Comments on: Favorite Moments in Red Harvest

By: Randy Fromm

Randy Fromm — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 04:06:32 +0000

aw . . . shucks. I wanted to put that last one up. I just re-read it this morning and thought, “What a wonderful example of the classic, B-movie, hard-boiled tough-guy. I can see Robert Mitchum saying just those words.”

Then again, it is not inconsistent with the persona Bruce Willis takes on in Last Man Standing.

It does not surprise me that you latched on to it as well . . .

By: glenl

glenl — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 01:58:12 +0000

You’re making a fine pair of clowns of us. Be still while I get up or I’ll make an opening in your head for the brains to leak in.

This is on page 97 as the fight with MacSwain comes to a close. Throughout the book the Op is described as a short boozer who shuns exercise so it is consistent that a fight would be described as a comic brawl.

By: glenl

glenl — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 01:44:57 +0000

A bullet kissed a hole in the door-frame close to my noodle.

Isn’t that the way it always is? You’ve written your reports, burned your Fatimas, had your dinner, then you come home to this? I enjoyed how he took care of the light globe without getting up — chucking a Gideon Bible at it. Maybe he had the Bible out while he was burning the Fatimas.

By: Randy Fromm

Randy Fromm — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 03:22:52 +0000

As I am presently “obsessed” with simile, I have been on the lookout for them in everything I am reading. Conrad’s similes have been known to bring tears to my eyes. Hammett’s aren’t there . . . but they are pretty good. I was particularly “taken” with this one, from our narrator, on meeting Elihu Willsson for the first time:

His eyes were round, blue, small and watery. They looked as if they were hiding behind the watery film and under the bushy white brows only until the time came to jump out and grab something. [13-14]

On first reading this, the comparatum that came to mind was that of a fish that hides itelf and lies in wait for its prey. But then I re-read the simile. The comparandum is not Willsson himself, but his eyes. Imagine the eyes jumping out to grab something . . . it is an entirely different picture.