Books : Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s: The Postman Always Rings Twice / They Shoot Horses, Don't They? / Thieves Like Us / The Big Clock / Nightmare ... / I Married a Dead Man (Library of America)
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by: Horace McCoy, Kenneth Fearing, William Lindsay Gresham, Cornell Woolrich, James M. Cain, Edward Anderson
List Price: $35.00Amazon.com's Price: $23.10 You Save: $11.90 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.087208052
EAN: 9781883011468
ISBN: 1883011469
Label: Library of America
Manufacturer: Library of America
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 990
Publication Date: September 01, 1997
Publisher: Library of America
Sales Rank: 39352
Studio: Library of America
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The first collection in a two-volume set celebrating American crime fiction contains classic novels of the 1930s and 1940s, including The Postman Always Rings Twice, Thieves Like Us, Nightmare Alley, The Big Clock, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, and I Married a Dead Man. '
Amazon.com Review:
Literature and film buffs will be delighted by this collection of pulp novels, most of which were made into important films. James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice is a literary masterpiece with its spare prose invoking a savage, sexy, desperate world. It inspired no less than three great movies: Luchino Visconti's classic Ossessione, in 1942; the 1946 remake, starring John Garfield and Lana Turner and directed by the extraordinary Tay Garnett; and Bob Rafelson's underrated 1981 version with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. When you read the magnificent source for these movies, you'll be astonished at how three different incarnations could all, in their own ways, be faithful to the novel.
Cornell Woolrich's I Married a Dead Man also became three movies: No Man of Her Own, with Barbara Stanwyk; the French I Married a Shadow; and the American comedy, Mrs. Winterborne, which starred Shirley MacLaine and Ricki Lake. Edward Anderson's vivid Thieves Like Us was transformed into They Live by Night, Nicholas Ray's first important movie and one of the seminal noir films of the 1940s. It was brilliantly remade in 1974 by the great revisionist director Robert Altman. Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock was transformed into a marvelous film starring Charles Laughton; 40 years later, the same source, retitled No Way Out, brought Kevin Costner to stardom. William Lindsay Gresham's Nightmare Alley was the source for Tyrone Power's best movie; Horace McCoy's experimental They Shoot Horses, Don't They? became one of the seminal films of the 1960s.
These dark, evocative novels, when taken together, are a fascinating study of how words can inspire a magnificent variety of cinematic images and styles.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Crime Back When it Took Talent to Commit It
Excellent selection of fine writing about crime and vice - another winner provided us by the LOA. It's early era merely extends it's charm into a time past that's as vibrant as if it were set in the last decade, allowing us a nostalgic glimpse into our own literary birthright.
One, entitled "The Big Clock", is about the highly sophisticated and competitive world of big city publishing and involves a murder committed by it's top executive who is losing his ability to cope; a uniquely ... Read More
Rating: - Six Degrees of Noir
Before reading this handsome, well-made volume of six crime novels, I tended to consider 'noir' a movement, one of both style and period. I now know that noir is also and more generally an atmosphere and pertains to a wide variety of literary styles, characters, plots, motivations -- but all informed by a dark and often depressing overall mood. Ultimately, these six novels are character studies and although they are offhandedly described as 'pulp novels', their qualities of description, dialogue, ... Read More
Rating: - Splendid Read
This collection of novels from the 30s and 40s was terrific fun and an outstanding introduction to the genre. You can debate whether they're all noir (at least what I expected noir to be); but nonetheless they each convey a distinct impression and view of the time. Without getting into lengthy reviews, I enjoyed Woolrich's "I Married a Dead Man" the most--from his eloquent style to the actual story-line. You know you're reading a master story-teller. Second was Gresham's "Nightmare Alley;" although ... Read More
Rating: - Thank God for the 1930's and 1940's/
First of all, the Library Of America collection provides the reader with some of the most beautiful hardcover editions available today. That said, the selections chosesn for this edition are all first class; for someone just getting into hard-boiled fiction, this is the ideal place to start. If you're like me and have been reading this genre for many years, this is a perfect volume to add to one's collection.
Rating:  - The Dark Underbelly of the American Dream
Noir emerged in the early 20th-Century from Pulp paperbacks published for mass consumption. Highlighting in gritty and sensationalistic detail the sordid undercurrents of Western society, Noir became an artistic force that became the medium for the representation of the down and out segment of the populace. Whether set in the impersonal grime of urban reality or at the deceptive simplicity of rural picturesqueness, Noir in Film and Literature revealed the odyssey and travails of lost souls whose misguided ... Read More
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