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As for Hammett's psyche, in his own way he was as wounded as Brautigan. Hammett only wrote from 1922 to 1934, then abandoned publication to wrestle with the downside of fame, booze, Lillian Hellman and the anti-Communist witch hunts of the early 1950s. When the man died in 1961, all his novels ("The Maltese Falcon" and "The Thin Man" among others) were in print, but his great pulp shoot'em-up short stories, first published in Black Mark magazine, had been out of print for years.

It wasn't until 1966, five years after his death, that the first hardcover collection of short fiction, "The Big Knockover," was published, followed in 1974 by the splendid if not quite top-notch stories collected in "The Continental Op." And 12 years later, a long, forgotten novelette called "Woman in the Dark" was published as a short novel. When I first read "Woman in the Dark," the prose seemed fresh. Electric. Now, several years later, I have to admit that the work is really second-tier Hammett.

Now we have "Nightmare Town." In the book's introduction, William Nolan claims that this is the "largest collection of [Hammett's] shorter works and by far the most comprehensive." It's big all right. But "comprehensive" of what? Certainly not quality. It really is bargain-basement Hammett. Despite flashes of brilliant writing, almost every story is mired by corny detective-fiction conventions.

"How did you rap to Kelly?" a cop named O'Gar asks Hammett's roly-poly detective, the Continental Op. "Miss Menbrook was walking north on Leavenworth," the Op explains, "and was halfway between Bush and Pine -- when the shot was fired. She saw nobody, no cars, until she rounded the corner. Mrs. Gilmore, walking north on Jones, was about the same distance away when [Mrs. Gilmore] heard the shot, and saw nobody until she reached Pine Street. If Kelly had been telling the truth, she would have seen him on Jones Street. He said he didn't turn the corner until after the shot was fired." Give the Op a Belgian accent and he could be Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot wrapping up a traditional British mystery, the genre "Black Mask" was suppose to blow away.

I know there are still more uncollected Hammett stories, but I think this volume is it for me. My curiosity about the limits of Hammett's prose has been exhausted. Or more simply put, I suffer from Hammett burnout. A guy can only read so many car-chase-guns-firing-in-the-middle-of-the-night scenes before sniffing around for some Jane Austen to read. As for Brautigan, the "Edna" poems make Brautigan's best work seem even thinner. "Trout Fishing in America" is still a classic novel, but now I suspect that you just wouldn't want to examine it too closely.

Does my disappointment at reading Brautigan's and Hammett's leftover writings prove a larger point about the publishing of substandard posthumous work? Well, the Brautigan side of me wants every title in a writer's oeuvre to have its chance. Maybe there's a kid somewhere just discovering Brautigan who will benefit from reading his juvenilia. Then the Hammett side of me wins out. I think of all the mugs who claim a bad review in the Sunday New York Times is better than no review at all. They're wrong. They're the same jerks who say a lousy posthumous book doesn't soil a writer's reputation. Ha! Screw the kids. A tough guy's literary life stops when he croaks (if not years before then, as it did for Hammett). Nobody benefits from damaged goods. Save the posthumous stuff for eggheads in libraries.

Do I sound convincing? Let me tell you about the tigers and lambs ...
salon.com | Oct. 21, 1999

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