Bruce Beckham's Blog - Posts Tagged "the-maltese-falcon"
Another one bites the dust
So I've decided to abandon my second book in a week; this time it's Mourn Not Your Dead by Deborah Crombie.
I'm sure many people enjoy this detective series but, for me, the style has proved too much.
I struggled with the poorly edited, repetitive grammar from the first page, though I decided to persevere.
I even got past my normal 10-page cut-off, but the over-elaborated descriptions began to wear me down.
I believe a crime novel can sustain an alter ego - in the Inspector Morse series there is humour in the exchanges between Morse and Lewis, and the peculiar habits of Morse - but here it takes the form of a first-name informality, employed amongst the characters (and the narrator) that undermines the credibility of the entire proposition.
A teenager with limited experience of gritty life might write this way: there's even the cliché of a young policeman throwing up at the sight of the first body.
My fault for trying to work my way through the pile of unread books I discovered when auditing my shelves - don't know how I acquired them. Evelyn Waugh is next in the heap - but he's on hold. I have The Maltese Falcon burning a hole in my rucksack. The dog could be in for a long walk this morning!
I'm sure many people enjoy this detective series but, for me, the style has proved too much.
I struggled with the poorly edited, repetitive grammar from the first page, though I decided to persevere.
I even got past my normal 10-page cut-off, but the over-elaborated descriptions began to wear me down.
I believe a crime novel can sustain an alter ego - in the Inspector Morse series there is humour in the exchanges between Morse and Lewis, and the peculiar habits of Morse - but here it takes the form of a first-name informality, employed amongst the characters (and the narrator) that undermines the credibility of the entire proposition.
A teenager with limited experience of gritty life might write this way: there's even the cliché of a young policeman throwing up at the sight of the first body.
My fault for trying to work my way through the pile of unread books I discovered when auditing my shelves - don't know how I acquired them. Evelyn Waugh is next in the heap - but he's on hold. I have The Maltese Falcon burning a hole in my rucksack. The dog could be in for a long walk this morning!
To see, or not to see?
Should an author describe the visual appearance of a character? It’s a fascinating conundrum.
Right now I’m reading The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett – its protagonist in the eponymous 1941 movie famously portrayed by Humphrey Bogart.
The book opens with this paragraph:
“Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down – from high flat temples – in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.”
It’s a compelling description, but rather less Bogart and more DiCaprio, I’d venture.
Now, the novel was published a good decade before the movie was released, and I don’t imagine Hammet foresaw its meteoric trajectory nor its enduring longevity.
I’m glad to say I have not seen the film (though I now shall seek it out) – but the mere knowledge of Bogart’s starring role has been enough to keep me hallucinating inaccurately as I read the text!
More prosaically, in the first Inspector Morse novel, Last Book to Woodstock, the yet-to-be-famous detective is described as being younger than his sidekick, Lewis, and physically very unlike his subsequent small-screen impersonator, John Thaw.
Of course, the Bond franchise has trained us to expect a continual morphing of the leading actor, and you could argue it’s an irrelevance in a world that is – after all – entirely fantasy.
However, on the other side of the coin – as far as novels are concerned – is the reader who is comfortable with their own visualization of characters. And, some would say, this is central to the pleasure of reading, indeed the very essence of the imagination that is aroused by the author’s gentle stimulus.
Right now I’m reading The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett – its protagonist in the eponymous 1941 movie famously portrayed by Humphrey Bogart.
The book opens with this paragraph:
“Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down – from high flat temples – in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.”
It’s a compelling description, but rather less Bogart and more DiCaprio, I’d venture.
Now, the novel was published a good decade before the movie was released, and I don’t imagine Hammet foresaw its meteoric trajectory nor its enduring longevity.
I’m glad to say I have not seen the film (though I now shall seek it out) – but the mere knowledge of Bogart’s starring role has been enough to keep me hallucinating inaccurately as I read the text!
More prosaically, in the first Inspector Morse novel, Last Book to Woodstock, the yet-to-be-famous detective is described as being younger than his sidekick, Lewis, and physically very unlike his subsequent small-screen impersonator, John Thaw.
Of course, the Bond franchise has trained us to expect a continual morphing of the leading actor, and you could argue it’s an irrelevance in a world that is – after all – entirely fantasy.
However, on the other side of the coin – as far as novels are concerned – is the reader who is comfortable with their own visualization of characters. And, some would say, this is central to the pleasure of reading, indeed the very essence of the imagination that is aroused by the author’s gentle stimulus.
The Maltese Falcon
As a lover of crime fiction I can’t believe it has taken me so long to get around to Dashiell Hammett (thanks for the recommendation, Darlene).
So I have just enjoyed The Maltese Falcon in what, by my standards, is double-quick time. This was bad news for the dog, as it has been my outdoor reading, and the ball-throwing frequency fell dramatically.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover the novel was set in 1920s San Francisco, and not Malta – a misapprehension under which I have laboured for most of my life. However, Hammett is not one for describing the scene – reading feels more like watching a play in which the actors hold centre stage.
He reserves his descriptive skills for the characters: their appearance and their reactions. It is a method he applies with unusual but effective depth and precision. His economy of language is startling at times.
I suppose the plot is not especially challenging; nonetheless it has all the requisites of a page-turner. Nearing the end, for a while I thought I was going to be disappointed – but then comes a sharp sting in the tail that leaves you feeling just slightly shocked.
And now I can happily watch the movie.
So I have just enjoyed The Maltese Falcon in what, by my standards, is double-quick time. This was bad news for the dog, as it has been my outdoor reading, and the ball-throwing frequency fell dramatically.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover the novel was set in 1920s San Francisco, and not Malta – a misapprehension under which I have laboured for most of my life. However, Hammett is not one for describing the scene – reading feels more like watching a play in which the actors hold centre stage.
He reserves his descriptive skills for the characters: their appearance and their reactions. It is a method he applies with unusual but effective depth and precision. His economy of language is startling at times.
I suppose the plot is not especially challenging; nonetheless it has all the requisites of a page-turner. Nearing the end, for a while I thought I was going to be disappointed – but then comes a sharp sting in the tail that leaves you feeling just slightly shocked.
And now I can happily watch the movie.
