in between class assignments over the past few months i
actually read hammett (sort-of) chronologically. i first read
the novels (that was august and september, i think). then i
tackled the short stories that are currently available in
paperback. i didn't read the stories chronologically, but,
within each book i did tackle them in chronological order. it
was a pretty rewarding experience for me, particularly to see
hammett's development as a writer, i.e. his moving from
shorter, simpler, and perhaps more earnest to a more complex,
more convoluted writer, no longer sure that the world he was
creating was worth writing about. i didn't read any of the
stuff that was published posthumously, but maybe i'll get
into that later on. i was quite bowled over by the short
stories--they get longer and longer, and become what amounts
to sort novels, whose quality equals and surpasses some of
the novels. a task that's well worth the time... brooks
>
>His plan about rereading Macdonald twigged me to
something I'd forgotten:
>a plan to try rereading all of Hammett's work in
chronological order.
>With NIGHTMARE TOWN and all the other books and
collections I don't think
>I'm missing too much of his fiction, and I thought
going through it all
>but this time in the order it was written could be
fun. Has anyone ever
>tried this? Now that so many writers work in series,
this is a pretty
>standard way to go, but it's different when tackling
a writer who wrote a
>lot before paperbacks took over.
>
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