“Then she came into the room. She was tall and thin
and had a white frowning forehead and soft eyes. She wasn’t much to look at but
she was something to think about….She leaned over the chair where I was sitting
and bit me in the ear.”—American humorist James Thurber (1894-1961), “Hell Only
Breaks Loose Once” (written after reading James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice), in The Middle Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935)
(The image accompanying this post is from the
original film adaptation of The Postman
Always Rings Twice, starring Lana Turner and John Garfield. Needless to
say, the smoldering Ms. Turner was far closer to the conception of Cain’s femme fatale than the woman in Thurber’s
hilarious parody.)
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