Rainer Maria Rilke

"Live a while in these books, learn from them what seems to you worth learning, but above all love them. This love will be repaid you a thousand and a thousand times, and however your life may turn,-it will, I am certain of it, run through the fabric of your growth as one of the most important threads among all the threads of your experiences, disappointments, and joys."--Rainer Maia Rilke


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Sunday, August 31, 2014

A Moronic Bonnie and Clyde

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

Classic Noir

I'll have to be honest.  I didn't get this book.  And, I don't get the title.  Can someone explain it to me?  Mercifully, it was a short read. It's a story that was shocking for its time, but quite tame by today's standards. You should read it only for the novelty.

The book felt like an episode of "America's Dumbest Criminals", except without the humor.  The story centers on a drifter named Frank who's no good.  He is apparently more endowed in his pants than his brains as Cora, a restauranteur's wife, falls for him.  Or, she is so obviously bored with her older, overweightt foreign husband that it's any port in a storm. Frank wants to have sex with Cora and be on his way, but the sex is hot and Cora is complicated and Frank is stuck whether he likes it or not.  Frank has a hankering to escape and he wants Cora to become a traveling tramp with him.  She has a different vision of their life together--one that doesn't include her husband.  So, the two of them are up to their eyeballs in a botched murder attempt.  Only their first, as it turns out.

The story left me feeling sad and a little dirty, like I took part in something distasteful.  Their deeds and greed ruin them both and corrupt their love, which wasn't pure to begin with.  It's impossible to find a character to relate to or liek.

Perhpas it made a better movie.