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.