SOURCE: "The Short Stories," in his Dashiell Hammett, Twayne Publishers, 1983, pp. 19-46.

Marling is an American educator and poet whose books include William Carlos Williams and the Painters (1982) and Raymond Chandler (1986). In the following excerpt, Marling presents a detailed analysis of the author's short fiction, emphasizing the allegorical aspects of the stories.

Hammett's Early Short Stories

Hammett's stories rise above the efforts of his fellow Black Mask writers because they are framed by Hammett's own almost insupportable tensions. On the one hand, writing afforded him a way of maintaining his aloofness and pride, of identifying and rejecting the inauthenticities he had seen. Working for the Pinkertons, he found most people false, most emotion to be tactical fabrication. The inauthenticity extended, in Hammett's view, to innocent parties, such as Fatty Arbuckle, whom Hammett found guilty on other counts. These other counts are deviations from an ideal character, of which...