THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain

 

    Roughly one hundred pages long, this dark tale of lust and murder was banned in 1934 for its then-shocking depictions of sex and violence. The Postman Always Rings Twice even managed to shock fellow noir writer Raymond Chandler, who called Cain “a Proust in greasy overalls” and The Postman “the offal of literature.” Cain, who also wrote Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity, has since been recognized as one of the great noir writers, with The New York Times noting that “Cain can get down to the primary impulses of greed and sex in fewer words than any writer we know of.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce

Image
  A story with no real beginning or end (it ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence), this "book of Doublends Jined" is as remarkable for its prose as for its circular structure. Written in a fantastic dream-language, forged from polyglot puns and portmanteau words, the Wake features some of Joyce's most hilarious characters: the Irish barkeep Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, Shem the Penman, Shaun the Postman, and Anna Livia Plurabelle. Joyce's final work, Finnegan's Wake is his masterpiece of the night as Ulysses is of the day. Supreme linguistic virtuosity conjures up the dark underground worlds of sexuality and dream. Joyce undermines traditional storytelling and all official forms of English and confronts the different kinds of betrayal - cultural, political and sexual - that he saw at the heart of Irish history. Dazzlingly inventive, with passages of great lyrical beauty and humour, Finnegans Wake remains one of the most re
Read more

MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis

Image
  With Commentary by E. M. Forster, Dorothy Parker, H. L. Mencken, Lewis Mumford, Rebecca West, Sherwood Anderson, Malcolm Cowley, Alfred Kazin, Constance Rourke, and Mark Schorer. Main Street , the story of an idealistic young woman's attempts to reform her small town, brought Lewis immediate acclaim when it was published in 1920. It remains one of the essential texts of the American scene. Lewis Mumford observed: "In  Main Street  an American had at last written of our life with something of the intellectual rigor and critical detachment that had seemed so cruel and unjustified [in Charles Dickens and Matthew Arnold]. Young people had grown up in this environment, suffocated, stultified, helpless, but unable to find any reason for their spiritual discomfort. Mr. Lewis released them." Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota and graduated from Yale in 1907. In 1930 he became the first American recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Main Street
Read more

THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durrell

Image
  Lawrence Durrell's series of four novels set in Alexandria, Egypt during the 1940s. The lush and sensuous series consists of  Justine (1957)  Balthazar (1958)  Mountolive (1958)  Clea (1960). Justine ,  Balthazar  and  Mountolive  use varied viewpoints to relate a series of events in Alexandria before World War II. In  Clea , the story continues into the years during the war. One L.G. Darley is the primary observer of the events, which include events in the lives of those he loves, and those he knows. In  Justine , Darley attempts to recover from and put into perspective his recently ended affair with a woman.  Balthazar  reinterprets the romantic perspective he placed on the affair and its aftermath in  Justine , in more philosophical and intellectual terms. Mountolive  tells a story minus interpretation, and  Clea  reveals Darley's healing, and coming to love another woman.
Read more