First James M. Cain novel, that is. For me it was Mildred Pierce, which I first read back in February 1995 and promptly sent me off on a sloppy Cain binge (Postman, Indemnity, Serenade, The Butterfly). This was the time in my life when I was young and broke and trying to read every great hardboiled and noir novel I could afford. My supplier was Art Bourgeau, author and co-owner of Philly's legendary Whodunit bookstore. It must have been Art who turned me on to Mildred; I really can't imagine myself being lured in by that kinda dowdy-sounding title alone.
But that's the twisted beauty of a noir like Mildred Pierce. There are no crime lords, no fedoras, no snappy banter, no unsolved murders or any of the other things that readers associate with the genre. Instead Cain gives us a suburban California housewife hell-bent on providing a better life for her daughters, Veda and Ray. And like in every great noir, no good deed goes unpunished. The very sacrifices that give Veda a better life also mortify her; mother and daughter are locked in a classic inescapable Cain "love rack," and it's absolutely devastating.
Again: not the kind of thing you usually associate with noir.
This March HBO will be debuting its five-part mini-series adaptation of Mildred Pierce, directed by Todd Haynes. I can't wait. For some reason, I've never watched the 1946 Joan Crawford version; I think I've always worried that it would pale in comparison to the memory of the novel. (That, and I believe they threw in a murder, just to make it a more of a crime flick.) But enough time has passed, and I have a ton of admiration for the creators and actors involved -- including Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce and Hope Davis. Plus, HBO has proven it can do period pieces (Boardwalk Empire) like nobody's business. The trailer is so lush, I want to nuzzle the damned thing.
But you? You have a little more than two months. Pick up Mildred between now and then and give it a whirl. You might just fall in love, too.
12 comments:
I will do it. I will see if I can download it on Kindle to read it faster. You make everything sound like it is the best thing to do at the moment. You did that with your David Goodis blog. I thought 'Wow, I never even knew how he died'. Very nice! Thank you.
Thanks for saying that, Michelle. And yes -- I believe it is newly-available on Kindle (along with POSTMAN and DOUBLE INDEMNITY). About time, I say.
HBO does really good stuff. But alas, they passed on Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death. Was really looking forward to seeing that.
wv: desto
Yeah, that's a check in the negative box for HBO. I was really dying to watch MYSTIC ARTS. Charlie Huston talked a little about the experience in his most recent blog post.
Postman was my first. And I'll be dipping back into Double Indemnity soon, because a stage adaptation world premieres at Seattle's ACT later this year. Like Haynes' Mildred it hews closely to the book and ignores the film, or so I hear. Can't wait to see how it's translated.
BTW, I love the Crawford film. A different animal in many ways, but a rare piece of work.
It's funny that you say the title is dowdy-sounding to you--I found it immediately intriguing, because I had Sonic Youth's album Goo, which contains a song called "Mildred Pierce." That said, I still haven't actually read the book (even though I've owned a copy for most of a decade). Guess I should get around to it soon, huh?
Great post, Duane. I'm completely psyched about the HBO version. I've always loved both the book and the movie -- named my daughter in CHASING THE DEAD after Veda, and then ended up naming my own daughter that as well.
Vince: I should watch the Crawford version. But I might wait until after the miniseries.
Andrew: Absolutely. And had no idea about the Sonic Youth song...
Joe: I've always thought that was a beautiful name. Along the same lines I named a character "Lennon" in THE WHELMAN after the Beatle; then not long later, I gave our son "Lennon" as a middle name.
How timely. I just read "Serenade" about a month ago; I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. I think you'd enjoy the old movie version of "Mildred Pierce: but I'm looking forward to see what HBO does with the story.
POSTMAN was my first, followed immediately by DOUBLE INDEMNITY. MILDRED PIERCE followed those two a month or two later, and many of Cain's other works over the next few years. Those first three remain my favorite (and my preference echoes the the order in which I read them) of them all. They're each a reminder that when Cain was firing on all cyclinders, few writers could match him, then or now.
~ Ron C.
I read this on your suggestion. The book easily falls into my top five. I read Postman years ago. It reminded me how well Cain writes. He leads you in a certain direction, takes it away, then smacks you in the face at the end...twice! thanks so much for thue suggestion. Also, I watche the HBO trailer. I think it will be a more faithful adaptation of the book than the movie was
Christopher: Really thrilled you enjoyed it as much as I did. And yeah, the miniseries does look incredibly faithful. Fingers crossed...
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