Fri 1 Nov 2019
If you’re like me, when you read James M. Cain’s classic novel The Postman Always Rings Twice the first time, or even if maybe you saw the movie before reading the book, and put it down or got up from watching, didn’t you kind of wonder, where the postman was? Did you miss something? I did.
Here, finally is the answer. (Follow the link.)
November 2nd, 2019 at 11:32 pm
This book/movie title could practically stand-in as the guiding motif for all the subsequent works of noir which followed on its heels. It’s the ole doomed, ‘one-two punch’ zeitgeist, of so many great examples of the hardboiled storytelling format.
The ‘early bird catches the worm’ but ‘the second mouse gets the cheese’, except that ‘little fish always get et by big fish’ and on and on and on. The principle of karma. You can’t ‘skate by’ forever.
Just an aside: I don’t think “Bar-B-Q” is such a bad title as far as that goes, either
November 3rd, 2019 at 12:52 pm
I will have to disagree with you on this. The title BAR-B-Q just doesn’t cut it with me. But I do agree that coming up with THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE was a thought of genius. It may have very little to do with the book itself, but to me it evokes the whole essence of the word “noir.” Not in any specific sense I can put into words, but it does.
November 11th, 2019 at 8:57 am
Temperate disagreements make our country the interesting land that it is!
I’m just thinking, ‘BBQ’ is not the very worst title I’ve ever seen for a story. Of course, I don’t think it ever could have become the landmark, noir-defining concept that ‘Postman’ became, no.
But these days almost anything is attempted. Am I mistaken, or did Mel Gibson recently star in a comedy about a guy who goes around wearing a beaver puppet on his hand?