Book #12

The Maltese Falcon
by Dashiell Hammett

I did the Big Read, the NEA's promotion of a classic novel, intended to be a national book club. This year it was Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, which I've never read before and which my superintendent (The near-psychotic Judith Custy) wanted us to teach to our classes (I don't think so).

Here's what was good about it: Sam Spade is a great character. The villains were outstanding, both in their strengths and especially in their weaknesses; this was one of the only books I've read that captured a realistic competence and incompetence on both sides of this equation. The villains pull a couple of great tricks, but Spade manages to manhandle almost all of them at different times with relative ease, and they say and do a couple of stupid things; and while Spade catches them in their stupidity most of the time, they did nail him with the trip down to Burlingame, and he does lose at the end. Then there were two of the best analogies I've ever seen: a fat man moving compared to a cluster of bubbles hanging off the end of the bubble pipe that blew them, and the line that something disappeared "like your fist when you open your hand." That's just a fantastic line.

Here's what was bad about it: The ending was entirely too evil. Entirely. Completely. I hate Hammett for writing it, and Americans and literati for approving of it by making the book a classic. That was a vile, horrible, cruel way to wrap this up. Gah. Now I need to read something nice to get the taste out of my mouth.

Crap -- I'm reading a book about Auschwitz. Probably not the best choice.