The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain

I started my extended holiday break from work this afternoon around 2:30. I'm off until January 4. With the eight days left in the year, I plan to finish at least 2 of the books I've started but not yet finished this year. But this morning, I decided to clean my apartment before starting work instead of picking up a book. When I logged off this afternoon, I thought about picking up one of those books and I just wasn't in the mood. And so I looked at my shelves and I considered Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (and it has just come to my attention that Sjöwall died this year, so maybe I should read one of their books next!), but I looked to the left on my shelf and saw the slim copy of The Postman Always Rings Twice and thought I could probably finish it in an afternoon. I did, in just over two hours. 

I am, at this moment, listening to a recording of Maria Callas performing an aria from Don Carlo and I had a thought: The Postman Always Rings Twice could be an opera. I didn't have this thought when I was reading it, or when I started writing this over two hours ago (I broke for dinner), but now that I've had this thought, I'll expand on it. A quality of many operas that I've always found rather hilarious, when I step back and look dispassionately at it, is the spareness and speed of plot development. This was exactly the feeling I had reading The Postman Always Rings Twice. This book was all plot, there's no character development: you only understand them (if you understand them, which is an open question) through the plot. Nearly every new development seems to come out of left field. This may sound like criticism, but it's not entirely. (Have I mentioned that I love opera, and the humor I find in the sparse plots is one of the things I find endearing about it?)

I read Mildred Pierce several years ago, and it was not at all what I was expecting. Reading it, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never quite did. I was anticipating destitution, but that's not where it went. Thinking back on it now, maybe that ominous feeling I had while reading it was one of the book's strengths. My only other exposure to James M. Cain comes from the movie adaptation of Double Indemnity, which I've seen more times than I can say. There was a fleeting moment, while reading The Postman Always Rings Twice, where I remembered Mildred Pierce and thought maybe things would turn out okay for the protagonists. Unlike Mildred Pierce, though, they're murderers, so of course it doesn't. Double Indemnity is the closer relation. (The murdered husbands even have the same insurance policy! Was it actually routine that getting killed in a railway accident paid out double in the 1930s?!) But where in Double Indemnity, one character is played and one is the player, The Postman Always Rings Twice is actually a bit more complex. The deed the protagonists share turns them against each other, just when their interests should be aligned. 

Anyway, if someone wants to make a tragic opera from The Postman Always Rings Twice, please credit me. Thanks!