At year’s end...

Last year, I got The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century, edited by Tony Hillerman and Otto Penzler. It is a collection of mystery, crime, and detection short stories, the first of which was published in 1903, “A Retrieved Reformation” by O Henry, and ends in 1999 with Dennis Leane's “Running out of Dog”. It, of course, doesn't have any Doyle or Sherlock Holmes, but does have Glaspell's “A Jury of her Peers” and a short story by Dashiell Hammett, “The Gutting of Couffignal.” I was reading from this collection when I decided to blog about detective stories, even if I never blogged about anything I came across in this anthology (I was familiar with “Jury” well before I got this anthology).

However, as I bring this endeavor, which was originally just going to be about a few Sherlock Holmes stories, to a close, I want to move from The Maltese Falcon to my experience reading a few of the stories from this collection.

The first is Stephen Greenleaf's 1984 “Iris,” and it doesn't take long to tell this story wanders into some dark territory. It opens as a woman dumps a baby off on our protagonist detective and then drives away. At first, I thought it would be a story about the detective finding the real parents, but instead, he followed the woman – the eponymous Iris – and discovers what amounts to a small illegal kidnapping and adoption racket. It's darker than it sounds. When I read this story, with an ending Doyle would not have written, and that Hammett only might have, I felt like I had definitely hit a point where darkness reigned. I had seen this gradual darkening over the eighty years worth of fiction, but this one went places and did things I hadn't expected. I felt like I was in a place where there was no turning back.

So, braving whatever dark fiction awaited me, I turned to the next story, Sara Paretsky's “Three-Spot Po.” This story is about a murder mystery. And a heroic dog who braves the wintry weather and sea to bring his owner's murderer to justice. It's light, easy going, fun even. Sure, there's a murder, but the same darkness that permeated “Iris” just isn't there to raise the stakes and add a little horror to the situation. And this was also published in 1984.

And then, skipping a story and five years to 1989, there's “Too Many Crooks,” about two thieves who break into a bank while another band of thieves are taking everyone hostage. I laughed out loud while reading it. It's fun and far fetched, the entire story based on an absurd coincidence that juxtaposes two different types of criminals, all while being pretty funny.

My point in addressing these stories is because in moving from the Victorian Era and Sherlock Holmes just a few decades to Dashiell Hammett in Modernism is a massive shift and a loss of idealism to a harsh, post-war realism. However, this isn't to say that all the detective fiction that followed Hammett followed in that same cynical vein. The next major literary detective was Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, a cynic to be sure, but he's easier to trust than Sam Spade, his stories a little more up beat, a bit more hope and light.

I say this in particular because I'm not sure what the future brings for me, personally. This year, I started a Literature PhD program. Suddenly, the time I took writing a few things about literature and composition are being taken up by in depth research, writing massive essays for seminar courses, preparing for presentations, etc.. My life has become so busy that I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep this up or if it will be worthwhile. An idea that makes for a few good blog posts might be better suited for publication in a scholarly journal.

And so, I wrap up this year, pausing for December, and curious about what the next year will be.

Getting the Bird, Part 2: Lead and Modernism

In the Sherlock Holmes stories “The Blue Carbuncle” and “The Six Napoleons”, Holmes searches for something valuable lost or hidden in something mundane. In “Carbuncle,” it's the eponymous gem ingested by a turkey after being stolen (the gem, not the turkey), and for “Napoleons”, it's, again, a stolen precious stone, the Pearl of the Borgias, hidden in a bust of Napoleon after being stolen. Both stories require Holmes and Watson to traipse around London to trace the mysterious appearance of the Carbuncle and why busts of Napoleon were being stolen and destroyed. In both situations, the missing gem is recovered and returned.

The Falcon falls into a similar situation: something seemingly mundane hides something of greater worth, but, rather than precious gems, the falcon is just black enamel over a lead statue. In this regard, the Falcon is less like the the Blue Carbuncle or the Black Pearl of the Borgias and more like Jay Gatsby: a facade hiding something less desirable.

Not all modernist fiction is about misdirection, but a major facet of it is writing designed to obfuscate the reader's own ability to read. Without going into too much detail, modern fiction forces us to realize things aren't always as clear and easy as they seem. Perhaps Hemingway and his bleaker narratives about war typified this the most: the world isn't so easy to categorize or understand and the happy endings we want aren't what we get. This wasn't a time for the beauty of romanticism or the idealism of enlightenment thinking, and the jingoism of colonialism that marked so much of Holmes. It was a time for the harsh realities of life and reevaluating what we had believed. A fine beginning for the century to follow, filled with overturned idealisms and the exposure of the failures and brutalities of life and history.

There isn't always a Sherlock Holmes to right all the wrongs we face. They can hide or don't even understand the oppressive systems their reinforce.

We don't all end up well off like Philip “Pip” Pirrip or Oliver Twist or Jane Eyre. It's harder to move up the social ladder, and harder still to have someone else pay for it.

We don't all get to marry our Mr. Darcys. Sometimes their mansions are funded by bootlegging.

And what better way to represent that than with the Maltese Falcon? An item centuries old made of gems and gold, stemming from royalty, but available to whoever is able to get their hands on it? European aristocratic notions of wealth and superiority and status mixed with American opportunism, the desire to rise to power and eminence: to rival the old families who oversaw their ancestors. And once it's in our possession, the years of toil and effort we've invested in it suddenly seem worth it, right up until we scratch at the surface to go beyond the glossy enamel to the dull lead of reality. No shine, no glimmer.

This is where Spade, again, sets himself apart from Gutman, Cairo, and O'Shaugnessey, and, ironically, aligns him with the violent Wilmer Cook. Gutman and Cairo think they can continue their search for the Falcon and O'Shaugnessey thinks she'll be safe with Spade. Spade even confesses he may love her. Their optimism, their preconceived notions of a better tomorrow makes them romantics, not realists. Spade is a realist and Wilmer, certainly when he's made the fall guy, has realism thrust on him.

Spade, like Modernism, has his suspicion that things aren't as pure and as simple as they seem. Not every ending has a silver lining. Instead, they have the dead weight of lead.

Getting The Bird, Part 1: The Anti-Climax

The Maltese Falcon focuses on the eponymous statue of a black bird, described by Gutman as having an enamel overlay atop gold and gems in the shape of a falcon. However, when Spade, Gutman, Brigid, Cairo, and Wilmer are all together and the bird's enamel is tested by Gutman's knife, they discover it to be a fake, presumably prepared and planted for them by the previous owner.

It's an anti-climactic end. After everything else that occurs in the novel, at least three murders and the destruction of a ship, on top of whatever Gutman and his gang did to swindle it in the first place, the statue is simply lead and enamel, it's disappointing. Gutman laughs it off and characterizes the disappointment as merely another step in his years of seeking the falcon and he and whoever will join him (with an invitation to Spade) will continue seeking it. Gutman assumes the Russian general, Kemidov, they stole the bird from produced a fake to throw them off, not thinking, in the Falcon's long, tortured history, it might be the statue Kemidov had, himself falsely believing it was the real falcon (if so, then why he never removed the enamel is never addressed), or even that this statue is the statute in question, either the one that had always existed or something around which stories had grown and evolved. Either way, Gutman sees himself as the next to possess the bird, even if it seems he doesn't see far enough to understand he'll just be another piece of its history.

But Gutman isn't the protagonist: Spade is. It's easy to forget it's not about finding the falcon but about Spade maintaining his own professional integrity and clearing any doubt about his own innocence regarding Archer's murder. Refocusing our attention on Spade means seeing the revelation of Archer's murderer, a successful identification, as the climax rather than discovering the falcon is a fake.

But that's not as interesting.

The falcon is what's interesting, with its mystique, singularity, and value. Having the falcon means having a piece of history. It's value can be considered in the materials that went into its construction, the artful craftsmanship that brought them together, and the long, sordid past that has seen it hidden. But, as addressed, this isn't the falcon we get at the novel's end. What we do get is, well, worthless.

What would it mean if Gutman obtained the real falcon? For Spade, a payout and having to keep quiet, or still turn them over, but then have to deal with the real falcon. That would be an entirely different story, and likely not one Spade would be interested in (finding the bird means finding Archer's killer, after all: Spade has to deal with Iva next, not statuary). What's more, it would represent, for Gutman, a success after years of searching and whatever nefarious acts he was engaged in, validating crime. Villains victorious, even if they are arrested, and that's not how detective novels end. That story would need to focus on Gutman, not Spade. Spade's role as protagonist almost guarantees Gutman's capture and his loss of the falcon.

What, then, does the false bird represent?

I would argue, something more significant than the false one. As something mundane but believed to be worthwhile, a sad truth where one expects a great treasure, it's possible to see the falcon as representative of those changes, that shift to modernism, that helped mark Hammett's fiction as so different from Doyle's.

Modernism and the Moral Mystery of the Mind: Sam Spade

Returning to the paragon of crime fiction, Sherlock Holmes, we see it’s common for readers to be shut out of the detective's mind. Whatever is there is privileged information, and no matter who is narrating – whether it's a Watson, the detective, or some omniscient narrator, the closer we get to the solution of the case, the more closed off the detective's mind is. For Sherlock Holmes, this is accomplished by having Watson narrate, replete with well-documented and studied instances of Watson's inability to understand what is going on in Holmes' mind.

An interesting result of this is to what extent we can trust the detective to be a moral individual. As discussed in the last post, it isn't much of a stretch for a detective to go the way of his antagonists, especially in the cynical time dubbed modernism. Spade becomes less like Holmes and more like Gatsby: inhabiting a kind of moral no-man's land where they can bend and break the laws and manipulate the information they share with others to suit their own ends: not the law, not the civil or social good, but their own selfish interests.

Holmes we can guarantee is a moral, upstanding fellow because of Watson's own social position and Holmes' interest in mystery and righting wrongs. For Holmes to suddenly turn criminal would be contrary to his character. Even if he has dalliances with criminality, Holmes laughs them off, justifies them for the sake of the case, all while reassuring us of his stalwart nature.

We don't have that same confidence with Sam Spade, in part because the mystery he's investigating is an odd mix of personal and professional (his partner was murdered – there's a sense of professional pride even if nobody cared for Archer) and potentially lucrative: he appears willing to go along and be part of Gutman’s scheme until the end of the novel, only after they discover the falcon was a fake.

We must spend the novel wondering just where Spade falls morally. Of course, come the end, he makes the right decision so everyone will be arrested for their involvement in the crimes: arson, murder, smuggling, etc, and Spade is careful to remain unattached, suggesting his moral dubiousness was for the sake of the case.

Spade is therefore an unsolved mystery in his own right. We receive no resolution as to Iva Archer, and there's always the possibility Spade could have been bought out. As the saying goes, everyone has their price and it's possible Gutman just wasn't willing to pay Spade enough. After all, before Cairo joined Gutman's side, Gutman had offered more to Spade. Without access to Spade's thoughts or a confession on his part, it's possible his scenario about a “fall-guy” was a last minute concoction to get Gutman who had reneged on a previous deal.

So is Spade a man you shouldn't cross, or a man you shouldn't try to buy? Is he moral, or cautious? Does he have a price, or is he too upstanding? If he has principles, then why the affair with Iva Archer? Did Spade do what was right, or did he do what's right merely because it was the safest thing to do?

We like to consider protagonists to be like Holmes: characters of high moral standing who always do right regardless of consequence, and, even better, their right choices yield the best outcome for them. However, as discussed before, Hammett was writing at a particular time in the history of English Literature: modernism. Such a positive ending and depiction of a protagonist doesn't fit with the era and the novel as a whole. There's just too much going on for a Sherlock Holmes style resolution to easily fit. Just as the writing is cynical, we need to approach it cynically: doubting and wondering whether or not we really know just what’s going on in Spade’s mind, if it’s moral clarity or dubious desires. All we can say is Spade, like the enamel lacquer of the Maltese Falcon itself, is hiding whatever is inside.

Powers and Limitations: Polhaus, Dundy, and Bryan

In the course of The Maltese Flacon, Sam Spade periodically has to deal with the official police force; specifically, Detective Tom Polhaus, Police Lieutenant Dundy, and District Attorney Bryan. However, while each character is unique (Polhaus is much more willing to work with Sam than Dundy is; Dundy himself remains quiet and frustrated, and the District Attorney knows he has to save face as a public figure), they appear less often than Brigid, Cairo, Cook, or Gutman, but their roles in the novel are important in ensuring a satisfying outcome by enabling the civil justice Spade cannot.

The generic role of the official force when the protagonist is a private investigator (or really any competing detective) is to follow the wrong track. They provide alternative hypotheses about the case and sometimes even provide relevant information but have a tendency to misinterpret it, but are, never the ones to solve it. Because of this, the detective has a tendency to keep them in the dark about certain things, lest the police interfere in the investigation, especially when it's a private detective versus the official police. In some cases, not only will they compete with the protagonist but they will actively try to impede and harass the detective.

Sometimes, the official detectives' case is tangential to the protagonist’s. The Maltese Falcon is one such case. Once Spade gets caught up in the mystery of the Falcon, solving that mystery becomes part and parcel to discovering who killed Archer and Thursby, and his lack of sympathy makes us almost forget Archer until the very end when Spade reminds Brigid about it. For Spade, finding the Falcon meant finding out who killed his partner. Polhaus and Dundy never seek the Falcon. They don't even learn about it until the end.

Which begs the question: had they known, could they have done anything about the Falcon?

Polhaus, Dundy, and Bryan focus on Thursby's past as a gambler's bodyguard, an aspect of Thursby's background Spade learns from them, but it never directly affects Spade's investigation (that Thursby's Webley had killed Archer, though, Spade does use). Spade, on the other hand, does not reveal any of his investigation, conclusions, or hypotheses to them, As Spade himself says, “Mrs. Spade didn't raise any children dippy enough to make guesses in front of a district attorney.”

Of course, come the novel's end, Spade has discovered the murderers and found (or rather received) the Falcon, effectively doing Polhaus and Dundy's jobs for them while they were looking into Thursby's past. However, Spade can only do their job up to a point. As a private investigator, Spade does not have the power or authority to actually arrest, hold, or try the guilty party, and given Spade's double dealing, it would be difficult to tell whether he's an honest or dishonest man at the end. We may wonder on that point throughout the novel, but the inclusion of Polhaus and Dundy, the official policeman, means Spade has more options than to merely side with or betray Gutman and his gang. Spade has the option to side with law and order.

Polhaus and Dundy take Spade from an extreme and situate him in the middle. Ostensibly, Spade is like Polhaus and Dundy, but the range of his powers are different from theirs. He cannot incarcerate anyone, but can choose his cases. A case the police wouldn't take, he would. Similarly, where the official police are bound by their position, Spade is, like Gutman and his gang, a little freer to move around, engage in some more underhanded dealings, lie a little easier, or even be a little more honest. Spade is obligated only to his license (the revocation of which is threatened) and his conscience and only limited to the investigative powers his license affords him. Spade needs Polhaus, Dundy, and Bryan to ensure the villains' capture and to keep Spade from being one of them.

Taking up Space: The Corpulent Casper Gutman

Of course, someone had to be the first to seek out the Falcon, the one who knows the most about it and employ others to get it and who chases them down when they betray him. This role is filled by Casper Gutman. If not for him, Joel, Wilmer, Brigid, and Thursby never would have come to San Francisco, much less crossed one another's and Spade’s paths or entered one another's offices and apartments. Spade may end it, but Gutman started it. Gutman, initially and briefly, is known only as “G”, with Brigid writing the letter in the air before Spade and Cairo, indicating the mysterious individual behind the shadowed curtain. He dictates where people go, and when someone deals with one of his men or the bird he seeks, they have to deal with him.

However, he doesn't stay in the shadows for long. He doesn't even remain all that mysterious. Most villains evade giving details and information to the heroes. This is what Brigid and Cairo did after all: neither is entirely honest with Spade about what they want and why. Gutman, however, goes out of his way to detail the history of the bird and his efforts to get it. Where others hide their cards, Gutman willingly shows his, or at least some of them. Even when Spade tries to negotiate with him, Gutman is confident he'll make his escape fine, likely because he's done it before.

And then there's his girth and his speech. While it can be easy to forget what the other characters look like and they all tend to keep their lips shut more than open, Gutman, literally and figuratively, stands out. He's fat, with references to his multiple chins, and even his name: Gutman. His size is his most distinct physical characteristic. Similarly, his speech is distinct from his fellow characters. Everyone talks differently, but they tend to do so in hushed tones. Gutman has not only highly distinct speech patterns, but the mere quantity of words exceeds that of those around him. This man loves to talk, and it's a different proclivity than Brigid whose long speeches are pleas designed to get others to help her and make others believe they're in charge.

However, his size and his speech have no bearing on the novel's outcome. Gutman isn't caught by the police because he was too fat to run away, no doors he's unable to pass through, nor is he caught because he takes too long with a speech or reveals something he shouldn't. He's too careful for that. On the other hand, Spade taunts Joel and Wilmer to rile them up and catch them off guard, and Brigid carefully uses her beauty to charm Archer and, presumably, Thursby and Captain Jacobi. But the big talk and big body don’t get such narrative privilege: Nothing suggests Gutman must be the heaviest, most garrulous character in the novel.

So why is he? On the one hand, it's his greed. The space must be his, just like the Falcon, but it's deeper than that. It's not just a need for space, but the ability to reach out and extend himself. He reached out to a Russian General, the Orient, Hong Kong, and San Francisco, crossing the world in search of the falcon, and, it's insinuated, he has the criminal connections to do so, and money never seems to be an issue for him. Nor does escaping the official police. When haggling with Spade over what to do, Gutman insists all will be well, while Spade insists otherwise. Gutman figures all will be well probably because all has been well for him up to this point.

Gutman's physical traits and habits neatly line up with his motivations and actions as a character. Comfortably corpulent, greedy, far reaching, and, as he believes, safe. He is able to be the man pulling the strings and shows his cards because he's sure he can act with impunity and evade detection and capture.

Foiling Spade: Joel Cairo

Disclaimer: I feel I need to point out that I’m discussing a novel that’s almost 90 years old, written in a less respectful time. When I discuss homosexuality, masculinity, and femininity in this post, it is in that time’s context.

Which character in The Maltese Falcon: was brought into the mystery by Brigid O'Shaughnessey, is betrayed by Brigid, forms an uneasy alliance with Gutman, and carries a gun?

At first, it might seem like Sam Spade, but Spade, early in the novel, says he doesn't like carrying a gun (18), and never does in the novel. These characteristics instead describe Joel Cairo. These simple similarities, and this one difference, suggest there are more points of comparison and contrast, more similarities and differences that set these characters in opposition to each other. In other words, the foil to one another. Not in the sense they impede or spoil one another's plans or goals but that the traits of a foil character highlight the traits of another, whether they are similar or different, usually different. If we can look at one aspect of Spade, like how he got involved in the mystery, we can find similarities in Cairo's narrative, and by contrasting these similar situations and how the characters act and are represented in them, we learn more about one character, and the other as well.

Take, for example, their first meeting, when Cairo pulls his gun on Spade in his, Spade’s, office. Spade goes along with it until he's able to attack Cairo, thrusting his elbow at him, knocking him out. Cairo may be the one with the gun, but here and elsewhere, Spade shows he's good enough with his arms and fists he can get by. Even after Spade returns Cairo's loaded gun to him, and Cairo turns it back on him, Spade lets Cairo search the room, confident he won't shoot him, nor find the bird. Spade isn't afraid to get his hands dirty, whereas Cairo is much more of a dandy, right down to the spats on his shoes and the effeminate items in his apartment. Similarly, later in the novel when Wilmer Cook needs to be restrained, Cairo (and Gutman) try to hold him down, Spade uses him like a punching bag, knocking him out and carrying him to the couch. This makes Spade a mix of masculine violence and chivalry against Cook’s more aggressive violence and homosexuality. Once Cook is on the couch, unconscious and after he wakes, Cairo is there beside him, preening over him.

Who does Sam Spade comfort? At one point or another, all the women (all four of them) are comforted by Spade, even if he does, in his late 1920's chauvinism, treat all women more or less the same. He promptly gives them pet names like “angel” and is willing to flirt and kiss them. It doesn't matter whether it's his client, secretary, lover, or someone he just met: for Spade, women are women, and women are for flirting (among other things) and protecting, similar to how Cairo treats Cook. What about how Cairo treats women? We don't know. He only ever interacts with Brigid. When he appears at Spade's office, Effie Perine is on her way out, so they interact only briefly, giving us hardly enough to read into. As for his relationship with Brigid, it's strictly business, which could, in and of itself, be why she abandoned him for Thursby: she couldn't manipulate him like she could Thursby.

While Spade and Cairo are ready foils for one another, this comparison reminds us of one of the main ways we learn about characters and the social spheres they represent: how they interact with other characters. Spade, even if he isn't an official policeman (and is hounded by the police and officials throughout the novel), ultimately does what is right and brings the villains to justice, aligning himself with the officials, in purpose if not in method. Similarly, Cairo, at novel's end, agrees to go with Gutman, literally aligning himself with the villainous criminals. Cairo may not have been the most law abiding of individuals from the beginning, but he only solidifies this standing by going with Gutman. Herein marks perhaps the primary difference and similarity between them: neither is the most honest, both are willing to break laws and rules to benefit themselves, but while they may stand near one another, they both face in opposite directions: one to justice, the other to crime.