Dashiell Hammett’s birth of the cool
Every creative endeavor, in some way, owes a debt to what’s come before. Even the new hit show you’re watching on direct tv undoubtedly takes inspiration from a variety of sources. Sometimes, these sources might be difficult to see. When you’re talking about the hardboiled noir atmosphere of The Prodigy, though, there’s one man whose inspiration can’t be denied: a Pinkerton-agent-turned-writer named Dashiell Hammett.Hammett was born in southern Maryland in 1894, but grew up in both Baltimore and Philadelphia. He dropped out of school at 13 and eventually found his way to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, where he worked from 1915 to February 1922. He also served in World War I. These experiences, along with Hammett’s anger at the role of the Pinkertons in strike-breaking, eventually led him to put down the gun and pick up the pen.Raymond Chandler, an author who started writing shortly before Hammett stopped, said of his predecessor: “He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.” Often, these scenes were dark and shocking, much like those in The Prodigy. These led to allegations that he “lacked heart.” Looking at the enduring characters he left behind, though, the opposite seems to be truehe had a knack for getting inside the hearts of varied individuals and exposing them to the world.His best-known character, Sam Spade, appeared in only one full-length novel: 1930′s The Maltese Falcon. Hammett portrayed Spade as a man with questionable morals who still maintains a type of idealism. Spade was played by Humphrey Bogart in the 1941 adaptation of The Maltese Falcon.Before Spade, Hammett created the nameless character, the Continental Op. Working for a Pinkerton analogue called the Continental Detective Agency, the Op’s namelessness symbolized his detachment from common human emotions. The complexity of the character came from the fact that the Op feared this growing detachment, even as he used it to achieve a dark kind of justice.Hammett also had a lighter side, which he displayed in his final novel, 1934′s The Thin Man. An ex-PI and his socialite wife balance drinking and gossiping with crime-solving. The characters are said to be based off of Hammett and his partner of 30 years, Lillian Hellman. Although appearing in only one novel, the characters became stars in a string of films through the 1930s and 1940s.Most every crime writer working in the hard-boiled genre today owes a debt to Hammett, but he is much more than a bygone memory. His novels, still in print, still excite and thrill, even today.