tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post8741830129942101737..comments2024-03-28T10:31:55.774-07:00Comments on The Passing Tramp: The Mysteries You Have to Read 1--Through Thick and Through Thin: The Thin Man (1934), by Dashiell HammettThe Passing Tramphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-26090220353470182332020-06-20T11:26:24.074-07:002020-06-20T11:26:24.074-07:00Planning a film review next week. Which did you t...Planning a film review next week. Which did you think was the best of the Thin Man film mysteries. I've seen the first three and liked the second best as I recollect, though it suffers from <br /><br />SPOILER<br /><br /><br /><br />Famous Actor Murderer Syndrome--though I guess to be fair you know who wasn't actually famous at the time<br /><br /><br /><br />END SPOILERThe Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-29039229195794172952020-06-20T11:23:10.742-07:002020-06-20T11:23:10.742-07:00I said vintage mystery readers should be able to g...I said vintage mystery readers should be able to get the solution before Nick (the other Nick), because the main plot device certainly is not original! Hammett tries to obscure the gambit, but we readers are hard to fool.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-11999193348133448882020-06-20T04:54:19.078-07:002020-06-20T04:54:19.078-07:00Yeah, the plotting in the novel was purposely slop...Yeah, the plotting in the novel was purposely sloppy to make a point. But that was all lost in the acreen adaptation so that— despite all its real glories as a character comedy— it comes off as merely a poorly plotted example of the type of story the novel was criticizing. monescuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04111922576836593406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-68369502282943915232020-06-20T03:41:44.405-07:002020-06-20T03:41:44.405-07:00I enjoyed this twenty years ago. The "workman...I enjoyed this twenty years ago. The "workmanlike and thorough" mystery ... is also the same plot as R. Austin Freeman's Eye of Osiris. As you've pointed out, the hardboiled school liked their Humdrums.Nick Fullerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05668031989499870182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-35818166439496792402020-06-20T01:41:49.831-07:002020-06-20T01:41:49.831-07:00Maybe drinking helps!Maybe drinking helps!The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-36864225257711300122020-06-20T01:41:21.313-07:002020-06-20T01:41:21.313-07:00Ugh, tell me about proof reading. Try it after a ...Ugh, tell me about proof reading. Try it after a 2000 word blog post, ugh again.<br /><br />My apologies to Dickie Hall, who was Dickie Hall? So Dean was only in the last one? I've never actually seen any of the last three.<br /><br />I totally agree about the cannibalism digression. People want to argue that has some deep meaning, but it didn't require four pages of direct quotation from another book, lol.<br /><br />I love the mathematics line, reminded me of Dr. Priestley and Dr. Thorndyke, who always solved mysteries like that. My widened mystery reading since I first read Thin Man has made me like it all the more.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-78037777434206344962020-06-20T01:23:49.545-07:002020-06-20T01:23:49.545-07:00“Meant to show” “too ensconced” one day I’ll learn...“Meant to show” “too ensconced” one day I’ll learn to proofread. monescuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04111922576836593406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-53632697491710999472020-06-20T01:21:35.642-07:002020-06-20T01:21:35.642-07:00I think it shouldn’t be overlooked that the untidi...I think it shouldn’t be overlooked that the untidiness of the plot— the subversive part you note— is indeed the very thesis of the book (yes, it indeed has one). “That may be— but it’s all pretty unsatisfactory,” are not only the final words of the story, but the very point that Hammett is making— that real life (which supposedly he is showing us glimpses of here) is never as neat or symmetrical as that offered in Golden Age detection. And so Hammett purposely includes irrelevant leads (E.g. the beef blood) and unimportant tangents (I know people will find ways to justify the multi-page digression on cannibalism, but it’s not subtle clueing, it’s mean to show the kind of irrelevant digression that real life presents). <br /><br />Hammett was really to ensconced in the world of puzzle plotting to lead everything nowhere (and his follow up sequel treatments, before they were thinned out by other writers, were rather thick with traditional clueing), but the central theme of this novel is summarized by Nick’s line “when murders are committed by mathematics, you can solve them by mathematics. Most of them aren’t and this one wasn’t.” And it’s not a particularly satisfactory sense of what I refer to as sudden retrospective Illumination (the confluence of surprise and inevitability) when Nick says “it’s neat enough to send him to the chair, and that’s all that counts.”<br /><br />All that got lost in the transfer to the screen. Fortunately, what remained— the tangy relationship of Nick and Nora— Has been sufficient to keep people entertained for close to a century now. (Incidentally, the little boy in the photo is Dickie Hall, not Dean Stockwell [who didn’t play the part until Song of the Thin Man]).monescuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04111922576836593406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-13892198218933121292020-06-19T23:55:31.530-07:002020-06-19T23:55:31.530-07:00"Nick quit the detecting biz to devote himsel..."Nick quit the detecting biz to devote himself, when he isn't drinking, ... to managing his wife's business interests."<br /><br />As the Great Crash happened in between and Nora and Nick are still wealthy, he's obviously pretty good at it.Roger Allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11012987757094423896noreply@blogger.com