The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M Cain

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE -

JAMES M CAIN

There's the film starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange with the scene on the kitchen table and then there's the book by James M Cain on which the film is based. What might not be so well-known, however, is that the book was said by Albert Camus to have inspired his own book, The Stranger. You live and learn.

In regard to Cain's book, by page 9 the two main protagonists are at it with a 'Bite me! Bite me!' and well, I don't remember reading anything like that in The Stranger or indeed in anything Camus has written. And hang on a minute, when was this written? 1934? And there was me thinking (as Philip Larkin once put it) sexual intercourse didn't begin until 1963, between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP.

By page 45, the cheating wife and her errant lover have murdered the husband and with a 'Rip me! Rip me!' and a 'Yes! Yes, Frank, yes!' they're at it again down in the dirt and dust next to the crashed car where the husband's body is, after staging the crash to make it look like an accident.

If The Postman Always Rings Twice was a competitor in a 100 meter sprint then before the starting gun had even been fired it would be half-way down the track ahead of all the others. In its immorality it certainly sets the pace and in terms of being no holds barred, for its time it's way ahead of its time. Of course, nowadays it's all pretty tame stuff but for its mix of sex and violence it comes as no surprise that it was banned in certain states in America.

The influence upon Camus is discernible in its depiction of immorality and the subsequent reckoning with the Law, though in The Outsider it's not so much for the crime that the main character is tried but for his general attitude toward the mores and values of society.

In its style of writing, The Postman Always Rings Twice is very straight to the point; very lean and very mean. There are shades of Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment in there as well as Zola's Therese Raquin but it's all condensed into a much purer and much more easily read form. It's pulp fiction, essentially, but pulp fiction at its best.

John Serpico