical file i really don't know how i could have done this book yeah so many gaps in his

00:18:34.180 life and it's sort of like the biography of his illness so how did he decide writing was it just

00:18:39.460 like it's the only thing i can do in bed in my house was that what the sort of necessity that he

00:18:44.180 decided on that or he had an inclination for storytelling and that's what drew him to that

00:18:49.300 well i mean i think he was a good storyteller in general uh there's no evidence before he entered the

00:18:57.540 pinkertons that he wanted to be a writer um i think he had a mother who told him he could be whatever

00:19:03.780 he wanted which helps um but i don't think she told him what what he should be in particular uh

00:19:14.420 so when he but he spent he always was a big reader and i i think uh the the most true quote

00:19:23.300 that is ascribed to him as he came he would he came back from the san francisco public library having

00:19:32.020 read a bunch of uh pulp magazines in the reading room there and he said sort of contemptuously

00:19:40.740 i could do that and meaning also that he would know what he was talking about unlike the people who

00:19:46.420 were writing those those fanciful detection stories and uh it turned out that he could

00:19:52.500 yeah well we'll talk about these pulp magazines in a bit here um because it's it's really i think

00:19:56.980 it's a lost forgotten part of american literary history or overlooked um but talk about like what

00:20:02.900 how did his experience as a pinkerton help him as a writer and i'm not just talking about he he was

00:20:07.940 able to get he had some experiences that he could call upon to help his stories but you even make the

00:20:14.100 case in the book that his the reports he had to write as a pinkerton op helped him develop the style

00:20:19.940 of writing that he became famous for yes once i once i um learned more about how the pinkerton agency

00:20:29.460 actually functioned work once you learned um where people would be assigned from around the country for

00:20:37.300 particular cases and uh what kind of uh jobs your average op would be assigned to do um i got to reading the

00:20:49.300 op reports of of the other uh other operatives um the ones that are surviving and there really was a

00:20:59.060 certain literary style uh house style um starting with um not being judgmental in writing about um

00:21:09.780 you know these uh street guys and and uh rogues that they were had to be interested in to um to solve

00:21:18.820 these crimes and then the whole point of ellen pinkerton's approach as opposed to say you know the 0.80

00:21:26.180 sherlock holmes approach uh was assimilation assimilation with with criminals and there is no 0.51

00:21:33.940 better way to learn uh what he learned than uh having to pass yourself off among among uh among rough types 0.79

00:21:46.020 uh and the discipline of writing up what you see every day for not just the client but the

00:21:55.620 supervisors who would sometimes uh edit what you had written to the client's liking that experience

00:22:03.060 it's i i saw it as as like a newspaper and i compared him to uh ernest hemingway at the same time working

00:22:11.140 at the kansas city star uh those two institutions did not teach those guys how to write i mean they brought

00:22:20.660 they came there with their gift but it was a place where their um their uh uh observing power and uh

00:22:31.220 and and and and uh lyrical ability was rewarded day after day and it and it only could only have

00:22:38.980 increased their confidence in what they were doing uh so that's that's that's uh that's how i looked at

00:22:45.780 as opposed to um the you know the old way of trying to account for his style was you know these english

00:22:54.980 professors would would strain themselves trying to prove that he must have read this hemingway story

00:23:03.700 in the public library in 1923 and then that excited his imagination and to writing uh short clipped

00:23:12.340 street dialogue you know i mean there was a certain amount of it that was in the air in america in

00:23:17.780 general because people wanted to sound wised up because they'd been to the war and the war uh made

00:23:24.180 people uh you know more cynical uh but i just don't i don't see it i don't see it just coming from

00:23:32.980 reading although he'd read a lot i think it it was this experience um uh as a as a pinkachin op that um

00:23:41.300 that really honed him so how did um are there any specific real experiences that he had as a pinkachin op

00:23:50.740 that ended up in some of the stories that he he wrote well um oh let's see um

00:24:03.380 there's um there's there are two things that that come up again and again and again in his stories and

00:24:09.220 then one is uh uh his very first story uh uh was um was radical in that it starts with uh not a

00:24:21.780 pinkachin op but a uh an operative for uh a fictional agency um on a river in burma and he's been chasing

00:24:32.660 chasing this um thief for i don't know if it's two or three years um

00:24:42.980 and uh since they were both in new york and uh and it opens with him uh he's he's he's cornered his man

00:24:52.980 and you know in the the the contemporary stories of the time you know it would be you know he would be

00:24:59.460 totally uh admirable and he would get his man and and bring him back and uh instead the story ends

00:25:10.500 with him being offered this bribe if you come into the jungle with me i will share my rubies my stolen

00:25:17.460 ruby uh collection with you and it ends with him thinking it over and that's the end of the story and

00:25:26.020 and and and this i found um uh he he hammett himself uh was once um trailing a guy named insterwald

00:25:41.140 uh from one state to another who was a who was accused of um uh stealing jewels and uh

00:25:49.380 uh finally the guy came up to him uh on a park bench where hammett thought he was discreetly watching

00:25:56.980 him in the park and said uh don't you look familiar so i know you're from somewhere and

00:26:02.100 was because he'd been following him from state to state and so of course he was familiar uh and they

00:26:08.980 got to talking and the guy started to offer him part of his uh his scam and hammett then uh turned him

00:26:16.740 in and then he was arrested when he arrived where he was going uh that's not as as dramatic as what

00:26:23.460 he made of it in his first story but you see it um throughout his his uh other stories where that

00:26:30.580 where a woman will come up and try to seduce the detective who throws her over and then it you know

00:26:37.620 he perfected and perfected it until the multi-falcon has the most famous example and in there

00:26:43.380 uh it's loyalty to his his uh his dead partner that gives him the strength to to turn down the

00:26:54.580 opera but uh i think there's you know events like that that he would just then refashion and refashion and

00:27:01.700 uh and you know each time it wasn't perfect and he would do it again he had a lot of themes that he

00:27:07.620 would he would return to until he had gotten it right whereas other people would be afraid they

00:27:13.300 were repeating themselves he was sort of like perfecting it yeah and i guess you make the case

00:27:18.980 too that uh some of the detectives that he worked with even some of the bosses he worked for uh ended

00:27:26.180 up in some of his short stories uh as i guess they they inspired characters in the stories i guess the

00:27:32.180 one thing he does the old man right in his continental law series yes the old man uh again in um the

00:27:45.140 other biographical works there's this assumption that the old man was based on uh phil giac

00:27:53.940 uh who uh who had been his uh supervisor in san francisco but when i looked into phil giac's actual

00:28:02.340 biography and description he was like 40 years old and uh short and fat uh more like the continental

00:28:10.980 op and uh but but hammett had said that at uh at some uh dinner and so people just believed it uh i think

00:28:20.900 that his the old man who was described as having a you know white mustache and a and being a glowering

00:28:28.180 older figure in his 70s much more uh resembled the most famous pinkerton um of all who wasn't an actual

00:28:36.260 pinkerton family member um uh mcparland james mcparland who was the the uh the operative who who

00:28:46.260 um who cracked the uh molly mcguire's rings gotcha all right so uh hammett broke he cut his teeth

00:28:54.740 writing with these pulp fiction magazines and like i said it's often forgotten part of american

00:28:59.780 literary history i mean what sort of stuff would people find in the pulps i mean what kind of stories

00:29:05.860 besides the detective stuff i mean was it just sort of lowbrow originally they the um

00:29:11.220 um they did everything you know they'd have horror they'd have um you know weird tales they'd have uh

00:29:19.140 uh uh sort of erotica uh not like erotica now but um what they called there was a magazine called

00:29:28.420 saucy tales um things like that you know and and uh uh and you and westerns westerns were were were big

00:29:38.900 and and hammett loved westerns and there's a certain uh critical school that sees the detective

00:29:45.780 story it's just the western come into the urban setting uh and there's you know there's there's

00:29:52.260 something to that uh which is why he would play jokes on that like when he has one where the

00:29:58.260 continental op leaves san francisco and he goes to arizona and he has to ride a horse around

00:30:03.540 as a wrestling gang and everything and he can't ride the horse and you know he he would make fun of

00:30:08.180 the genres he was writing about at the same time that's one of the great um misunderstood things

00:30:14.500 about him is you know how funny he is and it's you know it's okay to send up the thing that you are

00:30:20.580 also participating in at the same time and i think that makes some people uh uncomfortable like

00:30:26.660 is this serious or not he's like making fun of at the same time and uh he's just you know he was

00:30:32.500 always amusing himself his his his work is full of in jokes to himself just to amuse himself starting

00:30:38.980 with the continental uh agency which is his mythical uh version of the pinkerton agency because he first

00:30:47.700 worked in the continental building in baltimore that's where the pinkertons were gotcha yeah you

00:30:52.820 can really see his humor shine through in the thin man i think yes it's hilarious the back and

00:30:58.180 forth dialogue is amazing that book especially that one and that's where he sort of had uh he's

00:31:03.860 sort of given up on the the classic detective novel and then he's that's like a um it's hard to it's

00:31:11.140 hard to describe but you know the the protagonist is an ex-detective the writer is an ex-detective

00:31:17.940 and he's out of his element but um you know he's just there to have a good time and his wife keeps

00:31:24.020 telling him to go back to what he used to do to solve the crime it's a it's sort of it's a funny

00:31:30.340 uh uh self-referential thing so let's talk about uh sam spade because this is the most iconic

00:31:36.260 uh create character of dashnell hammond thanks to humphrey bogart where did sam spade come from that

00:31:42.900 have any did his pinkerton experience have any influence on the creation of sam spade i i really

00:31:48.420 don't think so i think sam spade is as he said he's a dream man he's what all the guys he used to

00:31:55.060 work with uh wished they could be or or thought they sometimes were that's how he described it uh

00:32:02.580 uh the thing about sam spade you can in pickerton terms you can see him as the absolute uh product

00:32:10.340 of assimilation i mean he's so assimilated with criminals that you really don't know what he's going to

00:32:18.020 do like is he crooked crooked or is he pretending to be crooked you know that's how he plays both

00:32:24.340 sides to do his job is that uh he's absolutely unpredictable except for his loyalty to the

00:32:32.820 client no matter how scummy he'll still take their money uh and and and uh and give it his all but you

00:32:41.380 don't know you don't know what he really thinks about anything except uh when he's pushed to it

00:32:50.500 as he says uh when a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it so there's a

00:32:56.020 there's the buddy element in the end but this is the same guy who was sleeping with his partner's

00:33:02.340 wife before he was alive so he's not like your best friend but he does have a point he does have

00:33:09.780 but an outer limit yeah so he's um and because he's so unpredictable i just think he seems more

00:33:17.220 lifelike than all the uh the the copycat detectives that he inspired i just there's something about

00:33:25.300 sam spade who just he's so alive on the page in the way that nothing mickey spallane ever did uh

00:33:32.260 was you know is the same it's just um uh he's he's he's he did he's mercurial but he's fasting

00:33:41.300 and he has and he has no history there's no you know you don't find out about his childhood you

00:33:46.500 don't know his there's no inner monologues and yet everybody has an idea of what sam spade is about

00:33:54.580 yeah yeah well i mean the only thing we do know that uh that inspired sam spade or as part of the

00:34:02.740 character of sam spade is sam spade's apartment i thought that was really interesting so oh yeah

00:34:07.860 that's right can you talk a little bit about sam spade's apartment as um dashnell hammond's apartment

00:34:14.020 well um when he when he wrote that book and uh red harvest he was living in basically a 500 square

00:34:22.820 foot uh studio on post street uh uh which is still there in san francisco and uh he had originally

00:34:34.660 ended up there because his he'd have these flare-ups of his tuberculosis and the doctors said he had to

00:34:41.860 live apart from his young children uh because it's you know it's unhelpful uh and so he you know he

00:34:50.340 moved uh he moved around san francisco and sometimes he would come back and he um

00:34:58.100 uh he was living in this little apartment uh writing his brains out i mean it actually allowed him to

00:35:04.020 write the novels that he finally wrote um and uh the uh to me the most um uh the moving part of

00:35:15.060 writing this was there's this famous uh part of the book uh it's known as the the flitcraft uh

00:35:23.860 parable i mean he didn't call it that but that's what people call it and which sam spade tells his

00:35:29.380 story about a man named flitcraft who was on his lunch hour one day and a beam fell and just missed

00:35:38.340 killing him and hit the sidewalk sidewalk next to him and like a piece of cement hit his cheek uh and

00:35:45.700 he was so unnerved by this that he had to abandon his life as it was and um he you know he left his

00:35:53.300 wife and his child and what and went relocated to another town where he said he started up exactly the

00:36:00.340 same kind of life um so the point of the story is as spade tells it he adjusted to beams falling and

00:36:11.860 then he adjusted to them no longer falling in his new life and then spade is hired to go find him by

00:36:17.460 mrs flitcraft and he does but he leaves him alone rather than bring him back which you think would be

00:36:24.420 the spade like thing to do is like he's a bulldog uh if you're hired to go retrieve somebody for for

00:36:30.740 you know why doesn't he bring him back and i've always thought that was strange uh until i realized

00:36:38.420 at that moment that that hammett was writing it he was living apart from his family and he was

00:36:45.700 contemplating leaving san francisco altogether and going to new york uh to you know where his book was

00:36:53.540 going to come out and uh he was going to get some more movie money and then to start his life

00:36:59.620 apart from them uh and the flitcraft parable is is hammett really talking to himself about the this

00:37:07.860 decision uh and i just found that very moving because you know when you when you read these books about

00:37:16.740 an artist you are supposed to root at every point for them to move through their life to the part

00:37:25.380 where they become the great artist that you got interested in in the first place and at this point

00:37:29.780 i you know as a father and a writer i you know i felt some of the the uneasiness that he must have

00:37:40.820 felt you know he really made a choice and he what he did was he moved his wife and his daughters uh to

00:37:50.260 hollywood where they were supposed to just wait for him to become a success in hollywood and come back

00:37:57.860 and live with them well he never lived with them but he did visit them there and he did take care of

00:38:03.700 them uh but he lived the life that you associate with him um ever since you know the lillian hellman life

00:38:10.500 and then going to parties and um hanging around in hollywood and drinking too much yeah that's

00:38:15.860 that's where that started yeah he basically did the the whole scott fitzgerald thing just

00:38:21.620 write movies and drink a lot yes so what i think unlike unlike scott fitzgerald i think in hammett's case

00:38:33.620 he had come so close to death with tuberculosis that i really don't think

00:38:38.900 he expected to live very long i mean maybe uh you know years but not like years and years

00:38:45.220 and so the the miscalculation he made was that he would live as long as he did

00:38:52.340 you know that's the the mystery is always oh why did he stop

00:38:56.820 writing which actually he stopped publishing but didn't stop writing um i really think he he thought

00:39:03.140 he could you know he could still go um at any time yeah so what's uh i mean we've talked about

00:39:10.020 hammett in his days at pinkerton how it influenced his career but what's uh what's hammett's legacy

00:39:14.580 today i mean what authors did he influence and where can we see the fingerprints of hammett's and

00:39:20.340 and of hammett's and pop culture right now well i mean uh uh i think he's he's in uh most cop shows

00:39:34.100 uh the the what he what he what he started with the giving all the procedural background stuff

00:39:44.180 um you know then we drove over to here then we watched their house for a while then we uh

00:39:52.820 followed her into the supermarket things that before him would have been thought to be

00:39:58.580 dull and um no one wants to read that they just want a nice uh murder mystery set in an estate

00:40:07.060 you know and the and the you round up the swells who were at that that's a house that weekend and one

00:40:13.460 of them must have been the killer and what he did was uh with his his early op stories which were

00:40:21.140 you know it was like making literature out of the op reports that he had written before i mean it's the

00:40:27.140 same um uh format of of uh following the detective around and making literature out of the tedium of

00:40:36.580 investigation and so once he introduced that then it became like a competitive sport like who

00:40:43.620 would have the most authentic background and so uh then by the 40s you have uh detective movies where

00:40:53.540 they're talking about um the skeleton of the corpse and obviously she was less than 24 years old because

00:41:00.820 look at the development of the femur and you know that kind of stuff and all the way to csi i mean i think

00:41:06.900 that's he started that procedural um uh form and then or look at something like um uh the bone is it

00:41:19.700 what's the show with it uh well the any show where there's a like a man and a woman like flirting on 0.99

00:41:26.340 the crime scene solving crimes it's all from the thin man yeah um mcmillan and wife or uh castle

00:41:33.780 yeah but that's that's another trope of his uh i don't know that he'd love all those shows but i

00:41:40.740 think you can definitely um trace it directly to him uh true detective would be uh unthinkable without

00:41:49.380 him uh i don't think he would have liked this season but the first uh i don't know uh and he's

00:41:58.100 certainly in uh and uh you know michael connelly uh dennis lennon you know he's in he's in a lot of

00:42:05.220 a lot of stuff out there now yeah well cool hey well nathan people mix them up with with chandler

00:42:11.460 which is unfortunate yeah uh chandler was his biggest fan and uh they don't write the same i

00:42:19.300 think where it where it goes down what it back to is humphrey bogart playing both their heroes yeah

00:42:25.060 and people mix them up because humphrey bogart played both uh uh the same way um people mix up davy

00:42:32.900 crockett and daniel boone because fess parker played them both you know it's just it's they

00:42:37.940 don't they haven't always read the books so they uh they rely on the on the movies i've also noticed

00:42:42.820 that um when the multis falcon was uh uh chosen by the wall street journal as like the book of the

00:42:52.100 month for online discussions it was clobbered for sam's sexism which is like that you know i don't

00:43:03.220 know what they were expecting to read but i just couldn't imagine people having the same reaction

00:43:09.940 with an old movie there's somehow people are smarter now about film than they are about old novels which is

00:43:17.940 i think sad but i just i couldn't imagine uh people saying the same things about the film of the book

00:43:25.860 yeah uh that was just my that's just my impression i think he also he also um invented

00:43:33.700 uh what we call noir um with the multis falcon uh uh that whole um it's it's removed and then he he

00:43:43.940 zooms in on the ashtray on sam's desk and then uh sam rolls another cigarette and then it's so

00:43:52.420 atmospheric uh in a way that movies would not be for another 10 years then you know because the

00:43:58.900 the film the multis falcon was in was in 1941 and you know he wrote that in 1929 uh but you know all

00:44:06.980 the noir stuff in film was years after what the writers were doing in the black mask and the pulps

00:44:14.260 and true detective magazine it just took it took that much longer for the movie audience to be

00:44:22.580 wised up by uh uh the depression uh and world war ii to to to want that kind of film i don't know i mean

00:44:29.700 i can't really explain i'm not a cinema person but uh uh i definitely see uh what became film

00:44:37.620 noir in the multis falcon and not really before that well fascinating the book i'm i mean yeah yeah

00:44:45.460 well nathan war this has been a fascinating conversation where can people learn more about

00:44:48.740 the book just uh amazon uh amazon's good bloomsbury uh uh um you mean where else can i buy it yeah

00:44:57.780 yeah yeah amazon's as good as any yeah all right well nathan ward thank you so much for your time

00:45:04.100 it's been a pleasure all right well thank you my guest today was nathan ward he's the author of

00:45:08.900 the book the lost detective becoming dashiel hammett or dashel hammett and you can find that on amazon.com

00:45:15.460 or bookstores everywhere well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more

00:45:23.380 manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com

00:45:27.460 and if you enjoy this podcast as always i'd really appreciate it if you take the time to give us

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00:45:35.620 let the other people know about the podcast and as always thank you for your continued support of

00:45:39.940 the podcast and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

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The Art of Manliness - November 17, 2015

#156： Lost Detective - The Life and Times of Dashiell Hammett

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