The Big Read: ‘You’re either in or out, for keeps!’

Mike Lunsford writes great feature pieces for the Terre Haute Tribune-Star. As you can see from the following story, he's a supporter of the Big Read and a fan of The Maltese Falcon. Thanks Mike.
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January 13, 2008

The Off Season: The Big Read: ‘You’re either in or out, for keeps!’
By Mike Lunsford
Special to the Terre Haute Tribune-Star [go here]

The next time you hear someone complaining that there’s nothing to do around here, you need not slap their face and tell ’em to “take it and like it.” Leave that to private eye Sam Spade. Instead, throw a book at them. Make it a copy of “The Maltese Falcon” while you’re at it.

Dashiell Hammett’s classic noir detective novel plays the central character in this year’s The Big Read, an “initiative” of the National Endowment for the Arts, coordinated locally by the Vigo County Public Library. As NEA Chairman Dana Gioia describes it, “The Big Read is designed to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popular culture.”

That’s a pretty tough task these days.

In a time when many Americans consider glancing through the listings of a TV Guide their daily dose of serious reading, Gioia bleakly cites a 2004 NEA report called “Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America.” The report “identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among American adults.”

The Big Read might help reverse that trend by providing us with the opportunity to read, and if we choose, discuss a single book — Hammett’s 1930 gem — in our own community.

Being an expert on Depression-era detective fiction or owning a college degree in literature is not a requirement of The Big Read. Whether you’re an avid bibliophile, or someone who thinks it’s time to put down the remote control and tackle a book for the first time since moping through “The Scarlet Letter” in high school, The Big Read is a win-win proposition.

If class discussion was never your strong suit, and you wish to avoid public literary discussion like the plague, by all means, read the book anyway, most appropriately in a dark room on a rainy night with as much of Spade’s terse vernacular in your head as possible. If you enjoy the give and take of a book discussion, then you’ll have plenty of opportunities, too, but keep it civil. Remember what Spade said: “People lose teeth talking like that. If you want to hang around, you’ll be polite.”

Chris Schellenberg — one of the most energetic proponents of reading that I know — is the person to call at the library if you have a question about The Big Read. If you like, she can place a reader’s guide (or teacher’s guide) in your hands, give you a bookmark, even hand you a helpful CD. Complete program information will be out next month, and most of the programs on which Chris and her staff are working take place in March. You can check out a copy of the book at all the library’s locations, and even more copies will be placed throughout the community.

In other words, if you want to read “The Maltese Falcon,” you’re going to have an easier time finding the book than Casper Gutman and Joel Cairo had in laying their greedy hands on the infamous “black bird.”

“Our goal is to get the entire community involved,” Schellenberg told me. “Book discussions will be held at all four library branches and other community locations. I just want everyone to know that this event only takes place with the generous participation of many community organizations. Although the library coordinates the event, it’s the varied programs at multiple locations that make it a success,” she said.

Anyone who has read this column very often knows that I love to read and that I often make my stories part of a reading bully pulpit. I read “The Maltese Falcon” a few years ago (and plan to do it again), long after I had watched director John Huston’s film masterpiece starring Humphrey Bogart and a cast of truly great character actors: Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet and Mary Astor. The beauty of Huston’s direction is that he didn’t change much of Hammett’s story for the film at all. But please, avoid taking the increasingly American way out of tackling great literature by watching only the film version and take the time to read, as Gioia says, “a brilliant literary work, as well as a thriller, a love story and a dark, dry comedy.”

I don’t want to play the spoiler here by giving too much away, but “The Maltese Falcon,” Hammett’s third book, is a relatively small and “exceedingly readable” novel that centers on a tough San Francisco private-eye who gets wrapped up in a web of lies and intrigue, all in pursuit of a black statuette once possessed by the Knights of Rhodes. Ultimately, Spade searches for the killer of his partner, Miles Archer, but because of its value and mystery, the falcon becomes the center of attention. It has changed hands many times over the centuries, and left in its wake a history of deception and death.

Hammett’s life reads like a novel, too. Born in Maryland in 1894, the writer quit school at 14, got a job with the Pinkerton Detective Service at age 21, and sent critic H.L. Mencken his first short story five years later. After writing for the pulp magazine “Black Mask,” Hammett eventually wrote five novels, including The Glass Key and The Thin Man (both produced as films, too). After divorcing his wife, he began a long affair with playwright Lillian Hellman, served a second stint in the American Army, gave up more and more of his time to politics, and eventually served six months in jail for contempt of court during the McCarthy Era. He died in 1961 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Believe me — no, I’m not the liar the book’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy is — there’s going to be plenty to do around town once The Big Read gets going full guns. There’s a 1930s cooking demonstration, an architectural walk of Terre Haute, even a “Big Party for the Big Read” on Feb. 29 at Idle Creek Banquet Center. You can call Chris at (812) 232-1113 (extensions 281 or 282) for all the details.

In reflection on his career, Hammett supposedly said that he believed he had been “as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.” But I prefer to think of reading his best book with the words of his hero, Spade, in mind.

To me, reading “The Maltese Falcon” again will be, “… uh, the stuff that dreams are made of.”

Mike Lunsford can be reached by e-mail at hickory913@aol.com, or by regular mail c/o the Tribune-Star, PO Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808.