by James M. Cain
I like reading books that have been banned at some point. It's not that the books themselves are so shocking to me usually, but that by reading them I get a window into what used to be shocking. I gain a lot of insight into various cultures by looking at their taboos through literature. The Postman Always Rings Twice was published in 1934 and promptly banned in Boston for it's mix of dark sexuality and graphically described violence.
By today's standards Postman is still pretty jarring. English slang has shifted significantly in the intervening 75 years making some of the dialog difficult to follow but the main events are pretty clear. Cora, the main female character, is a manipulative serial monogamist who jumps between two mates: Nick her Greek immigrant husband (both steady and loyal) and Frank the American ne'er-do-well who offers danger and excitement but no stability. Frank and Cora start a relationship right under her husband's nose and soon they decide to invent the perfect crime. After one failed attempt, Frank and Cora's relationship get's rocky. Things devolve from there.
The story has long supposed to be based on the real 1927 Ruth Snyder case. The Snyder case was outlined in one of my recent reads, The Poisoner's Handbook, and is why I picked up the book. However, Postman is a book that appears in any serious discussion of crime noir literature. In addition, it appears at the bottom of the Modern Library Association's list of 100 Best Novels. While I'm not sure it's quite deserving of it's status on the basis of the writing, the content does provide a unique look at the crazy out of control times around prohibition and it was seminal to the development of the hardboiled genre.
Its amazing how many of those novels included in the Modern Library Association's best 100 list, (both versions) I have read. It must have been compiled by my and my parents generation (your parent's and grandparent's). What do you think?
ReplyDeletebest lists almost always lag by 50 years or so. Partly because the Academic/Publishing Cognoscenti all tend to be in their 40's and 50's looking back to the generation before them.
ReplyDeleteThe other reason though is that it takes about 50 years to really look objectively at a work and what effect it has had.