364
STEVEN MARCUS
By the end of 1922, however, he began to break into print, with a num–
ber of small pieces in
Smart Set
and
Black Mask.
This latter, a popular
pulp fiction magazine, soon became Hammett's regular place of ap–
pearance in print, and his career and the career of the magazine tra–
versed almost identical arcs. In October 1923, the first story in which
the Continental Op appears-in his never-to-be-varied figure as
anonymous narrator-was published. From then until 1930, as Ham–
mett's writing underwent rapid and continuous development, this was
the essential (though not the exclusive) form into which his fiction was
cast. It was certainly the most successful, both in itself and in its appeal
to a rapidly growing audience of readers. By the middle years of the
1920s, Hammett was becoming known as an original talent, an in–
novator in a popular form of fiction, and as the central figure in a new
school of writing about crime-the "hard-boiled school," as it came
quickly to be called. And it was also beginning
to
be recognized as
being within its own context the structural equivalent of what Hem–
ingway and the writers who clustered naturally about Hemingway
were doing in their kind of writing during the same period.
By 1927, Hammett was ready to work on a larger scale. He began
to publish serially, in
Black Mask,
large units of fiction that were in
fact quasi-independent sections of novels. After they had been pub–
lished in the magazine, he would revise them, and they would appear
as volumes.
Red Harvest
was published as a volume in 1929, as was
The Dain Curse.
These two novels bring the Op's career to a climax
(although three more short stories featuring the Op were later
to
ap–
pear), and Hammett was rapidly becoming both well known and afflu–
ent. In 1929, he invented Sam Spade and
The Maltese Falcon
and be–
came immediately famous . This was followed at once in 1930 by
The
Glass
Key.
The Thin Man,
Hammett's last published novel, and an–
other large success, came out in 1934.
Some time during the late 1920s Hammett's marriage-two
daughters were born of it-broke up for good. His life as a writer, as he
continued to prosper, remained as intense, demanding, anarchic, and
casually self-destructive as it had been in the years of his apprentice–
ship. On the one hand, there was a great deal of heavy drinking, there
was a great deal of womanizing, and an even greater deal of compul–
sive and wild squandering of money. On the other hand, there were
rigorous bouts of self-discipline and periods of extremely intense, as–
cetic, and self-denying hard work. After 1930 these latter began
to
di-
