I’ve been taking advantage of my vacation to read through the collected novels of the best known novelist from my home county, whose complete works I discovered on my mother-in-law’s bookshelf. Not many people know that Dashiell Hammett was born in Great Mills, Maryland, about five miles from the college where I teach. Locals report that after his departure—apparently he got out of St. Mary’s County as soon as he could and never looked back—area ministers for years held up his womanizing, his boozing, and his leftist politics as their go-to example of a sinful life.
I’d only read The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon and so jumped at the chance to read The Glass Key, The Dain Curse, and Red Harvest. Along the way, I found a good explanation for much of today’s political discourse.
Have you noticed that those who speak in ringing absolutes are often better at grabbing the spotlight than those who value nuance? Those filled with passionate intensity outshout those who regard policy questions as complex. In The Dain Curse the narrator notes that, most of the time, even thinking people feel lost in a fog. As he sees it, those who seem sure of themselves are in actuality attempting to override their inner doubts. We’d be better off, he believes, if we admitted openly how confused we actually are.
The narrator is saying this to a woman who is convinced that she is gripped by a curse. He is trying to convince her that she’s perfectly fine:
Nobody thinks clearly, no matter what they pretend. Thinking’s a dizzy business, a matter of catching as many of those foggy glimpses as you can and fitting them together the best you can. That’s why people hang on so tight to their beliefs and opinions; because, compared to the haphazard way in which they’re arrived at, even the goofiest opinion seems wonderfully clear, sane, and self-evident. And if you let it get away from you, then you’ve got to dive back into that foggy muddle to wangle yourself out another to take its place…
You’re old enough to know that everybody except very crazy people and very stupid people suspect themselves now and then—or whenever they happen to think about it—of not being exactly sane. Evident of goofiness is easily found: the more you dig into yourself, the more you turn up. Nobody’s mind could stand the sort of examination you’ve been giving yours. Going around trying to prove yourself cuckoo! It’s a wonder you haven’t driven yourself nuts.
And later:
According to me it was as foolish to try to read character from the shape of ears [the woman has no ear lobes] as from the position of stars, tea-leaves, or spit in the sand; anybody who started hunting for evidence of insanity in himself would certainly find plenty, because all but stupid minds were jumbled affairs.
Two types of peole are being criticized here. On the one hand, there are the “stupid minds”—those who never “suspect themselves now and then”—who mindlessly spout talking points. They are guaranteed to run the country into a ditch. But Hammett is also challenging people like myself who emphasize the value of reason and rational thought.
I don’t want to go too far along this line and dismiss the value of clear thinking. It means something to have science on one’s side. Policy should be guided by the fact that most scientists believe that hydrocarbons are warming the planet, that most economists believe Obama’s stimulus helped pull the United States out of recession, that most doctors believe the benefits of vaccination far outweigh any drawbacks. But translating science into politics is often a muddle and even rational people don’t always act rationally.
Maybe Hammett’s private detectives capture how life really works. Unlike Dupin or Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, Sam Spade and the others do not figure things out from some high rational plane. Rather, they jump into the crime scene and muck around. Here’s how the narrator in Red Harvest describes his method:
“Plans are all right sometimes,” I said. “And sometimes just stirring things up is all right—if you’re tough enough to survive, and keep your eyes open so you’ll see what you want when it comes to the top.”
“That ought to be good for another drink,” she said.
This narrator, like Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, is trying to set all the corrupt parties against each other so they’ll bring each other down. He compares his strategy to playing with dynamite and acknowledges that one false move could blow up in his face. Or as he puts it,
I was in a good spot if I played my hand right, and in a terrible one if I didn’t.
In other words, public policy may be more poker than a game of chess. It takes good players but no one can see all the cards, emotions run high, and there’s a fair amount of luck involved.
Further thought: There’s a passage in Red Harvest that’s a pretty good description of how the Republican right wing is taking the GOP away from the Republican establishment. For years this establishment has been relying on social wedge issues to turn out voters (like “acid, amnesty, and abortion”), only to redirect the focus back to financial issues (such as corporate tax breaks) once it attains power. Now, thanks to figures like Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz, the right wing is flexing its muscles and most centrist Republicans are terrified of being “primaried.”
In the book a mining boss uses shock troops to break a strike and then, like the GOP establishment, is upset when he has to share power with them:
The strike lasted eight months. Both sides bled plenty. The wobblies had to do their own bleeding. Old Elihu hired gunmen, strikebreakers, national guardsmen and even parts of the regular army, to do his. When the last skull had been cracked, the last rib kicked in, organized labor in Personville was a used firecracker.
But, said [labor organizer] Bill Quint, old Elihu didn’t know his Italian history. He won the strike, but he lost his hold on the city and the state. To beat the miners he had to let his hired thugs run wild. When the fight was over he couldn’t get rid of them. He had given his city to them and he wasn’t strong enough to take it away from them. Personville looked good to them and they took it over. They had won his strike for him and they took the city for their spoils. He couldn’t openly break with them. They had too much on him. He was responsible for all they had done during the strike.
If the GOP fails to win the next presidential election, this may be a good reason why.