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juushikaTitle: The Postman Always Rings Twice
Author: James M. Cain
Published: New York: Vintage Books, 2010 (1934)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 98
Total Page Count: 166,932
Text Number: 489
Read Because: listed here, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: When a drifter lands a temporary job at a roadside diner, he sparks a dangerous affair with the proprietor's wife. The Postman Always Rings Twice is short, quick, and dense. This doesn't read like a first novel: the voice is strong, even quotable, without simplifying the impassioned emotions that fuel the narrative or skimping on dramatic irony. But the strong voice is a mixed blessing, because it creates a rough hardboiled tone which I suppose you either enjoy or don't (I didn't). Nonetheless, an inarguable success.
Longer thoughts, crossposted from Tumblr:
I just finished The Postman Always Rings Twice, and hardboiled has never much been my thing (and the racism and sexism fairies have paid a visit, but I suppose that goes without saying); otherwise, what a success. I admire that it can do so much in such a tight space.
I've been thinking about this list, which is where I got the book. Much of what I've written about that specific, evocative story that is The Secret History has to do with an ideal destroyed, about the rich ramshackle beauty of the weekend estate, about the cliquish Classics students falling apart from within; The Postman Always Rings Twice has a certain idealized atmosphere—that's what hardboiled is as a genre: the aesthetic of antiheroes, of sharp passions and memorable one-liners—also torn down, made messy and unenviable
but the real similarity (and there certainly is one) in tone and content is what happens between characters when murder is a concrete object between them: the way it becomes an expression of their emotions, the way it becomes a problem-solving tool (and it wouldn't have been before, not seriously), the way it lingers in and between them and overshadows their interactions, the knowledge that it could occur again. How to Get Away with Murder was about this, too.
When I watched A Simple Plan, I wrote that, in stories of co-conspiracy, the conspiracy becomes a destructive force—there aren't, and I wish there were, stories where the secret successfully binds the secret-sharers together. But here, it's not just the stress of conspiracy: it's the sudden realness of murder, the fact that everyone involved now knows they could die and could kill. The Postman Always Rings Twice does a lovely job with this—the quotable back and forth between the lovers is dense, their emotions mutable and high, even if the characters themselves aren't awfully interesting; death lies between them now, another man's, their own; the stakes are higher and what they were before is forever changed.
Author: James M. Cain
Published: New York: Vintage Books, 2010 (1934)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 98
Total Page Count: 166,932
Text Number: 489
Read Because: listed here, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: When a drifter lands a temporary job at a roadside diner, he sparks a dangerous affair with the proprietor's wife. The Postman Always Rings Twice is short, quick, and dense. This doesn't read like a first novel: the voice is strong, even quotable, without simplifying the impassioned emotions that fuel the narrative or skimping on dramatic irony. But the strong voice is a mixed blessing, because it creates a rough hardboiled tone which I suppose you either enjoy or don't (I didn't). Nonetheless, an inarguable success.
Longer thoughts, crossposted from Tumblr:
"Love, when you get fear in it, it's not love any more. It's hate."
I just finished The Postman Always Rings Twice, and hardboiled has never much been my thing (and the racism and sexism fairies have paid a visit, but I suppose that goes without saying); otherwise, what a success. I admire that it can do so much in such a tight space.
I've been thinking about this list, which is where I got the book. Much of what I've written about that specific, evocative story that is The Secret History has to do with an ideal destroyed, about the rich ramshackle beauty of the weekend estate, about the cliquish Classics students falling apart from within; The Postman Always Rings Twice has a certain idealized atmosphere—that's what hardboiled is as a genre: the aesthetic of antiheroes, of sharp passions and memorable one-liners—also torn down, made messy and unenviable
but the real similarity (and there certainly is one) in tone and content is what happens between characters when murder is a concrete object between them: the way it becomes an expression of their emotions, the way it becomes a problem-solving tool (and it wouldn't have been before, not seriously), the way it lingers in and between them and overshadows their interactions, the knowledge that it could occur again. How to Get Away with Murder was about this, too.
When I watched A Simple Plan, I wrote that, in stories of co-conspiracy, the conspiracy becomes a destructive force—there aren't, and I wish there were, stories where the secret successfully binds the secret-sharers together. But here, it's not just the stress of conspiracy: it's the sudden realness of murder, the fact that everyone involved now knows they could die and could kill. The Postman Always Rings Twice does a lovely job with this—the quotable back and forth between the lovers is dense, their emotions mutable and high, even if the characters themselves aren't awfully interesting; death lies between them now, another man's, their own; the stakes are higher and what they were before is forever changed.
