Synopses & Reviews
The Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett is an unprecedented collection of letters spanning Hammett's life, from 1921, when he was recovering from tuberculosis in a hospital with only vague plans about the future, to his death in 1960 -- his life of writing, celebrity, military service, and political activism behind him.
The book is edited by Richard Layman with Julie M. Rivett, Hammett's granddaughter. It draws on nearly 1000 previously unpublished letters, many never seen even by previous biographers, to the persons most important in Hammett's life -- including his wife, Josephine Dolan, and their two daughters; his lovers Lillian Hellman, Peggy O'Toole, and Prudence Whitfield; his editors at Knopf and Black Mask magazine.
The book is divided into five sections: the early years of a struggling writer, his period of success and indulgent celebrity in New York and Hollywood, the years during which Hammett rejoined the army at age 48, and the years of the Red Scare when he fought for his political convictions and was jailed for them, and the final years of solitude. Together these letters form an intimate portrait of a complex and often contradictory man, one who enjoyed the public spotlight but jealously guarded his privacy, who reinvented the crime novel with fluent ease but then faced a thirty-year battle with writer's block, whose personal idealism was matched only by his political commitment.
In his five great crime novels, all of them written in a magnificent burst of creativity between 1927 and 1933, Dashiell Hammett gave America a cast of immortal heroes -- The Continental Op, Sam Spade, and Nick and Nora Charles, mold-breaking, red-blooded characters, drawn from Hammett's own experience as private detective. A popular writer from the start, he had an ambitious literary vision. As he was working on his classic The Maltese Falcon, he wrote a letter to his publisher about the potential of the detective-story form: "Someday somebody's going to make 'literature' out of it...and I'm selfish enough to have my hopes."
Though Hammett's work is admired by millions, the man himself has always been an enigma, his image bound up with his characters and the legends of Lillian Hellman. Now, at last, The Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett reveals not only the private man but also the hard-working -- and hard-living -- professional. He was part cynical tough guy, like Sam Spade; he was part sophisticated inebriate, like Nick Charles. But the character of Dashiell Hammett was too complex to be easily categorized. His letters to his family, lovers, and colleagues show his personal warmth, his political commitment, his wide-ranging intellectual curiosity. And with wit, intelligence, and style, these letters further confirm Hammett's extraordinary talent as writer and observer.
Review
"The promise of this collection is a glimpse of the 'real' Hammett, through letters selected by his daughter, Josephine Hammett Marshall. But the volume is also a gentle wrestling match between Marshall's version of her reclusive, often absent father, and the Hammett of his famous lover, Lillian Hellman. 'Lillian was a constant in his life but not the everything she would have liked to be,' Marshall writes in the forward, citing the 'myth of the Great Romance' between Hammett and Hellman. The letters themselves offer a fascinating look at Hammett the man, but they can also be read as the effort of a loving daughter to recapture her long-lost father from his mistress." Anthony York, Salon.com
Review
"The Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett is a thing of beauty, from concept to execution, taking us all the way down to the life-marrow of hardboiled's one true icon. Under Richard (Shadow Man) Layman's masterful guidance, we find what Hammett sought (and fought for) his entire life...Truth." Andrew Vachss, author of the Burke novels
Review
"A deeply involving anthology....The letters illuminate the amazing texture of Hammett's life....They also limn his unusual and intense personal relationships, particularly with the women of his life....An important touchstone of literary history." Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Review
"An illuminating collection of the famed writer's letters....A fine rendering of Hammett's life in his own words -- and a remarkable slice of Americana." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"That these letters read exceptionally well is no surprise....[Hammett] comes across here as authentically, contradictorily human." Book
Review
"The key revelations are personal: self-portraits of the author as doting father, unremitting drunk, self-educated intellectual, committed Marxist, patriot, soft touch, seducer and romantic....[C]ompelling and informative." Dick Lochte, Los Angeles Times Book Review
Synopsis
This literary event features the letters, both private and professional, of Dashiell Hammett, creator of Sam Spade and the father of the hardboiled crime novel. With wit, intelligence, and style, these letters confirm Hammett's extraordinary talent as writer and observer. Photos.
About the Author
RICHARD LAYMAN is the author of
Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett and
Dashiell Hammett: A Bibliography, as well as two other books on Hammett. He is vice-president of Bruccoli Clark Layman and Manly, Inc., producers of reference works in literary and social history He lives in Columbia, South Carolina.
JULIE M. RIVETT is the granddaughter of Dashiell Hammett, and JOSEPHINE HAMMETT MARSHALL is his daughter. They live in Southern California.