While
reading The Maltese Falcon,
I had the strangest sense of déjà vu, as if I'd seen/read all of the
novel's elements before: the chain-smoking private eye; the
mysterious, sexy lady client asking the detective for help; the
motley group of criminals ultimately caught in the detective's net,
etc. etc. Of course, that's because I had: The Maltese
Falcon has seeped into our
cultural consciousness, until the Private Investigator/Detective is a
well-recognized figure in the crime/noir genre. Much riffing has
been done on these elements, and the films and books that developed
from and around it are too numerous to discuss here (although
Chandler took Hammett's formula and brought it to new heights). I
kept thinking about tv shows of the 1960s like Dragnet
and Get Smart (specifically,
the hilarious episode "Tequila Mockingbird"). There's even
a recent Sesame Street spoof on the "Private I."
So it
was quite a trip to read the original. Besides all the lady-pawing
that goes on, especially by Sam Spade, the story is as clipped and
speedy as the detective's own action plan, which changes every few
minutes to fit his developing understanding of the criminal mess he's
investigating. I must admit here that I was pretty lost about a third
of the way through, though, trying to keep straight when Brigid was
in Hong Kong and when she was with Thursby and who killed that dude
after he killed
Spade's partner...I'm just not that good a juggler, I suppose.
I
knew, though, that Spade would lay it all out by the end, which he
did. And what struck me was how he (mostly) kept his cool in the
midst of that maelstrom of lies, deceit, double-double-crossing, and
the fate of a mysterious bird statue. Although he did get pretty
pissed off here and there.
And I know it's
anachronistic, but I also couldn't help thinking what effect a cell
phone might have had on the story. For one thing, they could have
avoided all that coming and going and missing one another (Spade and
Brigid and Effie, specifically). But that's beside the point.
I'm
moving on to Chandler's The Big Sleep
now, and I'm excited to see what he does with the genre. Almost a
decade separates this from The Maltese Falcon,
and a lot can happen in that time, and we're talking the 1930s here:
i.e. gangsters, Prohibition, the rise of the FBI, economic
depression. Man, those were some crazy times.
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