Winston-Salem Writers has posted the final chapter of their online cooperative serial mystery, Cheerwine is Fine. On The Same Page thanks them for contributing to our programs this fall, and especially this playful and creative addition to our blog. Kudos to the fine writers who crafted the chapters for us!

And with that, On The Same Page goes back into planning mode for several months.

We hope you’ve enjoyed The Maltese Falcon this fall! It’s been a pleasure to share the Dashiell Hammett’s book with the community, and we’ve enjoyed developing programming and book discussions that brought our community’s readers together for this great read. Keep an eye out next year for the announcement of On The Same Page, 2011!

 

Image via Wikipedia

 

 

Image via Wikipedia

 

Joshua Cude is the winning entry…

…drawn from the pool of all the correct guesses sent in for our Find the Falcon Contest.  He wins a $30.00 gift card to Barnhills Books Art and Gifts. Thanks, everyone for participating.

It was a lot of fun to skulk around the community with a heavy, enamel covered bejeweled statuette and try to be inconspicuous while taking his picture. Happily, three people actually walked up to me and said, “That’s the Maltese Falcon!” and I clued them in on the reading program and the Find the Falcon contest. So here’s my advice. If you every want to meet people and strike up a conversation, walk around with a movie prop from ebay!

And if you’re interested in the original movie prop…

Click here for information about the auction of one of the three original props used in the filming of the 1941 movie.

October 12 Farewell and Fly Away

Today is The Maltese Falcon’s last day in Forsyth County, so he’s found a high place from which to say goodbye and make a take-off for the next city’s celebration.

Take your best guess, and go back and review old pictures from earlier posts and send in guesses if you haven’t, for tonight, the winner of the $30.00 gift certificate to Barnhill Books Art and Gifts will be drawn.

Stop here tomorrow for the winner’s announcement.

And as always, send us your guesses for the Falcon’s locations by using the “Contact Us” form on the left side of this page.

October 11 Leadership and a Library

Everyone is going to guess this one correctly!

As always, remember to submit your guesses for the Falcon’s locations by using the “Contact Us” form on the left hand side of the page. Include the date and the title of the photo shown in the caption.

October 8 Heart in San Francisco

Funny how so many people who leave their hearts in San Francisco end up in downtown Winston-Salem.

As always, remember to submit your guesses for the Falcon’s locations by using the “Contact Us” form on the left hand side of the page. Include the date and the title of the photo shown in the caption.

Book cover courtesy Amazon

Your blogger has just started reading in another recommended title, Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett, 1921-1960. Richard Layman, our guest speaker at On The Same Page a few weeks ago, edited this compilation with Julie Rivett, Hammett’s granddaughter.  (Published in 2001. Yes, the library has it in the collection; do ask for it. You can have it next!)

Josephine Hammett Marshall, Hammett’s younger daughter, contributed a foreword, talking about her remembrances and understanding of her father vis-à-vis his public persona and his literary legacy, and about his relationships with the people most important in his life. This foreword is a lovely–and loving–and perceptive piece of writing. I don’t know why I am relieved to know that Hammett was such a funny person, but she says he was, and I’m glad. One of the joys of On The Same Page is that it allows us to become intimate not only with a book, but with an author, and to read The Maltese Falcon is to want to know more about the man who wrote it:

 

Image via Wikipedia

 

“But if you tried to read his life from his work you’d get it wrong. Yes, there’s a piece of Sam Spade in him, the Op, Ned Beaumont, even Nick Charles, but there’s much more: the man who loved hunting, fishing, and babies, who listened to Gershwin and Haydn, who read Moon Mullins, Doc Savage, and Dostoyevsky, who was a womanizer and a Victorian father. The man I knew and the one I only knew about.” (page viii)

Her brief foreword manages to be both emotionally moving and ironic, and it inclines you to want to pick up her book Dashiell Hammett; A Daughter Remembers, which she published in 2001, simply because you want to read more of her writing, notwithstanding who she is, or about whom she was writing. Eschewing the work as a biography, a genre which she respects to a circumscribed degree, she emphasizes it as a child’s, and later as a more critical adult’s, memories. She is remembering a clearly loving, if often absent father, so there is both intense sweetness and sadness in her memories. Her control in talking about her mother and father’s relationship is pretty remarkable, yet the description of how her Mother came not to attend Hammett’s funeral is quite harrowing.

But the simpler wistfulness and quiet sadness aren’t what kept me reading. It was the controlled irony and humor and and the willingness to be fair and analytic about the people she loved. And her remark about Lillian Hellman, her father’s long-time collaborator/paramour in the second half of his life,  is among the most masterful things I have ever read: “The only solution, so far, has been to think of Lillian in the same way I think of cholesterol. There is good cholesterol, and there is bad cholesterol. They often work at odds, but they’re there in the same system, use the same name, and can’t be separated out. It’s a schizo, inadequate accommodation, but the best I have come up with.” (p.80.)

I’d love to have written that myself. Though I am thankful never to have had the need to write it.

So, since the FCPL also owns a copy of this book, take some time with it. The writing is both vigorous and restrained, yet still loving and intimate. It is loaded with pictures, and Ms. Hammett is quite direct in confessing what it is she most misses about her father, and what is is she regrets about their relationship.

October 7 Public Acclaim!

In the spirit of the Falcon’s running around our town, I’m going to give away something of local origin, and of course, we’re the library so it has to have something to do with reading! So…ta da…the prize that goes to the lucky winner of the Find The Falcon contest is going to be a $30.00 gift certificate to Barnhill’s Books Wine Art & Gifts.  I’m going to go pick it up tomorrow. So, keep sending in your guesses for the Falcon’s locations. There will be about five/six more photos total, then next Wednesday, I’d draw a prize winner from the correct entries sent in so far, and I’ll be in contact with them! Happy guessing.

October 7 Public Acclaim!

So to today’s mystery location. I’m sorry, but if this isn’t just the ULTIMATE Falcon About Town picture? How lucky am I to have found this location? How can a raptor NOT enjoy public acclaim? This is another location that deserves two photos for clues.

As always, remember to submit your guesses for the Falcon’s locations by using the “Contact Us” form on the left hand side of the page. Include the date and the title of the photo shown in the caption.

Image courtesy HauntingVisionsStock via Creative Commons

Enjoying Winston-Salem Writers serial mystery “Cheerwine is Fine”?

Chapters Five and Six are newly posted today and added to the ongoing story.

Image via Wikipedia

If you didn’t get a chance to costume up and come to the Swing Dance, OR, if you did, and want to get in costume again, visit us at Lewisville!

Sunday, October 10th 2:30 pm
Lewisville Branch Library

Have you always wanted to solve a mystery and try your hand at sleuthing?  You will get that chance at Lewisville Library’s “An Afternoon of Mystery” program on Sunday, October 10, 2010, at 2:30 p.m.  The Lewisville Library will be closed except for the program.   The auditorium will be turned into a 1920s Chicago speakeasy in order to present “The Chicago Caper or “You Dirty Rat!””  Adults are invited to wear 1920s flapper costumes (optional), and take a place at the table at S. P. Keasy’s Grill and Bar and solve the mystery!

The hostess, “Boots” Legger, will usher you to your table where her “goils” will take care of you.  Get a drink (strictly non-alcoholic) from the bar or grab a snack (heavy appetizers) and get your pencils and papers ready to collect clues from the action. Hal Coppone is dead—cruelly murdered! The suspects are Molly M. Awbsterr (a wealthy flapper), Ernie “Bet A Million” G. Ambler (a wealthy gambler), “Silky” M. Adam (wealthy young thing who likes to wear long silky gowns), Eddie “Socks” R. Gyle or “Fast Eddie”, Malissa F. “Scoop” Orrthot (young newspaper reporter), S. Treighton Harrow (US District Attorney), Anna Maria Carlotta “Torchy” Sassine (Torch singer), and Billy “The Kid” Thrower (star baseball pitcher).  Watch out for those suspicious characters and make an accusation at the end so the guilty one can be nabbed and sent to the “slammer”.

Drinks, appetizers and desserts will be provided.  Reservations are limited, so sign up soon by calling 703-2940.  Co-sponsored by the Friends of the Lewisville Library and the Lewisville Library.