Word: cains
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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ALAND OF SHIFTLESS hobos, of freight train yards and greasy roadside lunch counters; a land of desperate losers, crooked insurance salesmen and small-time racketeers, of empty pockets and broken spirits. That was James M. Cain's America. If for Thomas Wolfe or Jack Kerouac The Road led to freedom, for Cain it was some kind of a prison, a vast, inescapable refuse pile for the hungry and homeless. The characters in Cain's books, most of them drifters and box-car bums, search desperately for a piece of anything to call home. And when they find...
Although he was born and educated in Maryland, Cain found his America out West, in Southern California. There he ultimately carved out his niche in the annals of American literature, with books like The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. His hard-bitten, journalistic style would make him one of the most frequently imitated authors of this century. The Baby in the Icebox, and Other Short Fiction, a new collection of many of Cain's previously out of print early stories and dialogues, traces his development from a moderately well-known yet inconsequential magazine writer in the East...
...Disney World over April school vacation and, on Labor Day, helps raise money for Jerry's kids. Chet Curtis and Natalie Jacobsen, Channel 5's anchor team and newlyweds who recently had their first child (many dollars are pledged in the name of 14-week-old Lindsay Dawn). Jess Cain, who's been spinning records early in the morning since about forever. John Willis, the lethargic host of Channel 5's wake-up-slowly Morning Magazine. Years ago they had home-grown entertainment on these local cut-ins, but now there's only time to accept checks, a trend increasingly...
Body Heat-wonderful title-bears a family resemblance in plot and tone to James M. Cain's Double Indemnity: a man more ordinary than he thinks he is meets a newly rich femme fatale; sparks fly, plots hatch, a husband dies, insurance claims are debated, friendships fray, the lovers quarrel and part explosively. And though Lawrence Kasdan's film is set in today's South Florida, its characters move through an atmosphere that suggests the confluences of decor and demeanor in a 1940s film noir...
...much for emphasizing the sweet, the decent, the well behaved. Odysseus, to pluck an early example from Homer, was a wife-neglecting troublemaker if there ever was one. Even in the inspired stories of the Bible, people seldom behave very well, beginning with Adam and Eve and proceeding to Cain and Abel and the folk in Sodom and Gomorrah. Contemporary fictions create their own mischief: Portnoy, for example, spends precious little time collecting for the United Fund...