Maltese Mysteries

Over the years, I have read many mysteries and detective stories. From P.D. James to Wilkie Collins, from Agatha Christie and Christopher Fowler to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, they have made up perhaps 20% of my total book consumption.

Naturally, I thought Dashiell Hammett was a perfect evolution. And yet…

After finishing The Maltese Falcon  (1929), deemed by the London Times Literary Supplement as "…The best detective story we have ever read…an exceedingly well-written novel…" I find myself un-astounded. 

The plot is tight, very tight. The setting is impeccable. A week in foggy San Francisco, the late 1920s. Murder abounds; rare artifacts are lost and swapped and faked; the villain is detestable from his first three lines; the main character is dashing (heh!) and dynamic and unpredictable. 

But the book's treatment of females is really odd. I know for a fact that Lillian Hellman (female playwright, and Dash's longtime life partner and fellow political activist for 30+ years) was no shrinking violet. So why are the portrayals of women in The Maltese Falcon so perplexingly awful? 

There are three who feature prominently, all of them serving only, it would seem, as plot devices for the main character. Yes, the Detective Agency secretary is cute and tomboyish. Yes, the ex-lover takes things into her own hands and does some neat shadowing work.

Yes, yes, there is a Femme Fatale. Maybe it's just the modern age that I was born into, maybe his women were actually bold and shocking back then, but….Brigid O'Shaughnessy is pretty irritating. Clever, perhaps, but irritating. I just don't understand how such a skilled writer could so epically fall short in his rendering of female characters, especially when he had awesome real-life muses. 

I hope Dash isn't rolling in his grave. 

Despite the above, I do see why Mr. Hammett rose to fame. His writing is the epitome of the film noir genre: it birthed the era. The times were ripe for it; the gangsters, the mobsters, the espionage of WWI and WWII. Hammett had to deal with a lot of nonsense in his life, he stood up for what he believed in and was often shunned because of this. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps and had a fantastic career as a detective, and he still managed to write many well-plotted, intricate novels. *clap clap* 

I'm not sure if I'll read more of his work, but I enjoyed this brief encounter, this brush with the atmosphere of the golden city in a time of charismatic mystique and gritty glamour.  

Musings

We are told that ‘the greatest minds are the ones who go off the beaten path, who take to the road less traveled. And then I watch as literally everyone around me gets shunted into the same exact cycle of school, debt, work, marriage, retirement. Are you telling me to break out of this cycle and pursue a life that, while difficult, may be adventurous and novel? Or are you telling me to take the easy, pre-determined way and make my own little revolutions and rebellions where I can? Any historical figure that we put stock in somehow went against the norm. Yes, some were vilified in their time, but now we look back and admire them for their insight and bravery. Give me some answers, peeps. Give me some answers. Sigh

Thoughts on the Cycles of Comparison and Judgment

The ‘youths’ of today are enculturated to make comparisons. Don’t shake your head at me. You do it too. Everyone makes comparisons. It is inescapable, especially in a media-driven society such as ours. Holding yourself to your own standards is already difficult and near-impossible. Add to that the pressure of trying to comply with everyone else’s standards as well, and you might never be happy. This is my hypothesis: if we stop comparing ourselves to every living thing that walks up to us, we will be more content. (And by the way, for every person who has a skill that you admire, you’ve probably got one that they admire, too. You just can’t think of it because you’re so preoccupied with frustration and envy.)

I got a college flyer in the mail today which read: ‘It’s about being the first. The only. The best.’

It made my blood boil.

Let us stand back and look at this a moment. Are you really going into a field in which you’ll be in the top 2% of geniuses who make it big in the ‘real world’? Are you going to become famous or renowned instantaneously, like J.K. Rowling or (god forbid) Taylor Swift? Is that a realistic expectation?

Because I can guarantee (unless you are VERY unique) for every one person we hear about in the headlines making it big, there are at least a million people out there who aren’t. Some people just have the friends, make the connections, are in the right place at the right time.

Chances are, you are not going to be ‘the first, the only, the best’ in whatever you are doing. The only sane course of action is to strive for what YOU want. Sure, maybe there will be a lucky break or a pleasant happening. But always hoping for something in the future or thinking that a cataclysmic event is in store doesn’t help any process.

In conclusion:

•            I don’t want to be the first, the best, the only in anything. I just want to be happy.
•      Being first, only, and best is NOT the goal of life. The goal of life is to collaborate, to support our fellow humans, to be immersed in what we care about and pursue it tirelessly and guiltlessly. The goal of life is to want the best for each other. You’re cool. I’m cool. End of subject. Move on.
•           Try to be content in your own little world, doing your own things, the things that are important to you, even if others don’t understand why.
•          Comparisons are terrible, terrible things to make. So stop making them and break the vicious cycle.

Feminism

Well, it’s been over a year since I last posted! Things have been busy. And it doesn’t look like there’s been a good rant on here for ages, either. Let’s fix that now.

There’s a lot circulating about feminism and what it actually means. All sides have something to shout at the top of their lungs, and I thought I’d add my opinions to the cacophony.

The actual meaning of feminism is dissolving. This is due in part to some factions of extreme feminists making everything more dramatic than it needs to be. But it is also due to the fact that humans love to categorize and generalize. The natural human condition is to simply throw one’s lot in with whatever resonates most. Not to step back, steady our selves, and promote a relativist look at things. What other creature on earth is so adept at deceiving itself? We create biases, and base opinions on those biases quickly. So, while people are busy taking sides and fussing, they fail to realize that we are arguing a simple matter of human rights. Man, woman, it doesn’t matter which you are, or if you’re somewhere on the spectrum in between. Both sides should be free from judgment and stereotype.

The definition of feminism is simply: “the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.” Not pointing fingers at men or putting them down or refusing to accept their help or saying, “we’d all be better off without you lot.” There are great men, and there are men who need to be enlightened. There are great women, and there are women who need to be enlightened. There’s a happy medium for everything, and it just hasn’t been discovered over the course of this conflict. Yet.

I do wonder if the word feminism can be brought back, because sometimes words become so toxic that we should let them go.

And, keeping with tradition and disregarding everything I’ve just said above, here comes the mini rant.

(Let us here note for perspective’s sake that you can dress however you want, but I personally am pretty darn conservatively minded when it comes to public modesty).

I possess a relatively unbiased opinion because I think most men are awesome BUT I have also experienced a fair share of leering and it makes me want to yell and punch things. Maybe even those men. But not all men! Generalization is the devil incarnate when it comes to political, racial, or religious issues. Actually, scratch that. ALL issues, ever.

I understand that given whatever situation-terrible role models, rough childhood, crappy high school romances, whatever-people are going to have emotional discrepancies or scarring. In the cases where men are total butts to women, there’s probably a backstory there. The problem is lack of awareness and education from an early age. The solution? I have no idea. Hate is often an easier emotion to conjure up than compassion, and changing people who are set in their ways is sometimes impossible.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that all the men in these hypothetical situations are complete stalkers, because there is a definite grey area between  “well that was blatantly creepy”  and “I feel like he was giving me a look but maybe it’s just my imagination, but then again I definitely got a creeper vibe…am I paranoid?” All it means is that some guys never had the experience of earning the right to call a woman beautiful. And that’s sad. They should go construct a proper relationship and learn from it.