Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009

Granddaughter gives glimpse of Big Read author

By Michelle Dupler, Herald staff writer

KENNEWICK -- Julie Rivett has only two memories of her famous grandfather, author Dashiell Hammett.

Rivett is Hammett's granddaughter by his daughter, Jo Hammett, and was 3 years old when Hammett died in New York City in 1961.

She had met him just once during a week-long family trip from Southern California to visit Hammett and playwright Lillian Hellman on Martha's Vineyard off the Massachusetts coast.

The two things she remembers are that Hammett showed her how to hold her hand out flat to feed his poodles, and him taking her up into a round room in a tower to make echoing noises.

After he died, she was left with Hammett's short stories, novels and letters as her only means to get to know him.

Rivett was in Kennewick on Friday to celebrate what could be considered Hammett's greatest work -- The Maltese Falcon -- the featured book for the Mid-Columbia Libraries' Big Read in October.

The novel is considered the first in the hard-boiled detective genre, and has spawned more than 100 printed editions, two radio spin-offs, three films, countless imitations and a recent prequel, Spade & Archer, written by mystery writer Joe Gores with the permission of Hammett's literary estate.

Rivett said the estate has returned to the control of Hammett's family after years in the hands of Hellman and her estate after her death in 1984.

Hellman and Hammett were lovers for three decades, although they never married. Hellman's career was on the rise while Hammett's had halted abruptly after the publication of his last novel, The Thin Man, in 1934.

"He didn't stop writing so much as he stopped finishing," Rivett said of Hammett's literary efforts after 1934.

She said he had hoped to write a mainstream novel instead of another piece of crime fiction, but his desire to produce something great overwhelmed his ability to complete another book.

"Sometimes ambitiousness and aspiration can get in the way," she said.

Fragments of later literary attempts exist in an archive at the University of Texas at Austin, and some it appears Hammett gave to Hellman to use as the basis for her own work.

Rivett said one story referenced in Hammett's letters called My Brother Felix became the plot for Hellman's play Watch on the Rhine, later adapted into a film.

Not enough of Hammett's fragments remain to consider publishing, and Rivett said the family would be unlikely to do so out of concern for diminishing Hammett's literary reputation by releasing writings never meant for public consumption.

Hammett became a political activist after he stopped publishing, but his communist views brought him trouble during the McCarthy era of the 1950s.

He went to jail in 1951 for refusing to testify in a federal court about the location of some political fugitives. In 1953, he bumped heads with notorious Communist hunter Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who was spearheading an effort to have books written by authors with communist leanings removed from overseas libraries for servicemen.

Hammett was blacklisted and found himself under the scrutiny of the Internal Revenue Service. Rivett said at the time of his death, the IRS claimed he owed $160,000 in back taxes and the rights to all of his works were auctioned to pay the debt.

That's how Hellman and a friend picked them up for $5,000. Hellman, and later her estate, held the rights for decades until Rivett's brother began the fight to have them returned to the family.

Rivett became involved with Hammett's literary estate 12 years ago, and in 2001 edited and published her mother's memoir and a volume of Hammett's letters.

It was through those letters that she came to understand her grandfather's literary talents.

"I really developed an understanding how ambitious he was," she said. "I developed an understanding of how deep this book is."

She described The Maltese Falcon as a complex work that can offer different layers to different readers, or to the same reader on subsequent reads.

"This book is revered by crime writers but is also very well-respected by writers of all kinds because it is concisely written," she said. "It has earned a respect far beyond the mystery marketplace."

The Mid-Columbia Libraries have given out 2,500 free copies of the book during October and had a series of events celebrating the novel.

Upcoming events include:

-- Special free showings of the classic 1941 Oscar-winning film, The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade and Mary Astor as the femme fatale at 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday at Fairchild Cinemas, 5020 Convention Drive, Pasco.

-- Book discussion at 7 p.m. Thursday in Spanish at Columbia Basin College, Pasco.

* Michelle Dupler: 509-582-1543; mdupler@tricityherald.com