Add Evan Lewis to the list of people — alongside me, Terry Zobeck, Lillian Hellman —who dig the Hammett western satire “Corkscrew.” He just put up a post talking about it and the other contents of the Dell Mapback Nightmare Town, and included all the illustrations from that title. Doesn’t mention that it is the most heavily edited Op story of them all, as Terry showed us here recently in a series of three longgggg pure text posts.
For the benefit of people who don’t have access to the only two Op stories not currently in print in a book, Evan also offered to provide scans of “Death and Company” and “It” — but again doesn’t mention that Frederic Dannay cut those stories up in the edit room. If you get the scans you can hop back over here to check them against the pure text posts, linked here at “Death” and at “It” and More It.
While Dannay seems to have cut more total wordage out of “Corkscrew,” in my opinion he did much more damage in “Death and Company” — really, he ruined one of the great autobiographical in-jokes Hammett ever put in a story.
Obviously, the joke went right over Dannay’s head.
