MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
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A life as hard-boiled as his fiction
In this extract from his new biography on the great crime fiction writer Dashiell Hammett, KEN FULLER charts a life of artistic highs and personal lows
PAUL DONOVAN recommends the fine performances in this account of the pre-war meeting between the US president and the British king
TECLYN AROD relishes an intimate celebration of jazz improvisation that mixes local and national musicians
The missing sister, the vengeful WAG, cruise ship claustrophobia, and reanimated Avengers
Three great releases of lost concerts by Duke Ellington Orchestra, John Taylor & Stan Sulzman, and Joe Henderson
To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
DASHIELL HAMMETT is sometimes portrayed as a “Marxist writer,” usually by observers who are themselves not Marxists. The truth is that he was a Marxist and a writer — although not at the same time. Thus, Hammett’s work and politics are almost, but not quite, separate subjects.
What is often misidentified as an already developed Marxist outlook in some of the stories and the novels — particularly Red Harvest — is in fact nothing more than a deepening alienation from the corrupt society in which he lived.
This alienation led Hammett, an avowed atheist, into nihilism and despair, such that by the early 1930s he was flirting with suicide.
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CHRIS MOSS joins the hunt in Argentina for the works of Poland’s most enigmatic exile
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son
The creative imagination is a weapon against barbarism, writes KENNY COYLE, who is a keynote speaker at the Manifesto Press conference, Art in the Age of Degenerative Capitalism, tomorrow at the Marx Memorial Library & Workers School in London
ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes an exuberant blend of emotion and analysis that captures the politics and contrarian nature of the French composer