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cian — as many observers came to feel about Huey Long. No one owes any respon
sibility to public institutions or, for that matter, the public. Unemployment, regres
sive taxation, and workers’ rights — all pressing political issues of the era — are of
no concern to elected officials. Business as usual continues in the world of The
Glass Key because gangland and city hall remain the same regardless of the out
come of elections. One corrupt administration will replace another, but graft will
keep on as before. There is no expectation that American government or casino
capitalism will become any less dishonest as long as would-be dictators like Paul
Madvig — or the real-life Huey Long in Louisiana — remain in power to make a
mockery of representative democracy, separation of powers, and due process.
Eastern Washington University
Philip Dubuisson Castille
Notes
1. Lewis’ novel appeared in October 1935, a month after Long’s assassination. But it was written earlier
that year, when Long was stepping up his campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination
in 1936.
2. Hammett met Heilman in 1930, several months after completing The Glass Key. New Orleans was
her hometown. See Layman, Selected Letters 80.
3. Hammett’s biographer Richard Layman seems too hasty when he concludes that “The Glass Key is
remarkably apolitical” (118). On the contrary the novel seems strikingly leftist in its mordant treatment
of bourgeois democracy and free enterprise. Hammett’s social themes and the anti-fascist tendencies of
the crime genre are discussed by Robert Greene in his entry on Detective Fiction in the Encyclopedia o f
the American Left 191-92.
4. Long’s misuse of power is documented in Hair’s The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times o f
Huey P. Long.
5. In The Glass Key American corruption is symbolized by illegal gambling, which functions as a
distortion of licit capitalism and sanctioned government. Following the lead of Hammett’s fiction,
many detective novels of the Thirties and Forties — and numerous film s noirs adapted from them —
continue this sardonic pattern of imagery. See Krutnik 252-53.
Works Cited
Bentley, Christopher. ‘‘Radical Anger: Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest.” American Crime Fiction:
Studies in the Genre. Ed. Brian Docherty. Basingstoke, Eng.: Macmillan P, 1988.
Betz, Frederick and Jorg Thunecke. “Sinclair Lewis’s Cautionary Tale It Can't Happen Here (1935).”
Orbis Litterarum 52.1 (1997): 35-53.
Brinckley, Alan. Voices o f Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression. New York:
Vintage, 1983.
Cunningham, Henry. “Jack Burden Investigates.” Southern Quarterly 31.1 (1992): 35-49.
Encyclopedia o f the American Left. Ed. Mari Jo and Paul Buhle and Dan Georgakas. Urbana: U of
Illinois P, 1992.
Hair, William Ivy. The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times o f Huey P. Long. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State UP, 1991.
Hammett, Dashiell. The Glass Key. 1931; New York: Vintage, 1972.
Johnson, Diane. Dashiell Hammett: A Life. New York: Random House, 1983.
Knoenagel, Axel. “The Historical Context of Sinclair Lewis’ It Can VHappen Here.” Southern Humanities
Review 29.3(1995): 221-236.