The Postman Always Rings Twice

What a fantastic book. At just over 100 pages it feels as full as a book three times its size, with enough turns to keep things unpredictable the entire time. The noir sex & violence doesn't feel forced like in many later adaptations, the spiralling romance and tension is the backbone of the story, not thrown in titillation. It feels like it could have had a dozen different endings along the way, and you're almost torn between wanting to see someone make it out or to have them all punished for their sins. As the foreword notes, despite noir being adopted and immortalized by Hollywood, they couldn't actually put to screen what Cain wrote even decades after morality rules and an attempt to ban the work.
Notes on the edition: One of the show more slimmest FS volumes, yet richly and fittingly illustrated (but don't look up the illustrations as they spoil the main story beats). Fully bound in cloth with a blocked design, Abby Wove paper. show less

Considered one of the most important crime novels of the 20th century, The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain is a masterpiece of noir. This story had such shock value that it was banned upon publication in some areas of the United States and Canada. And although the title is very well known it has a mystique of it’s own as there are no postmen or doorbells in the book. Apparently Cain heard a screenwriter talk about how gut-wrenchingly anxious he was while waiting for the mail to bring him news on whether or not a script had been accepted. Cain thought this phrase captured the feeling of desperation that he wanted the book to portray.

Although slightly over 100 pages in length, this is a story that is intense and gripping. show more The inescapable fate of three people caught up in lust, greed and violence is told with such veracity that the author doesn’t need to embellish or extend his story. The reader is drawn into many emotions, including feeling somewhat sympathetic toward Frank and Cora, but underneath it all you know they have been corrupted by their desire and their willingness to take short-cuts to get what they want.

This classic piece of noir more than stands the test of time. Both Cain’s superb writing and the originality of the story ensures this tale of twisted love will continue to enthrall it’s readers. Definitely a 5 star read for me. show less

Lana Turner and John Garfield hunger for something more in Tay Garnett’s glossy soap opera noir, The Postman Always Rings Twice. Based on James M. Cain’s lusty potboiler, Turner is fantastic as the manipulative yet vulnerable Cora Smith, with Garfield matching her as the drifter who can't get Cora or her dreams out of his blood. Turner is like a white creme, icy cold on the surface but burning hot and deep with desire underneath.

Cora is a girl aware of her looks and the effect she has on men. Since she was 14 she’s had to argue with men about it. But she didn't have to argue with Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway), a much older man Cora marries for security, not love. When drifter Frank Chambers (Grafield) shows up to fill the Help show more Wanted sign at the Twin Oaks Diner the mismatched couple run together, Cora discovers she can’t live without love or passion.

Cora is a smouldering vision in white when Frank first sees her, a room full of gas that only needs a single spark to ignite it. Frank knows he can sell anything to anybody and begins to fan the flames when he talks Nick into getting a neon sign for the diner Cora wants the place to be. She tries in her own way to resist what is going to happen between she and Frank, but deep down knows that all the things she married Nick for and clings to are the things she really wants with Frank.

Cora lets him kiss her once then keeps Frank at a distance, working him into a frenzy of desire. A midnight swim seals their fate, the gas now ignited and burning out of control. By the time love is involved, Frank knows nothing can stand in the way of Cora’s dreams.

Garfield is excellent here as a guy who knows he’s signed on for a one way ride to nowhere but can’t help himself. There is a tricky D.A. (Leon Ames) onto them after a botched attempt to live out Cora’s dreams fails. Hume Cronyn is terrific as a crafty defense attorney who throws a monkey wrench into things, but an insurance policy, jealousy, and blackmail gone awry bring them back to the beach, and memories of that swim. Maybe they can even atone for their scenes, unless Fate has other plans…

Turner gives an icy hot performance here, with many long takes between she and Garfield as they are drawn to each other like moths to a flame. Much is made of director Tay Garnett framing Turner in sexy white outfits throughout the film. In her best scene, however, and the one in which she is the most strikingly beautiful, she is dressed in a black bathrobe. She is in the kitchen at the time, caressing a knife and agonizing over her dreams and what needs to be done to make them come true. When Frank walks in on her, her voice catches, her reluctance to follow through real. She tells Garfield in a quivering voice: "If you really loved me…”

Whereas Wilder’s Double Indemnity was a dark noir of twisted passion and greed set in Claifornia, Garnett’s The Postman Always Rings Twice uses the bright sunshine and beaches of Los Angeles County in the 1940s to create a soap opera noir, with the shining blonde Turner and a reluctant drifter Garfield at its center. A good glossy noir. show less

I'll admit it: a collector and a completist by nature, I read this one because it made the Modern Library's list of the one hundred best English-language novels of the twentieth century. I'm not much for crime stories or noirs, but I was pleasantly surprised by this one. One hundred years after it was written, it's short, tightly written, and, in its way, sort of shocking.

Most of the shock here comes from the sex. Sex scenes are notoriously difficult to write: they trip up some of the best authors. But the encounters between Frank and Cora -- especially the ones that happen early on -- are unbelievably intense, almost jarring. Cain is also subtle enough to depict Cora as an undeniably attractive woman without forgetting to give her a show more personality and a past. His frankness -- a willingness to show his characters' ugly sides -- extends to other aspects of his characters, too. Cora, a transplant product of the American Midwest -- is an unapologetic racist. Frank, on the other hand, often reads as charming, but has more than his share of personality flaws. A sometime hobo, he's a hedonist and the less respectable kind of free spirit. It's not just that he's a lecher, we also see him consistently resist opportunities to build something permanent, to, in other words, make something of himself. But this is California in the thirties: I'd hazard that Frank's character is meant to stand in the wild parts of the state still untouched by Anglo influence, most of which were about to be buried by an avalanche of development and internal migration. This book's about a lot more than three people in a love triangle who make a lot of disastrous choices.

I found that the problem with "The Postman Always Rings Twice" oddly enough, is that it's almost too good a noir. Or maybe that it has spawned too many imitators. Reading this one is like reading Poe: the prose still shines, but the plots have been redone so many times in so many mediums that it's difficult to be surprised by anything in the plot. I can't be sure, but it feels like this one served as a foundation for much of both film noir and the thriller genre in general. Which doesn't mean that it's prose is any less direct or efficient -- it is certainly both -- but it does mean that many readers are likely to sense the story's pulses well before they've finished reading, and perhaps even predict it's twists. There aren't many noirs or thrillers out there as good as "The Postman Always Rings Twice", but there are a lot of noirs and thrillers out there, and so whatever the novelty the book might have once held for its reader is mostly gone. Even so, even as we come up on its centennial, it's still easy to admire this book's uncompromising honesty and its almost punishing directness. Recommended, even if you're not much of a fan of the genres it helped spawn. show less

I began slipping off her blouse. "Rip me, Frank. Rip me like you did that night."
I ripped all her clothes off. She twisted and turned, slow, so they would slip out from under her. Then she closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow. Her hair was falling over her shoulders in snaky curls. Her eye was all black, and her breasts weren't drawn up and pointing at me, but soft, and spread out in two big pink splotches. She looked like the great grandmother of every whore in the world. The devil got his money's worth that night.

The great grandmother of every whore in the world...

I'm not even sure what that means, but I do understand why this novella, written in 1934, was the subject of an obscenity trial, primarily for the scene above. Tame by show more 21st century standards, the sex and violence were shocking at the time. The writing is dated -- terrible dialogue, perfectly suited for films of the era; very little character development; blatant sexism and xenophobia -- and yet, as a noir novel, it still works. show less

Classic noir novel about a drifter who falls in love with the wife of a restaurant owner, and they plot to murder him. Fast-paced, choppy sentences, quick read. There is definitely some sexism & racism mixed in here that speaks to its 1930s publication. Glad to read the well-known story though, and it definitely kept me turning the pages. I wish I could have seen a bit of depth in the character of Cora. We see her only through the drifter’s eyes.

When Cain published this work in 1934 he opened up a new field for writers, and defined a new subgenre .. the hard-boiled noir crime novel.

Frank Chambers is a drifter, who gets tossed off a truck on which he had stowed away, and winds up at the Twin Oaks Tavern. It’s a dusty little “roadside sandwich joint, like a million others in California” including a lunch counter, filling station, and a half-dozen “shacks that they called an auto court.” The owner, a Greek named Nick Papadakis, offers him a job, but Frank isn’t interested … at least not until he gets a look at Nick’s wife, Cora.
The passion between Cora and Frank is palpable. And I don’t just mean lust. They fight, slinging horrible words at one another, and are show more even physically brutal. Everything happens at breakneck speed. They coldly plan to murder The Greek, and are “saved” only by a dead cat. The reader gets the sense that despite their professed love, these two are each other’s worst enemy, and one can only keep reading to find out what the final body count will be.

It’s a fascinating story, and rapid-paced. The writing is spare and bold. There isn’t a lot of extraneous description or exposition on motives. Emotions are raw and characters act on them without much thought to consequences. Fans of today’s forensic pathology TV series and books may find this simple. BUT, put yourself back in 1934, and just go along for the ride.

You can read this slim volume in a day or two … but you’ll be thinking about it much longer. show less