a little pulp to lighten your load

In a strange twist of literary fate, I have finished three books in the last two days. One is the relatively serious Religious Literacy, a short little non-fiction tome bemoaning the loss of religious literacy in the U.S. The other two, alas, are a little less academic and lot more entertaining: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams and The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett.

I have been on a bit of a Hammett kick recently, so let's start with The Thin Man. Hammett established his reputation by writing short, intense detective thrillers. They tended to star The Continental Op, the otherwise nameless detective characterized by his employer, The Continental Detective Agency, and his stature, short and stout. After a time, Hammett tried his hand at longer, more complex narratives. One of those attempts was The Maltese Falcon. More than a novellette but not quite a full-fledged novel, this story featured the inimitable Sam Spade and has managed to stay in the public imagination in no small part because of the film starring Humphrey Bogart. The book works because there are only a handful of characters who lie, cheat, and steal. Plus, Spade runs about keeping them all in check and is himself quite a handful. The Thin Man, however, takes a giant leap further into the realm of complexity. It's almost not worth the ride, but Hammett redeems himself with the delightful duo of Nick and Nora Charles. Nick is a retired detective. He married the independently wealthy Nora, he helps her stay rich, and he spends the majority of his time drinking, carousing, and dodging bullets. He's an homage to old school macho, hard-boiled to the extreme. After getting seriously grazed by a gangster's bullet, Nick asks for a drink before calling a doctor. And while most of Hammett's females are either femme fatales or hilarious send-ups of the weaker sex, Nora is a quick-witted sidekick. She disappears a little too much for a feminist like myself to be happy, but she never frets and gives Nick some well-deserved crap every chapter or two.

Plotwise, this book is a bit of a disaster. Too many characters are doing too many things to too many other characters without probable cause. And it's awfully difficult to see the end from any point besides the end. I like a good mystery. I like to be tricked, too. But the mystery in The Thin Man is not the one described in the book, but rather the fact that it is considered readable by any but the most devoted of mystery fans. Good mysteries usually provide a few clues for the discriminating reader. They leave you scratching your head at the end and thinking, "Man, how did I miss that? It was so obvious." or "Wow, I never saw that one coming." Unfortunately, at the end of this book, I found myself thinking "That was stupid. And incomprehensible." Yes, I actually think things like that. The problem is that everyone ran around being crazy and misleading, and Nick pops in at the end and says, "Here's what I think. Now let's grab a drink." And that's pretty much the entire last chapter. Well, not quite. He gives a nice little speech about how the real world has a lot more ambiguity and indecision than people think. He goes on to say that sometimes that's all you get - there're no guarantees and there's no surety. A thoroughly modern sentiment from a writer who brought about modernity. And on that at least I can look back and say, "A pretty good read." (But if you're new to Hammett, read The Maltese Falcon first.)