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language: English
country: USA
year: 1934
form: novel
genre(s): mystery
dates read: 19.7.25
James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice is a very goofy book, and I have to think that at least some of that is intentional.
this relentlessly heterosexual novel follows Frank Chambers, a “drifter” who, after taking a job at a roadside diner, starts hooking up with his boss’s wife, Cora. it was banned in 1934 for obscenity, but frankly the way Cain writes sex scenes is just kind of squalid and gross. the first time they kiss Chambers describes “mash[ing]” his lips against Cora’s, which apparently is supposed to be erotic. anyway, after a few months of this they decide they’re in love, and Cora decides that the only way out of her marriage is for them to murder her husband. the remainder of the novel deals with the murder and the legal and interpersonal aftermath.
the book is deeply sexist both through Chambers’s perspective and in that everyone around Cora is constantly manipulating her. it is racist, though in a less foregrounded way apart from Cora’s description of her husband, who is Greek. it’s still early days for noir, I guess, and in any case the novel is so relentlessly heterosexual that we get no hint of gay people and so no homophobia.
the book has two saving graces. first, once they commit the murder, the local district attorney immediately concludes that they did it and begins attempting to catch them out. he is, of course, entirely correct about this — but for entirely incorrect reasons, leading to a clever scene where Chambers is simultaneously trying — with mixed success — to cover his tracks and genuinely bewildered by the accuations the district attorney is leveling at him.
second, in a fascinating and quite funny sequence, the legal resolution happens almost entirely off the page. Chambers hires a lawyer of dubious morals who through some wild wrangling is able to disarm the DA’s key witness, but rather than being shown this is portrayed through the lawyer’s absolutely bewildering narration of the 5-dimensional chess game he was playing with the DA, which Chambers certainly didn’t understand and neither I nor my partner, who was listening to the audiobook with me, 100% understood, either. this conversation includes the laywer repeatedly prompting Chambers, “you see?” and Chambers frankly (as it were) replying, “no, I don’t”. it’s genuinely very funny — I have to assume at least somewhat intentionally — and I’m always interested in narratives that choose to position what seem like they should be “major” events out of the audience’s view.
after the legal case the book entirely jumps the shark in a variety of ways (Cora of course ultimately dies gruesomely, which Cain has written in the most melodramatic way possible). it feels like Cain was just throwing more stuff in to see how much he could get away with, and apparently the answer is “all of it”, based on the number of adaptations there have been. a very silly but at times also very clever book.
the audiobook we listened to is narrated by Stanley Tucci, who was hashtag #Acting, but frankly I think it would have been nice if he’d #Acted slightly less and also maybe slowed down. just a bit.
moods: dark, funny, grimy, horny, wacky