It's Hammer time
Mickey Spillane gave us tough-as-nails private eye Mike Hammer. For my money, that particular shamus definitely belongs up there with Chandler's Marlowe and Hammett's Spade.
Born in 1918, Mickey Spillane hailed from Brooklyn, New York. From humble beginnings (his father was a bartender) he went through school and hopped from job to job, once quite literally as a circus trampoline artist. Spillane begun to write stories as early as high school and when he met folks in the world of comic books in the early 40s, he wrote new stories every day - comics tales for Batman, Superman and others. Then came WWII and Spillane joined the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He would go on to become a fighter pilot and flight instructor.
Already quite a life, right? You ain’t seen nothing yet. His novels, most famously about hard-hitting private dick Mike Hammer, would sell in the hundreds of million copies. He would become known as the ‘king of pulp fiction’ and he’d occasionally even step in front of the camera, once even portraying Mike Hammer himself. Seems he had no talent for acting, but he most certainly brought the physique and must have been quite charismatic.
I had seen Stacy Keach as Mike Hammer in the 80s series. He’d been tough-ish, sure - but had none of the bloody pulp and guts of the real Hammer of Spillane’s novels. I had of course also seen the noir classic ‘Kiss Me Deadly’ with a Ralph Meeker delivering an excellent Mike Hammer. And just now I’ve read ‘The Big Kill’ - a 1951 first edition paperback I’ve found on Ebay. Frankly? Pulp fiction at its best.
For Mike Hammer, there was justice (and he was judge and jury, as the law tended to be in his way) and it had to be fought for by any and all means necessary. He most certainly saw himself as the good guy, the kind of good guy needed in a world gone to seed. Hammer fought the bad guys on their turf, meeting everything they threw at him fists and bullets and unrelenting grit.
Most in the literary world sneered at Mickey Spillane, calling him a homicidal paranoiac and some such, and the literati considered his novels atrociously written and everything from distasteful to nauseating. However, one particular literary giant saw it very differently: Ayn Rand very much ‘appreciated the black-and-white morality of his books’ and the two became friends. When asked who was the best living writer today in her estimation, this was her answer:
“The best living writer, from the aspect of originality, imagination, color, sense of drama, and above all, magnificent plot structure, and the writer who has been treated most unjustly by the alleged literati, is Mickey Spillane.”
Check out the 30min interview, Mike Wallace talking to both Ayn Rand and Mickey Spillane:
Eventually the literary establishment - begrudgingly, no doubt - came around. In the eighties, Spillane was given the lifetime achievement award by none other than the Private Eye Writers of America - and a decade later he receive an Edgar Allan Poe Grand Master Award. What a life, what a life. And with all of everything he also chose to marry three times and become a Jehova’s Witness later in life (I’m trying to imagine what private eye Mike Hammer would have been like if he had been a Jehova’s Witness).
The Big Kill, the old paperback on my desk right now, starts out on a rain-drenched night in dingy New York City bar. All Hammer wants is to be left alone … but then he sees a man walk into the bar. The man deposits a baby child in a booth and then, crying, he steps back out into the night. As soon as he’s out there, he is shot and killed. Hammer gets involved, shoots one of the assailants, then proceeds to take care of the baby boy and hunt down whoever is behind the murder with his singular fury. But just get the beginning - to me, it’s poetry:
“It was one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world. The rain clawed at the windows of the bar like an angry cat and tried to sneak in every time some drunk lurched in the door. The place reeked of stale beer and soggy men with enough cheap perfume thrown in to make you sick. Two drunks with a nickel between them were arguing over what to play on the juke box until a tomato in a dress that was too tight a year ago pushed the key that started off something noisy and hot. One of the drunks wanted to dance and she gave him a shove. So he danced with the other drunk. She saw me sitting there with my stool tipped back against the cigarette machine and change of a fin on the bar, decided I could afford a wet evening for two and walked over with her hips waving hello.”
Like I said, for me, Mike Hammer belongs into the pantheon of private dicks, right up there with Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, and I guess I’d include Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, too. But while other classic private eyes could be just as cool and just as rough and tough - I don’t think any of them downright reveled in their own fury, in the bloodlust boiling up, in the sheer brutal vengeance that was Mike Hammer’s life force … I think below line from ‘My Gun is Quick’ nicely makes the point:
“He couldn't lose me now or ever. I was the guy with the cowl and scythe. I had a hundred and forty black horses under me and an hour-glass in my hand, laughing like crazy until the tears rolled down my cheeks.” (from My Gun is Quick)
So if you’ve up for a bit of legendary pulp noir, grab yourself one of the novels and enjoy your Hammer time!
