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100-448: Walter Ellis Mosley (born January 12, 1952) is an American novelist , most widely recognized for his crime fiction . He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins , a black private investigator living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles , California. They are, perhaps, his most popular works. In 2020, Mosley received

200-474: A "black author". Mosley has said that he prefers to be called a novelist . He explains his desire to write about "black male heroes", saying "hardly anybody in America has written about black male heroes. There are black male protagonists and black male supporting characters, but nobody else writes about black male heroes." In 2019, after working in the writers room for the television series Snowfall , Mosley

300-754: A "very critical Marxist" who was "often contemptuous of the Soviet Union " and "bitingly sharp about the American Communist Party ", to which he was nevertheless loyal. At the beginning of 1942, he wrote the screenplay of Watch on the Rhine , based on Hellman's successful play, which received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) . But that year the Oscar went to Casablanca . In early 1942, following

400-483: A New York Times editorial challenging Misplaced Pages's categorization of American female novelists within a distinct category , which precipitated a significant amount of press coverage describing that Misplaced Pages's approach to categorization as sexism. For her, the public representation of women novelists within another category marginalizes and defines women novelists like herself outside of a field of "American novelists" dominated by men. However, other commentators, discussing

500-510: A Novelist", highlight such moral and ethical justifications for their approach to both writing novels and criticizing them. When defining her description of the role of the modernist novelist in the essay " Modern Fiction ", Virginia Woolf argues for a representation of life not interested in the exhaustive specific details represented in realism in favor of representing a "myriad of impressions" created in experience life. Her definition made in this essay, and developed in others, helped define

600-662: A Panda-Leopard , at the age of 15, which brought him considerable critical attention. Similarly, Barbara Newhall Follett 's The House Without Windows , was accepted and published in 1927 when she was 13 by the Knopf publishing house and earned critical acclaim from the New York Times , the Saturday Review , and H. L. Mencken . Occasionally, these works will achieve popular success as well. For example, though Christopher Paolini 's Eragon (published at age 15)

700-713: A San Francisco jewelers, are given in: Starting in December 1925 and ending August 1926, there appeared monthly, in Western Advertising “Books Reviews by S. H.” Hammett is using not using D. but his other initial S. for Samuel. After their initial publication in pulp magazines, most of Hammett's short stories were first collected in ten digest-sized paperbacks by Mercury Publications under an imprint, either Bestsellers Mystery , A Jonathan Press Mystery or Mercury Mystery . The stories were edited by Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay) and were abridged versions of

800-431: A Scottish identity that the upper-class British society could embrace. In American fiction, the concept of American literary regionalism ensures that many genres of novel associated with particular regions often define the reception of the novelists. For example, in writing Western novels , Zane Grey has been described as a "place-defining novelist", credited for defining the western frontier in America consciousness at

900-503: A century after the novel form first solidified at the beginning of the 19th century. Often such British regional literature captures the social and local character of a particular region in Britain, focussing on specific features, such as dialect, customs, history, and landscape (also called local colour ): "Such a locale is likely to be rural and/or provincial." Thomas Hardy 's (1840–1928) novels can be described as regional because of

1000-555: A distance) to note the order of their Coaches and Carriages..As if (presented to a Novelist) it had bin the spoyles of a Tryumph leading Captive, or a preparation to some sad Execution" According to the Google Ngrams, the term novelist first appears in the Google Books database in 1521. The difference between professional and amateur novelists often is the author's ability to publish. Many people take up novel writing as

1100-450: A distinction between novelists who report reality by "taking life as it already exists, not to report it, but to make an object, toward the end that the finished work might contain this life inside it, and offer it to the reader" and journalists, whose role is to act as "crusaders" advocating for particular positions, and using their craft as a political tool. Similarly, writing in the 1950s, Ralph Ellison in his essay "Society, Morality, and

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1200-513: A fee paid by the writer. In these settings, unlike the more traditional publishing industry, activities usually reserved for a publishing house, like the distribution and promotion of the book, become the author's responsibility. The rise of the Internet and electronic books has made self publishing far less expensive and a realistic way for authors to realize income. Novelists apply a number of different methods to writing their novels, relying on

1300-459: A fireable offence but said no further action would be taken and asked that he not use the word, again, outside of a script. Mosley chose to leave the series, quitting without informing Kurtzman, and he explained his decision in an op-ed for The New York Times , in September 2019. He did not identify Discovery as the series he was working on in the op-ed, but this was confirmed, in reports on

1400-470: A group of writers known as the " Angry young men ," which included the novelists Alan Sillitoe and Kingsley Amis , who came from the working class and who wrote about working class culture . Some novelists deliberately write for a working class audience for political ends, profiling "the working classes and working-class life; perhaps with the intention of making propaganda". Such literature, sometimes called proletarian literature , maybe associated with

1500-460: A hobby, but the difficulties of completing large scale fictional works of quality prevent the completion of novels. Once authors have completed a novel, they often will try to publish it. The publishing industry requires novels to have accessible profitable markets, thus many novelists will self-publish to circumvent the editorial control of publishers. Self-publishing has long been an option for writers, with vanity presses printing bound books for

1600-493: A home in San Francisco , where Hammett would visit on weekends. The marriage soon fell apart; however, he continued to support his wife and daughters with the income he made from his writing. Hammett was first published in 1922 in the magazine The Smart Set . Known for the authenticity and realism of his writing, he drew on his experiences as a Pinkerton operative. Hammett wrote most of his detective fiction while he

1700-413: A letter of November 25, 1937, to his daughter Mary, Hammett referred to himself and others as "we reds". He confirmed, "in a democracy all men are supposed to have an equal say in their government", but added that "their equality need not go beyond that." He also found, "under socialism there is not necessarily... any leveling of incomes." Hellman wrote that Hammett was "most certainly" a Marxist , though

1800-985: A member (and in 1941 president) of the League of American Writers, he served on its Keep America Out of War Committee in January 1940 during the period of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact . Especially in Red Harvest , literary scholars have seen a Marxist critique of the social system. One Hammett biographer, Richard Layman, calls such interpretations "imaginative", but he nonetheless objects to them, since, among other reasons, no "masses of politically dispossessed people" are in this novel. Herbert Ruhm found that contemporary left-wing media already viewed Hammett's writing with skepticism, "perhaps because his work suggests no solution: no mass-action... no individual salvation... no Emersonian reconciliation and transcendence ". In

1900-483: A mentor and encouraged him, saying: "You're Black, Jewish, with a poor upbringing; there are riches, therein." Mosley still resides in New York City . He says that he identifies as both African-American and Jewish, with strong feelings for both groups. Mosley started writing at 34 and claims to have written every day, since, penning more than forty books and often publishing two books a year. He has written in

2000-425: A nameless private investigator, The Continental Op , appeared in leading crime-fiction pulp magazine Black Mask . Both Hammett and the magazine struggled in the period when Hammett became established. Because of a disagreement with editor Philip C. Cody about money owed from previous stories, Hammett briefly stopped writing for Black Mask in 1926. He then took a full-time job as an advertisement copywriter for

2100-482: A novel's fictional content. For this reason, the environment within which a novelist works and the reception of their novels by both the public and publishers can be influenced by their demographics or identity. Similarly, some novelists have creative identities derived from their focus on different genres of fiction , such as crime , romance or historical novels . While many novelists compose fiction to satisfy personal desires, novelists and commentators often ascribe

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2200-685: A particular character based on the national identity of the authors. In some literature, national identity shapes the self-definition of many novelists. For example, in American literature , many novelists set out to create the " Great American Novel ", or a novel that defines the American experience in their time. Other novelists engage politically or socially with the identity of other members of their nationality, and thus help define that national identity. For instance, critic Nicola Minott-Ahl describes Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris directly helping in

2300-414: A particular social responsibility or role to novel writers. Many authors use such moral imperatives to justify different approaches to novel writing, including activism or different approaches to representing reality "truthfully." Novelist is a term derivative from the term "novel" describing the "writer of novels." The Oxford English Dictionary recognizes other definitions of novelist, first appearing in

2400-627: A political science degree at Johnson State College . Abandoning a doctorate in political theory, he started work programming computers . He moved to New York, in 1981, and he met the dancer and choreographer , Joy Kellman, whom he married in 1987. Kellman, like Mosley's mother, was Jewish. They separated, ten years later, and were divorced in 2001. While working for Mobil Oil , Mosley took a writing course at City College in Harlem , after being inspired by Alice Walker 's book The Color Purple . One of his tutors, there, Irish writer Edna O'Brien , became

2500-479: A remarkable achievement, the last word in atrocity, cynicism and horror. Dashiell Hammett's dialogues, in which every character is trying to deceive all the others and in which the truth slowly becomes visible through a fog of deception, can be compared only with the best in Hemingway." Hammett devoted much of his life to left-wing activism . He was a strong antifascist throughout the 1930s, and in 1937 joined

2600-489: A secondary hobby. Few novelists become literary celebrities or become very wealthy from the sale of their novels alone. Often those authors who are wealthy and successful will produce extremely popular genre fiction. Examples include authors like James Patterson , who was the highest paid author in 2010, making 70 million dollars, topping both other novelists and authors of non-fiction. Other famous literary millionaires include popular successes like J. K. Rowling , author of

2700-490: A small monetary advance before publication of their debut novel; in the rare exceptions when a large print run and high volume of sales are anticipated, the advance can be larger. However, once an author has established themselves in print, some authors can make steady income as long as they remain productive as writers. Additionally, many novelists, even published ones, will take on outside work, such as teaching creative writing in academic institutions , or leave novel writing as

2800-457: A strong focus by novelists from there on the significance of family, religion, community, the use of the Southern dialect , along with a strong sense of place. The South 's troubled history with racial issues has also continually concerned its novelists. In Latin America a literary movement called Criollismo or costumbrismo was active from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of

2900-480: A total of over 2.8 billion words. Novelists do not usually publish their first novels until later in life. However, many novelists begin writing at a young age. For example, Iain Banks began writing at eleven, and at sixteen completed his first novel, "The Hungarian Lift-Jet", about international arms dealers, "in pencil in a larger-than-foolscap log book". However, he was thirty before he published his first novel,

3000-507: A variety of fiction categories, including mystery and afrofuturist science fiction , as well as nonfiction politics. His work has been translated into 21 languages. His direct inspirations include the detective fiction of Dashiell Hammett , Graham Greene and Raymond Chandler . Mosley's fame increased in 1992 when presidential candidate Bill Clinton , a fan of murder mysteries, named Mosley as one of his favorite authors. Mosley made publishing history, in 1997, by forgoing an advance to give

3100-440: A variety of approaches to inspire creativity. Some communities actively encourage amateurs to practice writing novels to develop these unique practices, that vary from author to author. For example, the internet-based group, National Novel Writing Month , encourages people to write 50,000-word novels in the month of November, to give novelists practice completing such works. In the 2010 event, over 200,000 people took part – writing

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3200-618: A week, he attended the Victory Baptist day school, a private African-American elementary school that held pioneering classes in black history . When he was 12, his parents moved from South Central to the more comfortable, working-class west LA . He graduated from Alexander Hamilton High School , in 1970. Mosley describes his father as a deep thinker and storyteller, a "black Socrates.” His mother encouraged him to read European classics, from Dickens and Zola to Camus . He also loves Langston Hughes and Gabriel García Márquez . He

3300-576: Is based on, and nearly geographically identical to, Lafayette County, of which his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi . In addition to the geographical component of Southern literature, certain themes have appeared because of the similar histories of the Southern states in regard to slavery , the American Civil War , and Reconstruction . The conservative culture in the South has also produced

3400-551: Is dedicated to Hellman. Why he moved away from fiction is not certain; Hellman speculated in a posthumous collection of Hammett's novels, "I think, but I only think, I know a few of the reasons: he wanted to do new kind of work; he was sick for many of those years and getting sicker." In the 1940s, Hellman and he lived at her home, Hardscrabble Farm, in Pleasantville, New York . The French novelist André Gide thought highly of Hammett, stating: "I regard his Red Harvest as

3500-553: Is dedicated to his wife Josephine. For much of 1929 and 1930, he was romantically involved with Nell Martin , a writer of short stories and several novels. He dedicated The Glass Key to her, and in turn she dedicated her novel Lovers Should Marry to him. In 1931, Hammett embarked on a 30-year romantic relationship with the playwright Lillian Hellman . Though he sporadically continued to work on material, he wrote his final novel in 1934, more than 25 years before his death. The Thin Man

3600-409: Is not a question of the subject matter or political stance of a particular author, but of her gender : her position as a woman within the literary marketplace. However, the publishing market's orientation to favor the primary reading audience of women may increasingly skew the market towards female novelists; for this reason, novelist Teddy Wayne argued in a 2012 Salon article titled "The agony of

3700-585: Is particularly associated with the rural English Midlands, whereas Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) is the novelist of the Potteries in Staffordshire , or the "Five Towns", (actually six) that now make-up Stoke-on-Trent . Similarly, novelist and poet Walter Scott 's (1771–1832) contribution in creating a unified identity for Scotland and were some of the most popular in all of Europe during the subsequent century. Scott's novels were influential in recreating

3800-436: Is said to have lacked heart, yet the story he thought most of himself [ The Glass Key ] is the record of a man's devotion to a friend. He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before." Currently, 82 complete and standalone short stories are known to be written by Dashiell Hammett. They are listed below in

3900-557: The Communist Party . On May 1, 1935, Hammett joined the League of American Writers (1935–1943), whose members included Lillian Hellman, Alexander Trachtenberg of International Publishers , Frank Folsom, Louis Untermeyer , I. F. Stone , Myra Page , Millen Brand , Clifford Odets , and Arthur Miller . (Members were largely either Communist Party members or fellow travelers .) He suspended his anti-fascist activities when, as

4000-629: The Harry Potter series, Dan Brown author of The Da Vinci Code , historical novelist Bernard Cornwell , and Twilight author Stephenie Meyer . "[the novelist's] honesty is bound to the vile stake of his megalomania [...] The novelist is the sole master of his work. He is his work." Milan Kundera The personal experiences of the novelist will often shape what they write and how readers and critics will interpret their novels. Literary reception has long relied on practices of reading literature through biographical criticism , in which

4100-737: The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin . This archive includes manuscripts and personal correspondence, along with a small group of miscellaneous notes. The Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of South Carolina holds the Dashiell Hammett family papers. Hammett's relationship with Lillian Hellman was portrayed in the 1977 film Julia . Jason Robards won an Oscar for his depiction of Hammett, and Jane Fonda

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4200-559: The House Un-American Activities Committee about his own activities, but refused to cooperate with the committee. No official action was taken, but his stand caused him to be blacklisted , along with others who were blacklisted as a result of McCarthyism . Hammett became an alcoholic before working in advertising, and alcoholism continued to trouble him until 1948, when he quit under doctor's orders. However, years of heavy drinking and smoking worsened

4300-676: The Mystery Writers of America ; Red Harvest , The Glass Key and The Thin Man were also on the list. His novels and stories also had a significant influence on films, including the genres of private eye/ detective fiction , mystery thrillers, and film noir . Hammett was born near Great Mills on the "Hopewell and Aim" farm in Saint Mary's County, Maryland , to Richard Thomas Hammett and his wife Anne Bond Dashiell. His mother belonged to an old Maryland family, whose name in French

4400-543: The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, making him the first Black man to receive the honor. Mosley was born in Los Angeles, California . His mother, Ella ( née  Slatkin ), was Jewish and worked as a personnel clerk. Her ancestors had immigrated from Russia. His father, Leroy Mosley (1924–1993), was an African American from Louisiana who

4500-635: The attack on Pearl Harbor , Hammett again enlisted in the United States Army . Because he was 48 years old, had tuberculosis, and was a Communist, Hammett later stated he had "a hell of a time" being inducted into the Army. However, biographer Diane Johnson suggests that confusion over Hammett's forenames was the reason he was able to re-enlist. He served as an enlisted man in the Aleutian Islands and initially worked on cryptanalysis on

4600-451: The 16th and 17th centuries to refer to either "An innovator (in thought or belief); someone who introduces something new or who favours novelty" or "An inexperienced person; a novice." However, the OED attributes the primary contemporary meaning of "a writer of novels" as first appearing in the 1633 book "East-India Colation" by C. Farewell citing the passage "It beeing a pleasant observation (at

4700-766: The 20th century, which is considered equivalent to American literary regionalism. It used a realist style to portray the scenes, language, customs and manners of the country the writer was from, especially the lower and peasant classes, criollismo led to an original literature based on the continent's natural elements, mostly epic and foundational. It was strongly influenced by the wars of independence from Spain and also denotes how each country in its own way defines criollo , which in Latin America refers to locally-born people of Spanish ancestry. Novelists often will be assessed in contemporary criticism based on their gender or treatment of gender. Largely, this has to do with

4800-705: The Albert S. Samuels Co., a San Francisco jeweller. He was wooed back to writing for the Black Mask by Joseph Thompson Shaw, who became the new editor in the summer of 1926. Hammett dedicated his first novel, Red Harvest , to Shaw and his second novel, The Dain Curse , to Samuels. Both these novels and his third, The Maltese Falcon , and fourth, The Glass Key , were first serialized in Black Mask before being revised and edited for publication by Alfred A. Knopf . The Maltese Falcon , considered to be his best work,

4900-555: The Army as a patient at Cushman Hospital in Tacoma, Washington , where he met a nurse, Josephine Dolan, whom he married on July 7, 1921, in San Francisco. Hammett and Dolan had two daughters, Mary Jane (born 1921) and Josephine (born 1926). Shortly after the birth of their second child, health services nurses informed Dolan that, owing to Hammett's tuberculosis, she and the children should not live with him full time. Dolan rented

5000-474: The Author " that the author no longer should dictate the reception and meaning derived from their work. Other, theoretical approaches to literary criticism attempt to explore the author's unintentional influence over their work; methods like psychoanalytic theory or cultural studies , presume that the work produced by a novelist represents fundamental parts of the author's identity . Milan Kundera describes

5100-484: The Gap, Dash & Lily in 2020. The book series was made into a Netflix television series. Raymond Chandler , often considered Hammett's successor, summarized his accomplishments in his essay " The Simple Art of Murder ": "Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not with hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare, and tropical fish... He

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5200-684: The Novel", sees the novelist as needing to "re-create reality in the forms which his personal vision assumes as it plays and struggles with the vivid illusory "eidetic-like" imagery left in the mind's eye by the process of social change." However, Ellison also describes novelists of the Lost Generation , like Ernest Hemingway , not taking full advantage of the moral weight and influence available to novelists, pointing to Mark Twain and Herman Melville as better examples. A number of such essays, such as literary critic Frank Norris 's "Responsibilities of

5300-614: The Pinkertons he was sent to Butte, Montana , during the union strikes, though some researchers doubt this really happened. The agency's role in strike-breaking eventually left him disillusioned. Hammett enlisted in 1918 and served in the United States Army Ambulance Service . He was afflicted during that time with the Spanish flu and later contracted tuberculosis . He spent most of his time in

5400-636: The Southern District of New York issued subpoenas to the trustees of the CRC bail fund in an attempt to learn the whereabouts of the fugitives. Hammett testified on July 9, 1951, in front of United States District Court Judge Sylvester Ryan, facing questioning by Irving Saypol , the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York , described by Time as "the nation's number-one legal hunter of top Communists". During

5500-508: The alien and external as possible?" Dashiell Hammett Samuel Dashiell Hammett ( / ˈ d æ ʃ ə l ˈ h æ m ɪ t / DASH -əl HAM -it ; May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the characters he created are Sam Spade ( The Maltese Falcon ), Nick and Nora Charles ( The Thin Man ), The Continental Op ( Red Harvest and The Dain Curse ) and

5600-581: The amount of "$ 260,000 in negotiable government bonds" was posted "to free eleven men appealing against their convictions under the Smith Act for criminal conspiracy to teach and advocate the overthrow of the United States government by force and violence." On July 2, 1951, their appeals exhausted, four of the convicted men fled rather than surrender themselves to federal agents and begin serving their sentences. The United States District Court for

5700-404: The author's life is presumed to have influence on the topical and thematic concerns of works. Some veins of criticism use this information about the novelist to derive an understanding of the novelist's intentions within his work. However, postmodern literary critics often denounce such an approach; the most notable of these critiques comes from Roland Barthes who argues in his essay " Death of

5800-569: The beginning of the 20th century while becoming linked as an individual to his depiction of that space. Similarly, novelist such as Mark Twain , William Faulkner , Eudora Welty , and Flannery O'Connor are often describe as writing within a particular tradition of Southern literature , in which subject matter relevant to the South is associated with their own identities as authors. For example, William Faulkner set many of his short stories and novels in Yoknapatawpha County , which

5900-497: The capital needed to market books by an unknown author to the public. Responding to the difficulty of successfully writing and publishing first novels, especially at a young age, there are a number of awards for young and first time novelists to highlight exceptional works from new and/or young authors (for examples see Category:Literary awards honouring young writers and Category:First book awards ). In contemporary British and American publishing markets, most authors receive only

6000-756: The comic strip character Secret Agent X-9 . Hammett is regarded as one of the very best mystery writers. In his obituary in The New York Times , he was described as "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction." Time included Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest on its list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. In 1990, the Crime Writers' Association picked three of his five novels for their list of The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time . Five years later, The Maltese Falcon placed second on The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time as selected by

6100-584: The controversy also note that by removing such categories as "Women novelist" or "Lesbian writer" from the description of gendered or sexual minorities, the discover-ability of those authors plummet for other people who share that identity. Similarly, because of the conversations brought by feminism, examinations of masculine subjects and an author's performance of "maleness" are a new and increasingly prominent approach critical studies of novels. For example, some academics studying Victorian fiction spend considerable time examining how masculinity shapes and effects

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6200-476: The creation of French political and social identity in mid-nineteenth century France. Some novelists become intimately linked with a particular place or geographic region and therefore receive a place-based identity . In his discussion of the history of the association of particular novelists with place in British literature , critic D. C. D. Pocock, described the sense of place not developing in that canon until

6300-687: The educated middle classes. However, working men and women began publishing novels in the twentieth century. This includes in Britain Walter Greenwood 's Love on the Dole (1933), from America B. Traven 's, The Death Ship (1926) and Agnes Smedley , Daughter of Earth (1929) and from the Soviet Union Nikolay Ostrovsky 's How the Steel Was Tempered (1932). Later, in 1950s Britain, came

6400-468: The exception rather than the norm. Other critics and writers defending the merits of genre fiction often point towards King as an example of bridging the gap between popular genres and literary merit. Both literary critics and novelists question what role novelists play in society and within art. For example, Eudora Welty writing in 1965 for in her essay "Must the Novelist Crusade?" draws

6500-549: The genre or within their own interests. In describing the place within the industry, novelist Kim Wright says that many authors, especially authors who usually write literary fiction, worry about "the danger that genre is a cul-de-sac" where publishers will only publish similar genre fiction from that author because of reader expectations, "and that once a writer turns into it, he'll never get out." Similarly, very few authors start in genre fiction and move to more "literary" publications; Wright describes novelists like Stephen King as

6600-530: The hearing, Hammett refused to provide the information the government wanted, specifically the list of contributors to the bail fund, "people who might be sympathetic enough to harbor the fugitives." Instead, on every question regarding the CRC or the bail fund, Hammett declined to answer, citing the Fifth Amendment , refusing to even identify his signature or initials on CRC documents the government had subpoenaed. As soon as his testimony concluded, Hammett

6700-544: The hearings. He found himself impoverished due to a combination of the cancellation of radio programs The Adventures of Sam Spade and The Adventures of the Thin Man , and a lien on his income by the Internal Revenue Service for back taxes owed since 1943. Furthermore, his books were no longer in print. During the 1950s Hammett was investigated by Congress . He testified on March 26, 1953, before

6800-752: The highly controversial The Wasp Factory in 1984. The success of this novel enabled Banks to become a full-time novelist. Often an important writers' juvenilia , even if not published, is prized by scholars because it provides insight into an author's biography and approach to writing; for example, the Brontë family 's juvenilia that depicts their imaginary world of Gondal , currently in the British Library , has provided important information on their development as writers. Occasionally, novelists publish as early as their teens. For example, Patrick O'Brian published his first novel, Caesar: The Life Story of

6900-571: The impacts of cultural expectations of gender on the literary market, readership and authorship. Literary criticism , especially since the rise of feminist theory , pays attention to how women, historically, have experienced a very different set of writing expectations based on their gender; for example, the editors of The Feminist Companion to Literature in English point out: "Their texts emerge from and intervene in conditions usually very different from those which produced most writing by men." It

7000-548: The island of Umnak . For fear of his radical tendencies, he was transferred to the Headquarters Company where he edited an Army newspaper entitled The Adakian . In 1943, while still a member of the military, he co-authored The Battle of the Aleutians with Cpl. Robert Colodny, under the direction of an infantry intelligence officer, Major Henry W. Hall. While in the Aleutians, he developed emphysema . After

7100-589: The last four years of his life with Hellman. "Not all of that time was easy, and some of it very bad", she wrote, but, "guessing death was not too far away, I would try for something to have afterwards." Hammett died in Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan on January 10, 1961, of lung cancer , diagnosed just two months beforehand. A veteran of both world wars, Hammett is buried at Arlington National Cemetery . Many of Hammett's papers are held by

7200-443: The literary movement of modernist literature . She argues that the novelist should represent "not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; [rather] life is luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of the conscious to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of

7300-413: The male novelist" that midlist male novelists are less likely to find success than midlist female novelist, even though men tend to dominate "literary fiction" spaces. The position of women in the literary marketplace can change public conversation about novelists and their place within popular culture, leading to debates over sexism. For example, in 2013, American female novelist Amanda Filipacchi wrote

7400-531: The manuscript of Gone Fishin' to a small, independent publisher, Black Classic Press in Baltimore , run by former Black Panther Paul Coates . Mosley's first published book, Devil in a Blue Dress , was the basis of a 1995 movie starring Denzel Washington , and the following year, a 10-part abridgement of the novel by Margaret Busby , read by Paul Winfield , was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 . The world premiere of Mosley's first play, The Fall of Heaven ,

7500-841: The need for him to earn money to support the family. He left school when he was 13 years old and held several jobs before working for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency . He served as an operative for Pinkerton from 1915 to February 1922, with time off to serve in World War I . While working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency in Baltimore, he learned the trade and worked in the Continental Trust Building (now known as One Calvert Plaza). He said that while with

7600-420: The op-ed, shortly after its release. Novelist Novelists come from a variety of backgrounds and social classes, and frequently this shapes the content of their works. Public reception of a novelist's work , the literary criticism commenting on it, and the novelists' incorporation of their own experiences into works and characters can lead to the author's personal life and identity being associated with

7700-529: The order of initial publication. Unfinished writings, fragments, drafts, screen stories, and stories that were later reworked into novels are listed separately below. All 28 Continental Op stories and one unfinished story have been collected in their original unabridged forms in The Big Book of the Continental Op (2017). Examples of Hammett's advertising copy for the Albert S. Samuels Company,

7800-441: The original publications. Some of these digests were reprinted as hardcovers by World Publishing under the imprint Tower Books . The anthologies were also republished as Dell mapbacks . An important collection, The Big Knockover and Other Stories , edited by Lillian Hellman, helped revive Hammett's literary reputation in the 1960s and fostered a new series of anthologies. However, most of these used Dannay's abridged version of

7900-718: The political agendas of the Communist party or left wing sympathizers, and seen as a "device of revolution". However, the British tradition of working class literature, unlike the Russian and American, was not especially inspired by the Communist Party, but had its roots in the Chartist movement , and socialism , amongst others. Novelists are often classified by their national affiliation, suggesting that novels take on

8000-479: The release of defendants arrested for political reasons." The trustees were Hammett, who was chairman, Robert W. Dunn , and Frederick Vanderbilt Field . The CRC was designated a Communist front group by the US Attorney General . Hammett endorsed Henry A. Wallace in the 1948 United States presidential election . The CRC's bail fund gained national attention on November 4, 1949, when bail in

8100-401: The role of Hammett in the 1992 made-for-TV film Citizen Cohn . Sam Shepard played Hammett in the 1999 Emmy -nominated biographical television film Dash and Lilly along with Judy Davis as Hellman. Hammett's influence on popular culture has continued well after his death. For example, in 1975, the film The Black Bird starred George Segal in the role of Sam Spade, Jr.; the film

8200-515: The sleuths in Hammett's Thin Man series. The book was made into a film of the same name and released in 2008. Later, Rachel Cohn and David Levithan authored several books whose main characters are named for Hammett and his partner. In 2011, they published the YA suspenseful romance, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares . That was followed by the sequels The Twelve Days of Dash and Lily in 2016 and Mind

8300-399: The sole master of his work. He is his work." The close intimacy of identity with the novelist's work ensures that particular elements, whether for class, gender, sexuality, nationality, race, or place-based identity, will influence the reception of their work. Historically, because of the amount of leisure time and education required to write novels, most novelists have come from the upper or

8400-406: The stories. The first collection that prints stories in their original unedited forms is Crime Stories & Other Writings (2001) edited by Steven Marcus (especially after the third printing that incorporates the original text of This King Business ). Subsequent collections that print the original texts include Lost Stories (2005), The Hunter and Other Stories (2013), and The Big Book of

8500-462: The tensions between the novelist's own identity and the work that the author produces in his essay in The New Yorker titled "What is a novelist?"; he says that the novelist's "honesty is bound to the vile stake of his megalomania [...]The work is not simply everything a novelist writes-notebooks, diaries, articles. It is the end result of long labor on an aesthetic project[...]The novelist is

8600-456: The tuberculosis he contracted in World War I, and then, according to Hellman, "jail had made a thin man thinner, a sick man sicker ... I knew he would now always be sick." Hellman wrote that during the 1950s, Hammett became "a hermit", his decline evident in the clutter of his rented "ugly little country cottage", where "signs of sickness were all around: now the phonograph was unplayed,

8700-420: The typewriter untouched, the beloved foolish gadgets unopened in their packages." He may have meant to start a new literary life with the novel Tulip , but left it unfinished, perhaps because he was "just too ill to care, too worn out to listen to plans or read contracts. The fact of breathing, just breathing, took up all the days and nights." Hammett could no longer live alone, and they both knew it, so he spent

8800-617: The war, Hammett returned to political activism, "but he played that role with less fervour than before". He was elected president of the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) on June 5, 1946, at a meeting held at the Hotel Diplomat in New York City, and "devoted the largest portion of his working time to CRC activities". In 1946, a bail fund was created by the CRC "to be used at the discretion of three trustees to gain

8900-504: The way he makes use of these elements in relation to a part of the West of England, that he names Wessex . Other British writers that have been characterized as regional novelists, are the Brontë sisters , and writers like Mary Webb (1881–1927), Margiad Evans (1909–58) and Geraint Goodwin (1903–42), who are associate with the Welsh border region. George Eliot (1801–86) on the other hand

9000-960: The works, because of its prominence within fiction from the Victorian period. Traditionally, the publishing industry has distinguished between " literary fiction ", works lauded as achieving greater literary merit , and " genre fiction ", novels written within the expectations of genres and published as consumer products. Thus, many novelists become slotted as writers of one or the other. Novelist Kim Wright , however, notes that both publishers and traditional literary novelist are turning towards genre fiction because of their potential for financial success and their increasingly positive reception amongst critics. Wright gives examples of authors like Justin Cronin , Tom Perrotta and Colson Whitehead all making that transition. However, publishing genre novels does not always allow novelist to continue writing outside

9100-711: Was De Chiel. He had an elder sister, Aronia, and a younger brother, Richard Jr. Known as Sam, Hammett was baptized a Catholic and grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore . Hammett's family moved to Baltimore when he was four years old in 1898, and for the most part, it was the city where he lived until he left permanently in 1920 when he was 26 years old. As a teen, Hammett attended the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, but his formal education ended during his first year of high school; he dropped out in 1908 due to his father's declining health and

9200-548: Was a sequel and parody of the Maltese Falcon . The 1976 comedic film Murder by Death spoofed a number of famous literary sleuths, including several of Hammett's. The film's characters included Sam Diamond and Dick and Dora Charleston, which were parodies of Hammett's Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles. In 2006, Rachel Cohn published the YA novel, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist , whose main characters were named for

9300-568: Was a supervising custodian at a Los Angeles public school . He had worked as a clerk in the segregated US army , during the Second World War. His parents tried to marry in 1951, and while the union was legal in California, where they were living, no one would give them a marriage license . Mosley was an only child, and he ascribes his writing imagination to "an emptiness in my childhood that I filled up with fantasies.” For $ 9.50

9400-440: Was found guilty of contempt of court . Hammett served time in a West Virginia federal penitentiary, where, according to Lillian Hellman, he was assigned to clean toilets. Hellman noted in her eulogy of Hammett that he submitted to prison rather than reveal the names of the contributors to the fund because "he had come to the conclusion that a man should keep his word." By 1952, Hammett's popularity had declined as result of

9500-404: Was hired, by Alex Kurtzman , for a similar role on the third season of Star Trek: Discovery . After working on the series for three weeks, Mosley was notified by CBS of a complaint made against him by another member of the writers room for Mosley's use of the word " nigger ", while telling a story about his experience with a police officer who had used the slur. CBS told Mosley this was usually

9600-572: Was largely raised in a non-political family culture, although there were racial conflicts flaring throughout L.A., at the time. He later became more highly politicized and outspoken about racial inequalities in the US , which are a context of much of his fiction. Mosley went through a "long-haired hippie" phase, drifting around Santa Cruz and Europe. He dropped out of Goddard College , a liberal arts college in Plainfield, Vermont , and then, he earned

9700-449: Was living in San Francisco in the 1920s; streets and other locations in San Francisco are frequently mentioned in his stories. He said, "I do take most of my characters from real life." His novels were some of the first to use dialogue that sounded authentic to the era. "I distrust a man that says when . If he's got to be careful not to drink too much, it's because he's not to be trusted when he does." The bulk of his early work, featuring

9800-482: Was nominated for her portrayal of Lillian Hellman. Hammett was the subject of a 1982 prime time PBS biography, The Case of Dashiell Hammett , that won a Peabody Award and a special Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Frederic Forrest portrayed Hammett semifictionally as the protagonist in the 1982 film Hammett , based on the novel of the same name by Joe Gores . He would reprise

9900-640: Was not a great critical success, its popularity among readers placed it on the New York Times Children's Books Best Seller list for 121 weeks. First-time novelists of any age often are unable to have their works published, because of a number of reasons reflecting the inexperience of the author and the economic realities of publishers. Often authors must find advocates in the publishing industry, usually literary agents , to successfully publish their debut novels . Sometimes new novelists will self-publish , because publishing houses will not risk

10000-695: Was staged at the Playhouse in the Park , Cincinnati, Ohio , in January 2010. Mosley has served on the board of directors of the National Book Awards . He is on the board of the TransAfrica Forum . Former literature professor Harold Heft argued for Mosley's inclusion in the literary canon of Jewish-American writers. In Moment magazine, Johanna Neuman writes that black literary circles questioned whether Mosley should be considered

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