The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain is included on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read List, The Modern Library Top 100 and The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time and hence a classic noir - 10 out of 10

 

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain is included on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read List, The Modern Library Top 100 and The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time and hence a classic noir

10 out of 10

 

 

The Postman Always Rings Twice is clearly one of the best reads one can find http://realini.blogspot.com/2012/04/postman-always-rings-twice.html seeing as it is acclaimed by critics and readers with various tastes and preferences, as mentioned above, it is with the 1,000, the 100 best and not just in the arena of the writers of mystery books, but it has impressed critics at large…

 

Our professor of literature, the majestic Anton Chevorchian, used to say that a great opus has a mystery in it, and we can think of the quintessential Crime and Punishment http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/06/crime-and-punishment-by-fyodor.html of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, probably the ultimate crime story, as the tile indicates, raising the question of what humans are worth living and the morality of a life, the holiness of existence, the meaning of it, and much more about this…

Fyodor Dostoyevsky has been commended to death, and this story was related to us, the lucky ones, by the same Anton Chevorchian – if there is a heaven, I was going to say I hope he is there, but then there is no question about it, if we have an Eden, that is – and we found that the great writer was facing the execution squad, with three minutes left to live, which he left for admiring a ray of sunshine on a church tower, to say goodbye to friends and pass his life in front of him, before departing..,

 

He is pardoned at the last moment (unless the condemnation was just a scheme, meant to scare the revolutionary) and he lives to share with us, the readers, the thoughts, feeling of the man who is facing death, how he would rather live on a bare rock, in the middle of the ocean than cease to be extant, something we find in his magnum opera http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-brothers-karamazov-by-fyodor.html

I wrote some more, and then had to return for an alert (not a spoiler, in the sense that I mention who does it, that is actually clear pretty soon, the two main characters, Frank Chambers and Cora Papadakis, seem pretty determined, once they became infatuated with each other, to dispatch the third man in the ménage a trois, Nick Papadakis, Cora’s husband and employer for Frank…nonetheless, it will be a complex narrative, with quite a few surprises, it is for good reason that the novel has gained so much acclaim and has had such a huge success, it was adapted multiple times for the big screen)

 

From here on, this note has nothing to do with The Postman…Mircea Cartarescu http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/09/levantul-by-mircea-cartarescu.html is our greatest writer, has won some prestigious awards, the latest was gained in California, and he was celebrated on TVR Cultural, where he talked about the difference between European critics (say the Germans, who are very strict, laborious and serious, to the point) and the American ones – the latter say a couple of sentences about the work they are presumed to analyze and then go into personal sensations, experiences, what happened to them decades back when they first encountered the author, it is much more about them than the work, and Cartarescu was not upset with that, he thinks they have a lively, interesting perspective

 

Facing termination is one issue at this stage, for the tests done recently have brought me to the realization that the final countdown could be close, nearer than expected and perhaps hoped for, though there is also a sense that I am not really all that bothered, which is not a good sign, it could be terminal, as Victor Frankl observes in the narrative about his experience in the Nazi death camps, during World War II

One of the Fifty Psychology Classics is Man’s Search for Meaning http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/05/mans-search-for-meaning-by-victor-frankl.html by Victor Frankl, who had been sent to the camps, notwithstanding the fact that he could escape, he refused his special status, because his family would not be exempted with him, and he writes about what happened in those terrible places, when one lost the meaning, he would die very soon (he was with men in the same place)

 

So what am I to do with this new found negligence…I mean, on the one side there are some changes to the diet, high cholesterol means a stop to greasy sausages, foods roasted in oil and such like, but what is left, veggies are not such a thing (if at all) for me, fruit will do if they are strawberries and black berries, otherwise, apples and avocados, not so much…there comes the season for cherries, so that is a good thing

Andrei Plesu is one of the greatest thinkers of the world, albeit known only in this realm, and he has a conference on old age – which I guess would be called ‘mature’ so as to be politically correct – and he insists on the fact that at one stage, we should prepare for departure, which for an older being is not so calamitous, it is a tragedy when it struck their young ones, he is also referring to Cicero and other sages that classify over fifties as maturity, old age will only start at seventy, and that is a relief, if a short one…

 

The Postman Always Rings Twice has brought home the notion that one could be ‘in the way’, he is not only without support, humans that want him near and close, but on the contrary, he is better off dead, as that would release the restrictions on the finances, the movements and so on, which is a very unhappy place to be – happy people live longer than the others, and what the happiest have in common, research has demonstrated , is ‘strong connections with family and friends, and therefore, when your family wishes you departed, not near, what are the chances of a serene, cathartic life in Arcadia?

 

Now for a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html