This is a first even for me, after a professional writing career that began in 1971: a book that gets negative reviews before it has been published or read by anybody. The idea that I wrote this novel as a cash grab is news to me, since my advance was in the mid four figures. As famous as THE FALCON is, it is nonetheless a book published almost a century ago. Now I learn that I'm a buzzard picking the bones of a dead author, and one of your commenters calls me a "fanboy," which at my age is kind of good to hear. My suggestion is this: when RETURN OF THE MALTESE FALCON becomes available, buy it or don't buy it -- read it or don't read it, for whatever your motivation might be. Please don't tell me what mine was.
Hey Max! I deeply appreciate you writing in -- like I mentioned in the piece, I've been a fan since I picked up the comic of ROAD TO PERDITION as a kid. I don't think anyone's questioning that you love Hammett, Spade, or any of the other authors and characters you've adapted over the years, and that RETURN OF THE MALTESE FALCON stems from that love.
When I mention 'literary grave robbing,' I'm talking more about the publishing industry's seemingly insatiable lust for strip-mining existing IP. Instead of investing in new authors and stories, they're commissioning takes on Clancy or Parker or Chandler or Conan Doyle because those seem like safe bets, similar to how movie studios seem hellbent on churning out films based on ancient IP instead of giving the greenlight to new, interesting, but riskier stuff. I think that's problematic because a.) like I said, I think there's an unnecessary dilution that comes when someone else tries to take on a famous character, and b.) it takes money and attention away from contemporary voices pushing the boundaries of whatever genre.
Again, I'm not giving RETURN OF THE MALTESE FALCON a negative review (hell, I plan on reading it when it comes out) or saying you did this purely for the money. What I *am* questioning is the whole premise of reviving dead authors' characters, and I think I have a good argument for why that isn't the best idea.
Thanks for your nice response. Hollywood in particular is guilty of choosing to endlessly sequelize "I.P." over new material. I hardly think writing a book designed to honor a novel written almost one hundred years ago -- a 20th Century classic -- is in the same category. Among my intentions is to draw attention to the original, encouraging it being read by new readers. There will be others picking Hammett's bones, public domain being a reality; I just wanted to do so (a) first, and (b) with respect to the deceased.
It will sell, no doubt about it. I like Collins when he does Quarry or Nate Heller. The temptation to step into Spade must be high, and Collins has the chops to make it work, BUT... like you said, "dilution" - it's the washer/dryer thing. That bright T-shirt fades with each laundry cycle. Our Entertainment Industrial Complex sucks all the colors out until the "product" is uniformly gray. The saddest thing for me is that Sam is reduced to a generic icon or worse "a concept" that has become entirely separate from the writer who gave him birth and made him uniquely Hammett's - the things that happened in Dash's brain and cannot be replicated. So, let's be honest, it's not a "return" it's a different animal with a hybrid DNA. Hopefully people will reread the original ...
I always feel like the better artistic path is to create something new, but if I’m honest, I can see why taking on existing IP is tempting from a money perspective (and a build-your-audience perspective).
I enjoy Collins's work and have a tentative plan to reread FALCON before reading his sequel. I am intrigued how the sequel begins just days after FALCON ends.
As far as grave-robbing the IP, I have no comment. Over the year I have swung back on forth on this issue depending on my personal attachment to original story and character. There have been some really well done BOND novels. I enjoy the HAMMER books. I've loved and hated different SHERLOCK HOLMES efforts.
I like a good particle, the Holmes character is seen everywhere both overtly & borrowed, e.g. Mr. Spock, but these characters also exist not only in the milieu the author created for them but in the milieu the author themself lived in, & staying true to THAT gets very problematic. The Dain Curse is my least favorite Hammett for many reasons, one including the persistent racism the main character is immersed in. 100% of the white characters drop a racist comment as a shibboleth in the first conversation each of them has with the detective. The detective doesn't initiate these cracks to establish his insider cred, but doesn't comment on them either out loud or in his internal monologue: it just how it is. Yeah, this still happens all the time, but writing for a modern audience to sympathize with Spade will require a modification of his internal monologuing, if not his external, unless we're drifting into the overt white racist fantasies of a Mike Hammer character beating up 3 Black guys in a bar. Be interesting to see how it's handled, or if the pastiche just follows the avenue the movies followed of simply omitting non-white characters from Spade's California (sure, Jan) altogether.
Oh! I thought I had made the error in the original piece… never mind! You make a great point — Fleming’s racism was another thing that his literary successors studiously avoided, which obviously gives those books a radically different feel than the originals. (As much as I like much of Fleming’s books, the racist bits are especially off-putting.)
I agree with your post, of course. Thanks for writing it.
Max Allan Collins can be better or worse, but he was and is essentially a fanboy writing fan fiction. Whatever Collins does to Spade can readily be understood as inessential by the connoisseur. The greater tragedy was SPADE AND ARCHER by Joe Gores from 2010. Gores was a contender: perhaps not a heavyweight, but certainly someone of a higher pedigree than Collins. (INTERFACE from 1974 is considered a bonafide classic in some circles.) SPADE AND ARCHER was sanctioned, official, accredited…and a travesty.
This is a first even for me, after a professional writing career that began in 1971: a book that gets negative reviews before it has been published or read by anybody. The idea that I wrote this novel as a cash grab is news to me, since my advance was in the mid four figures. As famous as THE FALCON is, it is nonetheless a book published almost a century ago. Now I learn that I'm a buzzard picking the bones of a dead author, and one of your commenters calls me a "fanboy," which at my age is kind of good to hear. My suggestion is this: when RETURN OF THE MALTESE FALCON becomes available, buy it or don't buy it -- read it or don't read it, for whatever your motivation might be. Please don't tell me what mine was.
Hey Max! I deeply appreciate you writing in -- like I mentioned in the piece, I've been a fan since I picked up the comic of ROAD TO PERDITION as a kid. I don't think anyone's questioning that you love Hammett, Spade, or any of the other authors and characters you've adapted over the years, and that RETURN OF THE MALTESE FALCON stems from that love.
When I mention 'literary grave robbing,' I'm talking more about the publishing industry's seemingly insatiable lust for strip-mining existing IP. Instead of investing in new authors and stories, they're commissioning takes on Clancy or Parker or Chandler or Conan Doyle because those seem like safe bets, similar to how movie studios seem hellbent on churning out films based on ancient IP instead of giving the greenlight to new, interesting, but riskier stuff. I think that's problematic because a.) like I said, I think there's an unnecessary dilution that comes when someone else tries to take on a famous character, and b.) it takes money and attention away from contemporary voices pushing the boundaries of whatever genre.
Again, I'm not giving RETURN OF THE MALTESE FALCON a negative review (hell, I plan on reading it when it comes out) or saying you did this purely for the money. What I *am* questioning is the whole premise of reviving dead authors' characters, and I think I have a good argument for why that isn't the best idea.
Thanks for your nice response. Hollywood in particular is guilty of choosing to endlessly sequelize "I.P." over new material. I hardly think writing a book designed to honor a novel written almost one hundred years ago -- a 20th Century classic -- is in the same category. Among my intentions is to draw attention to the original, encouraging it being read by new readers. There will be others picking Hammett's bones, public domain being a reality; I just wanted to do so (a) first, and (b) with respect to the deceased.
It will sell, no doubt about it. I like Collins when he does Quarry or Nate Heller. The temptation to step into Spade must be high, and Collins has the chops to make it work, BUT... like you said, "dilution" - it's the washer/dryer thing. That bright T-shirt fades with each laundry cycle. Our Entertainment Industrial Complex sucks all the colors out until the "product" is uniformly gray. The saddest thing for me is that Sam is reduced to a generic icon or worse "a concept" that has become entirely separate from the writer who gave him birth and made him uniquely Hammett's - the things that happened in Dash's brain and cannot be replicated. So, let's be honest, it's not a "return" it's a different animal with a hybrid DNA. Hopefully people will reread the original ...
I always feel like the better artistic path is to create something new, but if I’m honest, I can see why taking on existing IP is tempting from a money perspective (and a build-your-audience perspective).
I enjoy Collins's work and have a tentative plan to reread FALCON before reading his sequel. I am intrigued how the sequel begins just days after FALCON ends.
As far as grave-robbing the IP, I have no comment. Over the year I have swung back on forth on this issue depending on my personal attachment to original story and character. There have been some really well done BOND novels. I enjoy the HAMMER books. I've loved and hated different SHERLOCK HOLMES efforts.
I like a good particle, the Holmes character is seen everywhere both overtly & borrowed, e.g. Mr. Spock, but these characters also exist not only in the milieu the author created for them but in the milieu the author themself lived in, & staying true to THAT gets very problematic. The Dain Curse is my least favorite Hammett for many reasons, one including the persistent racism the main character is immersed in. 100% of the white characters drop a racist comment as a shibboleth in the first conversation each of them has with the detective. The detective doesn't initiate these cracks to establish his insider cred, but doesn't comment on them either out loud or in his internal monologue: it just how it is. Yeah, this still happens all the time, but writing for a modern audience to sympathize with Spade will require a modification of his internal monologuing, if not his external, unless we're drifting into the overt white racist fantasies of a Mike Hammer character beating up 3 Black guys in a bar. Be interesting to see how it's handled, or if the pastiche just follows the avenue the movies followed of simply omitting non-white characters from Spade's California (sure, Jan) altogether.
Oh! I thought I had made the error in the original piece… never mind! You make a great point — Fleming’s racism was another thing that his literary successors studiously avoided, which obviously gives those books a radically different feel than the originals. (As much as I like much of Fleming’s books, the racist bits are especially off-putting.)
Pastiche, not particle. JFC, I loath spellchecker/autocorrect.
Good Lord, will fix! Damn you autocorrect…
I agree with your post, of course. Thanks for writing it.
Max Allan Collins can be better or worse, but he was and is essentially a fanboy writing fan fiction. Whatever Collins does to Spade can readily be understood as inessential by the connoisseur. The greater tragedy was SPADE AND ARCHER by Joe Gores from 2010. Gores was a contender: perhaps not a heavyweight, but certainly someone of a higher pedigree than Collins. (INTERFACE from 1974 is considered a bonafide classic in some circles.) SPADE AND ARCHER was sanctioned, official, accredited…and a travesty.
I remember when Spade and Archer came out! Couldn’t bear to read it…
Very thoughtful, Nick.
Thank you!!
Thanks for sharing this with us