Fri 4 Dec 2020
Reviewed by Dan Stumpf: DASHIELL HAMMETT, Editor – Creeps by Night.
Posted by Steve under Editors & Anthologies , Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy[10] Comments
DASHIELL HAMMETT, Editor – Creeps by Night. The John Day Company, hardcover, 1931. Blue Ribbon Books, hardcover, 1931. Tudor Publishing Co, hardcover, 1932. World Publishing Company, hardcover, 1944. Belmont #230, paperback, 1961. The latter contains only 10 stories of the original 20. The other 10 are included in The Red Brain and Other Creepy Thrillers (Belmont #239, paperback, 1961). NOTE: See also comment #4.
Last Halloween, I found a copy of Creeps by Night, edited by Dashiell Hammett, and was greatly impressed by the obvious lack of effort that went into it. Of the 20 stories included, 18 appeared in popular magazines within a year or two of this anthology — the other two were no more than five years older — so it’s obvious no one spent .a great deal of time scouting out obscure favorites. Even Hammett’s introduction reads as if it were written with his mind firmly on his fee.
Fortunately, no collection of creepy stories from this era could be entirely without merit, and Creeps includes some fine entries by Lovecraft, Ewers, William Seabrook and others, but nothing ever gets it completely past the feel of having been thrown together for a quick buck.
Contents:
7 • Introduction (Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills) • (1931) • essay by Dashiell Hammett
9 • A Woman Alone with Her Soul • (1912) • short story by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
15 • A Rose for Emily • (1930) • short story by William Faulkner
33 • Green Thoughts • (1931) • short story by John Collier
65 • The Ghost of Alexander Perks, A.B. • (1931) • novelette by Robert Dean Frisbie
87 • The House • short story by André Maurois (trans. of “La maison”)
91 • The Kill • (1931) • short story by Peter Fleming
113 • Ten O’Clock • (1931) • short story by Philip MacDonald
143 • The Spider • novelette by Hanns Heinz Ewers (trans. of “Die Spinne” 1908)
187 • Breakdown • (1929) • short story by L. A. G. Strong
211 • The Witch’s Vengeance • (1930) • short story by W. B. Seabrook
231 • The Rat • [The Rat] • (1929) • short story by S. Fowler Wright
273 • Faith, Hope and Charity • (1930) • short story by Irvin S. Cobb
311 • Mr. Arcularis • (1931) • novelette by Conrad Aiken
347 • The Music of Erich Zann • (1922) • short story by H. P. Lovecraft
365 • The Strange Case of Mrs. Arkwright • (1928) • novelette by Harold Dearden
395 • The King of the Cats • (1929) • short story by Stephen Vincent Benét
423 • The Red Brain • (1927) • short story by Donald Wandrei
441 • The Phantom Bus • (1930) • short story by W. Elwyn Backus
453 • Beyond the Door • (1923) • short story by J. Paul Suter
483 • Perchance to Dream • (1930) • short story by Michael Joyce
505 • A Visitor from Egypt • (1930) • short story by Frank Belknap Long, Jr.
December 4th, 2020 at 8:24 pm
It does feel that almost by accident it puts together many of the finest stories of their type of the era.
December 4th, 2020 at 8:30 pm
We read “A Rose for Emily” by Faulkner in college, in a short story anthology. It is indeed “creepy”.
Conrad Aiken was a good poet. Have never read any of his fiction.
December 4th, 2020 at 8:39 pm
I have long been under the impression that most of the stories in this anthology were reprinted from WEIRD TALES. This does not seem to be so. Some are, of course, but quite a few seem to have been published earlier in more highly regarded magazines of the day, such as HARPER’S and COSMOPOLITAN.
This is just a surface observation, though. A detailed investigation of all 20 stories would seem to be order. (But not by me, not right away.)
As an example, “A Rose for Emily,” mentioned above by Mike Grost, was first published in First published in THE FORUM, 30 April 30 1930.
And, hmmm, I’ve just counted, and there are 21 stories, not 20. Where did I get that from?
December 4th, 2020 at 8:48 pm
I’ve answered my own question. Between them, the two Belmont paperbacks from 1961 include 20 of th 21 stories. The exception is “A Woman Alone with Her Soul” (1912) by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the oldest of the 21.
Thanks to ISFBb for providing an easy answer to this question.
December 4th, 2020 at 11:09 pm
Conrad Aiken’s father killed his wife and himself when Aiken was eleven. Whether it was true or not, Aiken was convinced he found their bodies. His memoir Ushant circles round the incident. As you might expect, it triggered life-long alcoholism and several horror stories.
December 5th, 2020 at 10:17 am
Often when celebrity authors are listed as the “editor”, the real editing is done by a “ghost” editor. In other words Hammett may have had very little to do with this book. They paid him for the use of his name and someone else did the work. Even the introduction may not be by Hammett but we will probably never know the real facts.
December 5th, 2020 at 10:54 am
Here’s Conrad Aiken’s sonnet “Green, green and green again”:
http://mendocinocountylibrary.blogspot.com/2010/04/april-is-poetry-month.html
And a description of a major storm:
https://www.blueridgejournal.com/poems/ca-hatt.htm
He has the word-magic.
December 6th, 2020 at 10:04 am
John D. Haefele wrote an excellent and informative essay on Creeps by Night as a guest blog for Don Herron’s Hammett website, Up and Down These Mean Streets: https://donherron.com/hammett-and-derleth/
Haefele focuses on the contribution to the collection made by August Derleth–5 of the stories he recommended were selected for inclusion.
December 6th, 2020 at 11:52 am
Thanks for the link, Terry. I hadn’t read that article before. It certainly looks as though there’s a case for Derleth being credited as a co-editor, but it’s also true that having Hammett’s name on it was a great selling point for the book.
December 9th, 2020 at 8:56 pm
[…] Speaking of Dashiell Hammett, he came a cropper again more recently, this time a victim of the Bloated Times we live in. With Adventure Books coming out at over 400 pages, movies routinely over two-and-a-half-hours long, and Comic Books that take a whole year to tell a story, I guess it had to happen to even the champion of lean, terse writing, and the latest evidence of this mindless pursuit of Bigness is Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett, “edited” – and I use the word contemptuously — by Richard Layman and Julie Rivett. […]