--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Stephen Burridge"
<stephen.burridge@...> wrote:
>
> I've been wondering about this. I just read "The
Postman Always Rings
> Twice" for the first time last week. It was readable
enough but I
was most
> struck by its apparent originality. It seemed like a
more direct
ancestor
> to the kind of "noir" fiction often discussed on
this list than the
> detective stories of Hammett and Chandler. However,
I don't know
the work
> of Cain's contemporaries particularly well, so I was
wondering if it
was as
> original as it seemed.
I think it was pretty original technically (in the telling),
but Nathaniel West and Horace McCoy were doing similar
themes, though not specifically writing about crime. You're
right that the technique that Cain uses in that novel has
been enormously influential, most obviously on Higgins, but
also on more recent noir writers. I don't know if or what
Thompson took from Cain. Goodis seems to have a different
beat, and so do Woolrich and Willeford, but it's the same
type of music, in my opinion. I won't quarrel with Cain as a
father figure of noir.
Best,
mrt
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