Kindle. Prompted by James Walton's review of Nathaniel Rich's Cloudthief (2026) in the New York Review of Books, and curiosity about mid-century hard-boiled noir. And to break up the interminable slog through Philip Mirowski's Machine Dreams (2001).
Much is made early on of the song If You've Got the Money, Honey, I've Got the Time (1950) which more-or-less summarises the dynamic between the leading man (who recounts in the first person) and his lady-love. They meet in proximity to a bathtub in the South (Louisiana, Mississippi) and head West (Colorado) where their heist goes off like clockwork. She's a NYC moll and takes to affluence in New Orleans like an Australian but he's more of an outdoorsy bloke who is soon weighed down by the ashy proceeds of crime. The ending was a bit lame. Some of it functions as a time capsule (the wilds of Colorado before it became an enclave) with a fair bit that's generic (the timeless demimonde of New Orleans).
I guess it could be read as a commentary on post-war drifting, the failure of stuff to palliate, satiate or otherwise make the time pass agreeably. He wasn't born bad (this is a bit Natural Born Killers (1994)) but went wonky due to the irremovable shrapnel in his head or perhaps thirty-four months in a Japanese PoW camp on Luzon; there's still the need to fend off the childhood sweetheart, to give her a good enough reason to finally, totally lose heart. Much of the doing was committed but the undoing seemed more accidental or perhaps was a matter of decreased concern. Most of the good lines are mostly in poor (or at least non-PC) taste.
