The Life Of Dashiell Hammett
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
Behind every hard-boiled detective story lies the man who invented the genre — and Diane Johnson's The Life of Dashiell Hammett is the definitive portrait of one of American literature's most enigmatic and consequential figures. Johnson chronicles the turbulent life of Samuel Dashiell Hammett, the former Pinkerton detective who transformed his gritty, firsthand experience of crime and corruption into the seminal works The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, and Red Harvest, forever reshaping the landscape of American fiction. Johnson presents Hammett not merely as a literary innovator, but as a deeply contradictory man — a committed leftist who endured imprisonment for his political beliefs, a celebrated author who fell largely silent in his later years, and a lifelong companion to playwright Lillian Hellman. Her authoritative and nuanced prose uncovers the private struggles beneath the public legend, illuminating how poverty, illness, and political persecution shadowed a man whose art projected such cool, unflappable confidence. Readers left wondering whether Hammett's silence was defeat or defiance will find no easy answers — only a richer, more compelling truth.
Author: Diane Johnson
Format: Hardback
Published: 1984, Chatto & Windus / The Hogarth Press
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
Behind every hard-boiled detective story lies the man who invented the genre — and Diane Johnson's The Life of Dashiell Hammett is the definitive portrait of one of American literature's most enigmatic and consequential figures. Johnson chronicles the turbulent life of Samuel Dashiell Hammett, the former Pinkerton detective who transformed his gritty, firsthand experience of crime and corruption into the seminal works The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, and Red Harvest, forever reshaping the landscape of American fiction. Johnson presents Hammett not merely as a literary innovator, but as a deeply contradictory man — a committed leftist who endured imprisonment for his political beliefs, a celebrated author who fell largely silent in his later years, and a lifelong companion to playwright Lillian Hellman. Her authoritative and nuanced prose uncovers the private struggles beneath the public legend, illuminating how poverty, illness, and political persecution shadowed a man whose art projected such cool, unflappable confidence. Readers left wondering whether Hammett's silence was defeat or defiance will find no easy answers — only a richer, more compelling truth.