good weather stories and poems?

Well... Rosamund Lehmann's novel "The weather in the streets" features weather in the title..... but to be honest I can't remember that it features that heavily in the writing ...but Elizabeth Bowen's Heat of the Day has an oppressive heat laden feeling about it....

Miss Smilia's Feeling For Snow - Peter Hoeg A completely haunting book with one of the best female protagonists ever created. Strange, dysfunctional and compelling to a disturbing degree. The Siege - Helen Dunmore Snow and chill in Leningrad as the people starve. It made me cry.....a lot. The Sun Rising - John Donne The wicked wonderful Mr Donne. Will warm you through after all that cold. The Perfect Storm - Paul Junger (?) Does what it says on the book cover.....

Mildred Pierce by James Cain. There really was a lot of rain in Los Angeles in the 1930s, so many of the crime noir novels written about that time quite correctly feature rain. Even Bukowski mentions the rain of his youth in LA in Ham on Rye.

Wuthering Heights..

Snow Falling On Cedars - David Guterson

Hey, another James.M.Cain fan. What a writer! What a writer! What a writer! On weather, Hemingway (I know the old boy's out of fashion these days, but I'm still his bitch) wrote to John Dos Passos: "Remember to get the weather in your god damned book - weather is very important." And in another place: "I am such a simple writer that in my books the temperature and the weather of the day is nearly almost that of the weather outside." I find myself doing that. Living on a moor in Cornwall, I write grey misty weather almost all the time, and slanting rain and frosted hawthorns with their hair blown sideways. That's how I think of Cornwall: nippy and nasty, not sunny and tothelighthousey. If I'm writing a weather scene I open all the windows and doors. I've done that ever since I read "The Worst Journey in the World" by Apsley Cherry-Garrad, which would be my nomination for the best weather book. (He expressed the philosophy that cold is a state of mind.) In the winter I switch the heating off to get the effect of the weather and sometimes take all my clothes off to write, so that I can feel the season in my vitals. OK, sometimes I freeze, but my brain works much faster and I get more writing done when I'm brass-monkeyed in the knackers department. Eventually I hope I'll be able to afford one of those perky little portable computers. Then I could take it out to the fields with me and write amongst flying insects and crowcrap, as Van Gogh painted pictures. d.beswetherick.

Indeed, Cain was wonderful...at least his earlier stuff. He went on to write for quite some time and produced some very forgettable material, but the good stuff is great. Graham Greene: I forget the name of the novel (maybe it was a short story); it was made into a movie....the plot has to do with a bunch of people stuck in some town along the river in Africa (I think) during a long rain storm. One of the women is a prostitute and one of the men is a priest. Basically, the priest tries to convert the prostitute, but she seduces him instead and he kills himself as a result. The whole thing takes places during this torrential down pour.

Yes, it's his first few books that are awesome. The literary equivalent of Samuel Palmer, my favourite artist.

I've been thinking about the following overnight: >Graham Greene: I forget the name of the novel (maybe it was a short story); it was made into a movie....the plot has to do with a bunch of people stuck in some town along the river in Africa (I think) during a long rain storm. One of the women is a prostitute and one of the men is a priest. Basically, the priest tries to convert the prostitute, but she seduces him instead and he kills himself as a result. The whole thing takes places during this torrential down pour.> And I've come to the conclusion that you might be referring to the Somerset Maugham short story "Rain", which is set in the South Seas. If that is so, then, what with Mildred Pierce and all, we seem to share a taste for the middlebrow classics. d.beswetherick.

"Rain" would make sense...:)))) Yes, it does look like we have similar tastes in that regard. I also enjoy Jim Thompson's crime novels, though he doesn't get nearly the good press of Hammett, Cain, and Chandler. Getting off topic a bit, but one of my very favorites is a collection of short stories by Hammett generally titled "The Big Knockover" which is the title of one of the stories. The main character in all these stories is a private detective working for the Continental Detective Agency. He is only known in the stories as the Continental Op. Hammett never gives him a name. He is a precursor to the Columbo-style detective in the sense that he is a rather nondescript (in this case anonymous) guy going up against entrenched powerful interests by himself and defeating them, they who are too smart/powerful/prideful for their own good. I don't know if Hammett started it, but I can surely trace this strain of the detective fiction genre back to him, in terms of American writing anyway. If you read the Continental Op stories, it will forever influence the way you look at American detective fiction, movies, tv, etc. At least it did for me.

I have just written one; see 'Weather' by biggal (only just submitted).

Justin said: >Getting off topic a bit, but one of my very favorites is a collection of short stories by Hammett generally titled "The Big Knockover" which is the title of one of the stories.> Yes, I love these. I have two collections: "The Big Knockover and Other Stories" and "The Continental Op". Corking. I reread them to study objective point-of-view and twists. I think they are better than the Chandler pulp stories, though I prefer Chandler's novels to Hammett's. But then, I prefer Chandler's novels to just about everything. I'm an opponent of the trend in modern detective and police writing to bring the detective's private life to the forefront of the story. I know I'm in the minority, but I'm only interested in the crime and how it is solved. Even though Philip Marlowe speaks in the first person, he tells you little about himself. Hammett told us nothing about Spade. I like that style: but it's gone out of fashion. In the noir vein, I'm also keen on Cornell Woolrich. Excellent twists. d.beswetherick.

Hmmmm....true...and it's interesting that the same debate goes on re TV detective shows in the U.S. Some producers like to bring in the character's private lives, some don't. I tend to like the latter version...bringing in the private lives as a significant component distracts from what's really going on. I just love CSI, for example, and now there is CSI Miami, so I get a double-dose every week, not to mention, though I will, a daily M-F afternoon Columbo episode. My life is very full right now, regardless of the weather (brings discussion back to original topic in pathetically unconvincing manner).

I think Ian Rankin brings in Rebus's private life very well. Other writers clunk it in as an afterthought. I read Chandler and don't care whodunnit, as apparently neither did he. Detective fiction is as difficult as science fiction because the reader needs to 'buy in' at least initially ...

This brings up an interesting point, which I will carry to a new thread because this one is just about hijacked.