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GLASS_KEY
March 27, 2003
The Glass Key (1931) June 19, 2004
by Dashiell Hammett: July 6, 2021
This is the
book Hammett
wrote after
"The Maltese And "The Maltese Falcon" indulges in
Falcon". the rather unlikely Lone Private Eye.
Hammett heroes may work on their own,
It has much in common but they're typically members of
in style and theme organizations of some sort.
with it's more famous
predecessor, but I For one thing, it has
recommend this one not had the meaning
more highly. sucked out of it by a
film adaptation as
excellent as the 1941 G_IN_THE_AIR
If one man is responsible "Maltese Falcon".
for crystallizing the
American style, it's (As far as the filmed
Hammett: he perfected clean, "Glass Key" goes:
simple, direct prose. Pretty boy war hero
Alan Ladd borders on
(Hemingway is often given the pet rock
credit for "inventing" category, though
this, but "The Sun Also William Bendix did a
Rises" was published in fine job with the
1926, and Hammett's character Jeff.)
"Continental Op" stories
started running in 1924.)
The initial set-up:
Our hero is "Ned The politician is Paul
Beaumont", who Madvig, a machine-boss On top of this, there's
describes himself who is also running a bookie who tries to
as "a gambler, and speakeasies and gambling skip without paying Ned
a politician's houses. Madvig is Beaumont's winnings;
hanger-on". cutting a deal with a the girlfriend the
hoity-toity Senator bookie abandons; Paul
because he's after his Madvig's daughter,
daughter and fighting a who's been fooling
rear-guard action about with the
against a rival Senator's son Taylor
speakeasy operator who's Henry; and Taylor Henry
even more vicious than himself, who ends up
he is. dead in the street near
"The Log Cabin Club"
that Paul Madvig uses
as a base of
operations.
(Heh: "Log Cabin
Club". Paul Madvig
is no Abraham
Lincoln.)
The immediately striking
thing about "The Glass When Hammett wrote the
Key" (like "The Maltese Glass Key he *may* have
Falcon") is that it is been thinking of it as But there was
completely, relentlessly, a movie script in novel certainly influence
external. form ("The Jazz Singer" going the other
had been released in way: there were a
The third-person 1927). But he was number of attempts
narration follows the already going in this at doing "The
main character around direction some years Maltese Falcon" in
and records the things before that, circa movie form, before
he does and the things 1924: my guess is that John Huston did the
he says, but it never this was a minimal definitive version
ducks inside his head to influence. in 1941, with
tell us what he thinks. Humphrey Bogart.
Of course, it
*could* be he (And for once
A hot topic in mid-20s was thinking Hollywood had
literature was "stream about stage the sense to
of consciousness": plays... stop.)
writers like James
Joyce and Virginia But the distance
Woolf attempted to from audience to
capture on paper the curtain line is
torrent of words that much larger than
flow through the human from the reader
mind. to Beaumont's
mustache.
Hammett, I would guess,
believed that this was
impossible: no one
understands human
thought well enough to FOGGY_BOTTOM
record it honestly.
"The Glass Key" is in
effect (and perhaps by
design) an anti-"stream
of consciousness"
story: the reader
knows everything that
goes on, but can only
infer why.
But Hammett isn't pushing
the Literary Ambiguity in
your face... it's largely Or at least, the reader
pretty clear what's going usually *thinks* it's clear:
on in Ned Beaumont's head. different readers sometimes
find they disagree when they
compare notes.
SPOILERS
Ambiguities:
When Beaumont first breaks with
One of the virtues of the Madvig, he ends up getting roped
"Black Mask"/hardboiled in by Shad.
school is it's rejection BLACK_MASKS
of the absurdities of the Later, Beaumont gets together
mystery genre. with Madvig again for awhile,
and the world at large decides
There are no curare-dipped it was all a trick in the first
barbed shoe-laces, and no place, a shifty maneuver to get
succotash on the stairs at Shad.
over the suit of armor with
crossed-halbreds. I know at least one person who
got the impression that that was
However, "The Maltese Falcon" actually supposed to be the case.
does have a rather romantic
macguffin (a piece of
historically significant It seems pretty clear to
jewel-studded gold -- though me that Hammett had the
characteristically it never opposite idea in mind:
actually appears on stage). human character is much
And similarly, the main more shapeless than that,
character in "The Maltese and human motivations
Falcon" is the rather much less rational.
unlikely Lone Private Eye. Beaumont gets mad, and
walks out, then starts
"The Glass Key" has the toying around with Shad
gritty realism cranked for the hell of it and
up another few notches, get's pushed back into
with it's backdrop of Madvig's camp when Shad
corrupt politics and an starts playing hardball.
ethically dubious
political fixer as a The details of what Beaumont was
main character. *really* trying to do remain
open questions:
My first guess with this kind
of tale of corruption is that Maybe he was just trying to
the author is trying to use see if he could con Shad
fiction to say some things into letting him walk out
that you might not get away with a ten thousand dollar
with otherwise... "payoff" in his pocket and
a train-ticket out of town.
When Hammet was writing,
Prohibition was in full Maybe he was blowing some
swing, and Jimmy Walker smoke for Madvig, but just
and the Tammany Machine for old time's sake as a
were still in charge of parting gift.
New York City.
Maybe Beaumont himself
So maybe the author is trying doesn't really know and
to puncture some naivete: The hadn't thought it out
message is that underneath the very clearly...
respectable front your leaders
put up, there's greed, I think that's the right
power-lust, stupidity, and way to look at Beaumont's
corruption too clumsy to be character: he really *is* a
glorified with words like gambler, and he constantly
"conspiracy". dives into things without a
plan, and then trys to see
But these attempts at wising what he can squeeze out of
up the masses often seem the situation.
completely hopeless:
everyone is always willing Was he really sure what
to believe stuff like this he was going to do when
about some other land, or he lifted one of Taylor
some distant time, but not Henry's hats?
about *our* boy, not in
*this* day and age. Why exactly *did* he
go out to the house
But I'm afraid that where Matthews (the
Paul Madvig has a editor of the
lot in common with Observer) lived?
the last mayor of
San Francisco. (Willie Twice over, he has a
Brown) hand in manipulating
(And I've got my things so that Paul
suspicions about Madvig's enemies die,
the present one as but he can't really
well.) (Gavin be said to have
Newsom) planned their deaths.
The glass key can open the door,
but it's fragile, it may break
and leave you with the door stuck
open. You will have to live with
whatever was on the other side of
it, and it may not be -- probably
won't be -- what you expected.
So what is
The Glass Key
really?
Consciousness?
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