When I was in college one of the best classes I had was Speech. It was explained to us that that there are four forms of classical speech. My favorite was epideictic, which is speaking in praise of someone or something.

Today I would like to speak in praise of James M. Cain, an American fiction writer. He is associated with the hard boiled school of fiction, a label he never liked. Like most great artists, he did most of his best work early. His later work was crap. But wow, that early work. It's odd that much of his best remembered work is the movies made from his novels and stories. "The Postman Always Rings Twice" was made into not one but two great movies. "Double Indemnity," another classic.

He wrote in the homeland of noir writers, Los Angeles, before it went bad like spoiled fruit. Here is the opening of "Double Indemnity" --

"I drove out to Glendale to put three new truck drivers on a brewery company bond, and then I remembered this renewal over in Hollywoodland. I decided to run over there. That how was I came to this House of Death, that you've been reading about in the papers. It didn't look like a House of Death when I saw it. It was just a Spanish house, like all the rest of them in California, with white walls, red tile roof, and a patio out to one side. It was built cock-eyed. The garage was under the house, the first floor was over that, and the rest of it was spilled up the hill any way they could get it in."