American novelist (1894–1961) best known for detective and mystery classics such as the Sam Spade series (including The Maltese Falcon) and The Thin Man. TLS signed “SDH,” one page, 8 x 10.5, February 26, 1944. Letter to Florence Manash. In part: “So, years from now, when I come back to New York, weatherworn and weary from the Aleutian campaigns, and shamble into CBS looking for a job—any kind of a job—there you’ll be sitting plump and pretty at the personnel desk, demanding, ‘What experience have you had?’ I’ll mumble something about having done some broadcasting from an Army station back on the Alaskan peninsula and about having an NBC program that ran a long time, and you’ll lean back in your chair, showing your legs, and laugh, showing your teeth, and say to everybody, ‘Listen to that! He calls that experience!’ Then I won’t know what the hell to do, so I guess it’s better all around if you either quit the job before I come back or I strike CBS off my list of places to go hunting jobs. Or am I being morbid? There was a long time you didn’t write me, sister. Get your Irish up about something again? Or what? There isn’t much to add to my last report from this corner of the world except, perhaps, that the weather, if possible, worsens as it goes along. At the moment, along with other things, I edit the Post newspaper and we’ve been known to get it out wading around—for three or four hours—in eight inches of icewater, which is by no means fun, since, in addition to the coldness of the water itself, that much water in the hut makes it necessary to put out the fire if we don’t want to all go poof!” In fine condition, with intersecting folds. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope. Despite his isolation and lack of creature comforts, 1944 proved to be a personally satisfying year for Hammett. With the war in the Aleutian theater effectively over (the Japanese had withdrawn and no longer posed a threat), he started The Adakian to inform, entertain, and reflect the views of the closed off soldiers. First printed on a ditto machine, the paper gained steam and resulted in policy disputes with top brass, who sometimes surppressed information. RR Auction COA.
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