We launch the Summer of Dashiell Hammett with our deep dive on the Continental Op, the unnamed private investigator who starred in 28 stories and two novels. The San Francisco-based Op delivered a hardboiled fist to the drawing rooms, tea parties, and other twee scenarios that constituted detective fiction before his advent, changing the face of the genre forever.

We also dug into Angel Down, the most recent Pulitzer winner for fiction, and found this story of a celestial being who is dragged through the muck of World War I’s trenches compelling in spite of the gimmick that Nate didn’t like.

Works cited this episode:

Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett

The Dain Curse, Dashiell Hammett

“This King Business,” Dashiell Hammett

The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle

“The Tenth Clew,” Dashiell Hammett

Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche

Truth and Method, Hans-Georg Gadamer

Angel Down, Daniel Kraus

Herscht 07769, László Krasznahorkai

House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

Angels in America, Tony Kushner

Dracula, Bram Stoker

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

ttyl, Lauren Myracle

Ulysses, James Joyce

The Odyssey, Homer

O Brother Where Art Thou, dir. Ethan and Joel Coen

We were excited to have novelist and musician Willy Vlautin join us for a discussion about his career in both fields and his newest novel, The Left and the Lucky, which John Mulaney called “electric.” Willy covered his influences, why it was great to learn that some random lady hates him, and the interplay between his career as a songwriter and writer of fiction.

Then, what’s it like to read everything a single author wrote over just one summer? For us, of course, this means tackling crime fiction master Dashiell Hammett’s entire output. Hammett might not be on the New York Times’ “Best Summer Reads” list, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t curl up on a beach towel with his highly polished stories of violence, irony, and bootleg whiskey.

Works cited this episode:

Don’t Skip Out on Me, Willy Vlautin

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Joyce Carol Oates

The Night Always Comes, Willy Vlautin

Lean on Pete, Willy Vlautin

Northline, Willy Vlautin

A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin

The Deverry Cycle, Katharine Kerr

The Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells

Breaking Bad, created by Vince Gilligan

The Sopranos, created by David Chase

The Millennium trilogy, Stieg Larsson

The Space Trilogy, C.S. Lewis

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

iCarly, created by Dan Scheider

Executive Orders, Tom Clancy

Dombey and Sons, Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

Jazz, Toni Morrison

Sula, Toni Morrison

The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett

Spade and Archer, Joe Gores

The Bourne Identity, Robert Ludlum

We’re going to Hell with literary man-about-town Ed Simon, founder of the Pittsburgh Review of Books (with which our podcast is affiliated) and author of Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain. Ed helps us figure out why the legend of Faust still feels fresh in our world today, where nobody ever makes short-sighted deals that turn out badly in the end.

Then, we put Catcher in the Rye on trial. Does it deserve its vaunted position in the high school curriculum? And what do we want high schoolers reading, anyway, you big phony?

Ed Simon has several books out now.

Works cited this episode:

“Hypergraphia: On Prolific Writers and the Persistent Need to Produce,” Ed Simon, LitHub

“The New Fabio is Claude,” The New York Times

The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe

“Bart Sells His Soul,” The Simpsons

Hellraiser, dir. Clive Barker

Morphology of the Folk Tale, Vladimir Propp

“The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” Charlie Daniels Band

“Theophilus,” The Book of Drama, Hrotsvitha

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy D. Snyder

“High School English and the Making of American Readers,” Alexander Manshel, American Literary History

The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

“Texts Most Frequently Taught in U.S. Secondary Classrooms are Nearly Identical to List from Decades Ago,” National Council of Teachers of English

Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Crucible, Arthur Miller

Macbeth, William Shakespeare

Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Night, Elie Wiesel

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

King Dork, Frank Portman

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

Tom Brown’s School Days, Thomas Hughes

The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton

1984, George Orwell

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare