Reviews for A Dashiell Hammett Companion

The average rating for A Dashiell Hammett Companion based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-01-26 00:00:00 Michael Sturnick Her poems often begin in a very unassuming way, and then by the end they have punched you in the stomach. (courtesy of Mariam) --- favorite fragments of poems: pg 10 Landscape moves behind curtains, hills roll out into a plain. Last night I noticed we were going slower: a bookshelf in a suitcase, the windmill of a dusty fan, a fly on the faucet. pg 13 I open a door (not the one I open) and there's a gothic shadow all over a rusty Christmas tree leaning against a street lamp. I take a step, two steps, from the porch. A white step, a black step in the air, Everything wears bright auras and there is no perception of depth between the real tree and the unreal, between my body and its double, me. pg 21 a paper plane to nowhere pg 29 Of Putin he says, "Shitty government but its very shittiness contributes to the development of political culture, because at least there is something to oppose." A classic '60s dissident, my father couldn't live in the West. There's nothing to oppose there. He says the atmosphere of freedom makes him shrink. pg 40 The next summer I moved to another city to study literature. Are they still running through snow behind me? pg 43 Five months later he calls me crying: "She ditched me without explanation. Why?" - "I have no idea." That night she told me. "No, nothing is wrong. I'll live by myself. I like my own life, waking late, not emptying my ashtray every half an hour. Today I went into the bathroom and saw something he would have killed me for: my panties and bra on an open book of modern French poetry, and I rejoiced." pg 58 tanya I also knew that she hadn't killed herself, whatever it might look like. She simply sat on a wooden bench, an open pad in her lap, drawing the naked trees glistening white after an ice storm, a dead fountain under a crust of snow, black crows on staircase banisters. She must have warmed herself from time to time with gulps of brandy (she had developed a drinking problem when working at the hospital). So she sat for hours, oblivious to the snow and the arriving darkness, as the temperature kept falling and falling. pg 66 "How d you get them to be black and white?" pg 70 For ten years the window's turquoise square has held my eyes in its simple frame. Now, face to face with the darkening sky, what more can I say to the glass but thanks for being transparent, seamless, wide and stretching perspective across the size of the visible. pg 79 Sometimes a night is just a night. Sleeping bags move from love like dunes in the wind. pg 85 I talk in my sleep, my husband says Last night I caught the tail of a long sentence. I had dreamed of a locked iron case, a willow tree and a black sterling's nest. "These are the three main symptoms of emptiness," I heard myself say and was immediately awakened by my own voice. I didn't risk going to bed again and stayed in the kitchen until the night evaporated.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-05-01 00:00:00 Anthony Parker Jugular and operatic, Kapovich's tome is one of upheaval and disparity told through the metrics of song with disarming sincerity. Intentionally (and mostly successfully) derivative, her vignettes channel Russias' stalwart canon in their descriptions of the post-Soviet/new Russian experience. An essential piece of identity poetics.