Karin, I don't know if I agree that the films of Double
Idemnity and Postman are better than the books (though the
films are so good it's a very tough comparison) but I've
always felt the adaptations significantly contributed to the
longterm success of these novels. If the films hadn't been
made would Double Indemnity, for example, have fallen out of
print at some point and become a candidate for a Hard Case
Crime reprint? What if, for example, one of the many lesser
known Harry Whittington novels had been made into a classic
film noir? Would that novel be considered the classic today
rather than Double Indemnity? J http://www.jasonstarr.com
--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Karin Montin
<kmontin@s...> wrote:
>
> No racism in Cain? The slurs against Mexicans and
the Greek café
owner (husband) bothered me when I read the book a few years
ago. Cora is insistent that she's not a "Mex," that she's
white, and the Greek is called greasy over and over. These
remarks serve to build the characters, yet our sympathies are
supposed to lie with the narrator, at least at the
beginning.
>
> In my humble opinion, The Postman Always Rings Twice
is vastly
overrated. Cain, unlike Agatha Christie, was a two-hit
wonder. I know he wrote more but everyone thinks immediately
of Postman and Double Indemnity. I think the movies based on
those two Cain novels were better than the books.
>
> Looking for a Cain quote, I found this interesting
Anthology of
Thirties Prose, which includes essays, short stories (I
think) and excerpts from novels, divided into various
sections, including one on hobos and tramps. Authors
discussed in Rara-Avis are among them
(Ahlgren, Cain, McCoy, West and more):
>
> http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/White/anthology
>
>
> Karin
>
> At 19:43 12/11/05 -0500, you wrote:
>
> >I think Hammet is much worse on the
racism/misogyny than other
writers of
> >that period because of the casual assumptions
that fall into the
background. It's
> >fine to have a character who's a racist, as a
character flaw, but
it bugs me
> >how it's not really a purposeful point in the
Maltese Falcon.
Notice that
> >Cain, being in the same era, has no racism, and
his women might be
bad, but
> >they're not weak.
> >Vicki
>
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