Customer Reviews

Lost Stories (The Ace Performer Collection series)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dashiell Hammett was a marvelous writer who virtually single-handedly invented the hard-boiled detective story. Once I discovered Hammett I read every piece of work I could get my hands on. At the time this consisted of his five full length novels and compilations (including The Continental Op and The Big Knockover) of some of his short stories. I never felt as if I had read enough of Hammett. The publication of newly found or little known stories is, therefore, a welcome find. "Nightmare Town" is one such collection. "The Lost Stories" is another and is an excellent discovery for any Hammett fan or any fan of good writing.

There are only 21 stories here, all found in defunct magazines (including H. L. Mencken's Smart Set) and all of which had not appeared in print since their original publication. Standing alone these 21 stories would not be sufficient to warrant a full length book. However, the editor Vince Emery, has set out these stories in chronological order and has written something of a side-by-side biography of Hammett's life and times. This may seem intrusive to those who simply want to read the stories. However, Emery's commentary is very well written and he does a very good job of putting the stories in the context of Hammett's life and of the times. After a good introduction by Joe Gores, a successful mystery writer in his own right, Emery walks the reader through Hammett's life and times. Hammett's transition from a detective struggling with tuberculosis and eking out a meager existence through military disability payments to a successful writer is set out in a concise, well-written fashion. Emery briefly describes the story and Hammett's efforts at selling that story to various publications. Emery does spend a fair amount of time dissecting Hammett's work, exploring common themes, elements, pet phrases and the like. Some may find this a bit too similar to a course in writing for their taste. I found it helpful, others may not.

The stories themselves are fascinating. They may be uneven at times but from the very first one you can see Hammett's voice. Hammett always had an ability to craft a sentence that could describe a person, his attire, or a setting that would take others paragraphs. In one story, "The Green Elephant", Hammett describes a low-level criminal: "Joe's fault, as Doc Haire had once pointed out, was that he wan an unskilled laborer in the world of crime, and therefore had to contend himself with stealing whatever came to hand a slipshod and generally unsatisfactory method."

The Lost Stories is a valuable addition to the Hammett literary canon.

Hammett fans, rejoice! This collection of "lost" stories is a real treasure.

Many of the stories are very short (one is a mere paragraph!) and the book is mostly "filler" written by editor Vince Emery but these characteristics are surprises rather than disappointments.

The stories are true Hammett and the "filler" consists of history, background and critical analysis that I found interesting and entertaining.

If you love the writing of Dashiell Hammett you need this book.

By the way, "Lost Stories" is a very handsome volume that displays well with the rest of your Hammett collection.

"Lost Stories" is a compilation of 21 long-unavailable pieces of writing by Dashiell Hammett crossed with a biography by Vince Emery that follows Hammett's life and career in between the stories. I say "pieces of writing" because only about a dozen of them could be called "stories". The pieces range from one-paragraph vignettes to the 41-page story "Laughing Masks". All originally appeared in magazines between 1922 and 1941 and have not been available in recent decades -though "Night Shade" also appears in the "Vintage Hammett" sampler. I recommend "Lost Stories" to Hammett enthusiasts and scholars, not to casual fans. Combining a biography of Hammett with assorted obscure pieces of writing gives less informed readers a misleading picture of Hammett's work, because his best and most iconic work is absent.

Mystery writer Joe Gores introduces "Lost Stories" with discussion of Hammett's influence on 20th century American writers, his style, and themes. The bulk of the book divides Hammett's life into 8 parts, introduced with biographical essays by Vince Emery. Short stories and other writings are included chronologically, in the appropriate sections, often followed by critical analysis by Emery. The first and last sections contain no stories, but relate Hammett's life before he started writing and after World War II. Emery's essays include some info that was new to me in spite of my having read several Hammett biographies. Some of the essays contain too much hyperbole for my taste, however, and the conversions of Hammett's earnings to current dollar values are exaggerated. Emery may be using the unskilled wage rate to convert the values instead of comparing purchasing power using the CPI or GDP Deflator. To estimate current purchasing power, multiply 1930s dollars by 10 or 15.

If you want to make a beeline for the stories without wading through the rest, these are my picks: "The Barber and His Wife", because it's the first story Hammett wrote. The best crime stories in this book are "The Sardonic Star of Tom Doody", "The Joke on Eloise Morey", "Laughing Masks", "The Green Elephant", and "Itchy". Two very disparate stories about a writer are "The Dimple" and "This Little Pig", which comments on a screenwriter's dilemma. "Ber-Bulu" takes place in the 1890s on a Philippine island and is Hammett's only period story.

Hammett fans owe Vince Emery a big "Thanks!" for putting this volume together. I spent a lot of delightful time going over this enjoyable book and reconsidering the origins of the detective as the focus for a story . . . rather than the mystery.

As the title of this volume suggests, these are Hammett stories that you cannot easily find elsewhere. Since they are not usually available in complete form, these are obviously not his most famous stories.

There are other available collections of the better known Hammett stories (such as The Big Knockover edited by Lillian Hellman, The Continental Op Short Story Collection edited by Steven Marcus, Nightmare Town edited by Kirby McCauley, Martin H. Greenberg and Ed Gorman, and Dashiell Hammett: Crime Stories and Other Writings edited by Steven Marcus). You'll probably like the stories in those collections better than in Lost Stories.

But after you've finished all of Hammett's novels and short stories, you'll yearn for more. And that's where Lost Stories will become a treasure for you.

This extensive volume also contains a running commentary on Hammett's life and times which will give you a good perspective on his career and family life. . . especially through the lenses of being a soldier, tubercular invalid, new husband and father, private detective, hungry writer, advertising man, famous writer, incorrigible drunk and gambler, script doctor and Communist. I found it helpful to know where he was in his life when each story was written. I also appreciated understanding how his earnings translate into buying power today.

I didn't expect a lot from these stories. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that Hammett was always a good writer . . . before he became an astonishingly good writer.

Since many of these stories are quite brief, I won't attempt to describe each one except to note which ones I especially enjoyed. The book begins with Hammett's very first story, The Barber and His Wife, which displays a powerful ability to portray character with a few actions and words. The first published story (for Smart Set) was the anecdote-length tale called The Parthian Shot. Hemingway would have admired such a story.

The Road Home was his first detective story . . . and you can already feel the power of Sam Spade in it.

By 1923, Hammett's skill as a satirist was fully developed in such stories as The Master Mind and The Sardonic Star of Tom Doody. The stories begin to take on a special quality with The Joke on Eloise Morey as he employs stream of consciousness narrative and a dark-tinged sense of humor. Some of the stories seem almost autobiographical like Holiday. Plot lines begin to emerge in stories like The Green Elephant, Laughing Masks, Itchy, Ber-Bulu and This Little Pig that have the germs of full-fledged novels in them.

I particularly commend Laughing Masks, Ber-Bulu and This Little Pig to you. They are the crown jewels of this collection.

Ardent Hammett fans will also cheer for Joe Gores' delightful introduction.

Get these stories!

The Lost Stories intersperses Hammett's stories with biographical material describing what was happening in his life at the time each story was written. And some specific stylistic analysis of what makes Hammett unique. This greatly deepens my appreciation both for the stories and for Hammett as a person. Vince Emory provides this biographical material, and his research and writing is of a very high caliber. The reader gets to follow along as Hammett's writing abilities improve and then ultimately decline. His early struggles, financially and medically, make it amazing that he ever got off the ground at all. For Hammett fans, and I know there are a good number of you out there, this is a great addition. If only for the newly released Hammett material, five stars. But with the biographical stuff gluing it all together, ten stars.

I have to perfectly honest: after the first chapter and first story, I was convinced that this book was going to be, largely, a forgettable exploration of the smaller, lesser, and perhaps even unknown works of Dashiell Hammett, arguably one of the singlemost unacknowledged literary genius of our times. Hammett's crisp, clean prose has influenced hundreds if not thousands of writers, not to mention the influence his work has had on countless readers of noir and even general crime fiction. Compiler and author Emery points out that the contemporary crime novel really owes its legacy to Hammett, who brushed aside the literary tradition of the elitist ubermensch as detectives and, instead, focused on less honest, far from perfect, flawed central characters who still managed to solve the case without tossing "justice" -- far more important to today's readers than "law" -- out the window.

However, after realizing that what truly mattered here through Emery's contribution was revisiting Hammett's artful prose not so much against the perspective of only world history but equally against the private, personal, flawed life of the author. Stories are broken up with Emery's biographical summation, and it becomes much easier to see how Hammett's own life -- the people, the places, the persuasions both good and bad -- helped contribute to the overall shape and spectacle that was to become these works and the larger works such as THE MALTESE FALCON and THE THIN MAN novels. Hammett's prose takes center stage here, but, under Emery's direction, it shares screen time with Hammett, a writer arguably as flawed as he was gifted.

The final accomplishment here is the principle reason for the five-star review: there's no way any reader can go back and enjoy any of Hammett's work WITHOUT rethinking what influenced the work. The stories will all have new meaning, and, quite possibly, you'll never read one of Hammett's handful of novels without turning back to LOST STORIES to get a better grasp of the personal context under which the tome was written.

Many good short stories here. If you haven't read Hammett, I wouldn't spend my money with this first. But if you've already read what has been available for years, you won't be disappointed with this collection.

I found one story to be particularly moving, called The Dimple.

A great deal of the book is a narrative of Hammett's life, explaining where Hammett was at (professionally/personally/geographically) when he wrote each story.

I came to read Hammett after working my way through Raymond Chandler. I have read most of Hammett's novels and loved them. This collection presents some of his short stories, some I guess not found easily. What makes this book stand out for me was the commentary by the author. He adds context to the stories from Hammett's life and points out features of the stories one would easily overlook. The book is not a biography as such but the author's comments certainly brought Hammett's life and times to life for me and I enjoyed it so much, I have read it several times over the last few years. The stories and the commentary seem fresh each time.

As a hardcore Hammett fan you are always excited about the discovery of additional Hammett stories coming back into print. Alas, these stories are a real disappointment. There's a reason they aren't in print. Short (several less than 2 pages), mostly disconnected from the Continental Op & Novels that Hammett fans love; they often simply showcase a talented writer's future, much the way some early pencil sketches done by a famous painter are intersting but not worth purchase. The book was written not so much as to present unpublished Hammett as for the author/editor to get his 15 minutes of fame. I will admit, that if you don't know much about Hammett's life the book has some value as the biographical pieces are accurate and interesting.

Perhaps all the Hammett that's worth being in print has already been printed. Put simply, my copy of this book had to be purchased shrink wrapped - and it is obvious why the book was shrinkwrapped. If you had a chance to open and review it before puchasing, you simply wouldn't pay the price.

This book is a literary biography of Hammett's writing career embedded with a collection of his "lost stories", among which are published items that aren't "stories" at all, but pieces which may be only a few paragraphs in length. Few of the actual stories are typical of the detective fiction Hammett is known for. "Ber-Bulu", for example, is a fine yarn but it comes off like a Jack London South Seas story to this reader.

I recommend this book for Hammett fanatics and completists only, but they will be rewarded with the author's knowledgable analysis of Hammett's style and common tropes in addition to Hammett's material, much of which hasn't seen the light of day since its original publication.