Selling hot dogs to each other

When the big cat lady tells Frank she has a restaurant (where people come and eat and look at the cats), he tells her he has one too.

"Restaurant, hey. That's what I've got. Whole goddamn country lives selling hot dogs to each other."

That seemed like an astute observation about American capitalism during the Depression: people just selling junk back and forth.

Frank really had a few zingers, and you have to wonder, given the narrative frame, if he said/thought those things at the time or if they were born from the wisdom he seemed to acquire on death row and superimposed on the story.

The hustle

I thought the pool hustle was kind of revealing about Frank. If I read that correctly (tell me if I didn't), he set out to hustle a "rube," but instead got royally hustled himself. I kind of took that to mean he's (a) kind of naive/dumb, which doesn't really seem to fit his character; or (b) just not very good at being a "bad guy," maybe because his heart isn't in such a bad place?

Next pick

NPR reviewed this book, which they called a "short novel."

I've been wanting to read it ever since.

It clocks in at 208 pages, so hopefully that's nothing we can't handle. :)

What do you all think? Shall we aim for Jan. 15 to start discussing?

The title

I love the title, but I confess I had no idea what it meant. Cain's explanation (via Wikipedia) is this:

According to Cain, screenwriter Vincent Lawrence spoke of the anxiety he felt when waiting for the postman to bring him news on a submitted manuscript. According to Cain, Lawrence noted that he would know when the postman had finally arrived because the postman always rang twice, and Cain then lit upon that phrase as a title for his novel. Upon discussing it further, the two men agreed such a phrase was metaphorically suited to Frank's situation at the end of the novel.

With the "postman" being God, or Fate, the "delivery" meant for Frank was his own death as just retribution for murdering Nick. Frank had missed the first "ring" when he initially got away with that killing. However, the postman rang again, and this time the ring was heard, when Frank was wrongly convicted of having murdered Cora, and then sentenced to die for the crime. The theme of an inescapable fate is further underscored in the novel by The Greek's escape from death in the lovers' first murder attempt, only to be done in by their second one.

In his biography of Cain, author Roy Hoopes also recounted the conversation between Cain and Lawrence that gave birth to the novel's title. Hoopes' account of their conversation is similar to Cain's, but offered extended detail regarding Lawrence's comments. Specifically, in Hoopes's telling, Lawrence did not say simply that the postman always rang twice, but rather said that at times, he was so anxious awaiting the postman's delivery that he'd go into his backyard intentionally trying to avoid hearing the postman's ring. However, Lawrence continued, this tactic inevitably failed because if the postman's first ring was not noticed, he would always ring again, and, even from the backyard, that second ring would inevitably be heard.

In the 1946 film adaptation of the novel, Frank explicitly explains the title in the terms offered by Hoopes' biography of Cain.

A suitable title? Anything to add?

The Establishment

Who seemed more morally bankrupt to you, the lawyers/police/insurance companies or Frank and Cora?

Frank as narrator

Frank's voice as narrator is obviously what gave the book its personality. What did you think of the narrative voice? And, for that matter, the lately revealed device of telling the story from death row? Could you imagine the story being written from any other point of view?

( I always find it interesting how first-person narration tends to make you sympathetic to characters you would otherwise dislike. You sort of become their emotional accomplice, and rarely do you think, "Oh wait, I'm just being manipulated and mistreated, too!")

One of the best?

"Postman" is included in the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list. It's No. 98. I'm always extremely dubious about these lists because taste in literature is so subjective, even among literary historians/experts. The silliness of such rankings aside, can you see a case for "Postman" being regarded as an exceptionally important work of fiction?

The Greek

What about Nick? Did you like him/feel for him? Do you think the horribly racist stuff Frank and Cora said about him was just supposed to be "typical of the time" or did you get the feeling it was supposed to reflect especially poorly on Frank's and Cora's characters?

Frank and Cora

What did you think of Frank and Cora's relationship? Did you want them to get away with it and live happily ever after, or did you want them to fall apart and get caught?

Those darn cats!

What did you make of all the cat imagery? Cora is called a "hell-cat." The house cat shorts out the electricity, and there are the big cats at the end that play a part in sealing Frank's doom.

Postman — Intense?

Wow. What did you think? Was "Postman" a page-turner for you or did you find the plot implausible?