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Career in C Major
And Other Fiction
James M. Cain
Edited and with Introduction by Roy Hoopes
Contents
Introduction: Was the “Tough Guy” Really a Humorist at Heart?
Prophecy
Hunting the Radical
The American Eagle
Sealing Wax
1. Dialogues
Introduction
The Governor
The Legislature
The Administration of Justice (in Three Parts)
1. Counsel
2. The Judiciary
3. The Jury
The Commissioners
Don’t Monkey with Uncle Sam
2. Light Fiction
Introduction
The Whale, the Cluck and the Diving Venus
Come-Back
Hip, Hip, The Hippo
Everything But the Truth
The Visitor
3. The Light Novel
Introduction
Career in C Major
Introduction
Was the “Tough Guy” Really a Humorist at Heart?
PROBABLY NO ONE WAS more surprised at the worldwide reaction to The Postman Always Rings Twice when it was published in 1934 than its author, James M. Cain. His little novel rocked readers and critics as they had never been rocked before. Cain had described Postman simply as being about “a couple of jerks who discover that murder, though dreadful enough morally, can be a love story, too, but then wake up to discover that once they’ve pulled the thing off, no two people can share this terrible secret.” It was his favorite theme, which he had already developed in his 1928 short story “Pastorale” and would use again in his 1936 Liberty magazine serial, Double Indemnity. Cain, who was 42 when Postman was published, thought the book might sell a few thousand copies, if he was lucky, and maybe he would have another idea for a novel.
But Postman was that rare achievement—a literary success that was also a best-seller which kept on selling and selling around the world and down through the years. It was also bought immediately by Hollywood (although MGM would have to wait 10 years before liberalized censorship laws would permit a filmable script) and made into a Broadway play (by Cain), and it became one of the first big paperback best-sellers.
Suddenly, James M. Cain, the former “human interest” writer for Walter Lippmann’s New York World editorial page, who specialized in little pieces about food, music, sports, holidays, and domestic problems, the iconoclast who had written satiric dialogues for H. L. Mencken’s American Mercury, the disenchanted New Yorker editor and failed Hollywood screenwriter who had most recently been writing humorous short stories and articles for magazines, was now the nation’s preeminent “tough guy” writer. As The New York Times book reviewer said, James M. Cain “made Hemingway look like a lexicographer.” He also defied anyone to put the book down after reading its “remarkable” first sentence, which would soon be widely quoted in reviews, literary essays, and writing classes: “They threw me off the haytruck about noon….”Franklin P. Adams, with even more enthusiasm, said in his review: “Cain’s style …is better than most of Hemingway’s….I can’t detect a stylistic flaw in it.” Most of the other critics, at home and abroad, agreed: “This is strong man’s meat,” said Herschel Brickell in his syndicated book review, “and not for those who mind blood and raw lust.” In London, James Agate wrote: “One day last week the postman slipped into my letter box a slim package containing a little volume of fewer than 200 pages … a major work…. The book shakes the mind a little as the mind is shaken by Macbeth.” And Gilbert Seldes said: “It’s a long time since I have heard so many people of so many different tastes say that a book is ‘great.’”
Great, shocking, and incredibly fast-paced was the almost universal reaction to Postman. And from those first reviews on through 17 other novels and numerous short stories and magazine serials written before he died in 1977, Cain tried to live down his label as a “tough guy.” And it was not just the fact that Cain knew he was not, personally, a tough guy; he was much closer to Sean O’Faolain’s description when the Irish author referred to Cain’s “normal tough-guy heart-of-a-baby self.” What really concerned Cain was his literary reputation as “hard-boiled.” When Alfred A. Knopf, understandably trying to capitalize on the impact of Postman, promoted him as a “tough guy writer,” Cain complained: “I wish you would stop advertising me as tough. I protested to the New York critics about their labelling me as hard-boiled, for being tough is the last thing in the world I think about, and it’s not doing me any good to have such a thing stamped on me. Actually I am shooting for something different and plugging me as one of the tough young men merely muddles things up.”
Knopf agreed to stop the advertising, but wrote Cain: “I suspect that every other review of every other hard-boiled book that may be published in the next three years will drag you and the Postman into it.”
Knopf was right and Cain (with the help of Double Indemnity, which features adultery and premeditated murder, and Serenade, which features a shocking murder and a perhaps even more shocking love scene in front of an altar in a Catholic church in Mexico) quickly emerged as the personification of the tough guy writers in the 1930s. In 1941, Edmund Wilson, in his famous essay “The Boys in the Backroom,” nominated Cain as the best of the writers he called “the poets of the tabloid murder,” and Cain’s reputation was now firmly established. By 1947, Cain felt it was time to do something about it. In the Preface to his little novel The Butterfly (which also featured a murder and incest) Cain tried to put to rest forever the tough guy label. “I belong to no school, hard-boiled or otherwise,” he wrote, “and I believe those so-called schools exist mainly in the imagination of critics and have little correspondence in reality.” Writing a book, he continued, “is a genital process and all of its stages are intra-abdominal; it is sealed off in such fashion that outside ‘influences’ are almost impossible. Schools don’t help the novelist, but they do help the critics; using as mucilage the simplifications that the school hypothesis affords him, he can paste labels wherever convenience is served by pasting labels, and although I have read less than 20 pages of Mr. Dashiell Hammett in my whole life, Mr. Clifton Fadiman can refer to my hammet-and-tongs style and make things easy for himself.”
Cain also tried once and for all to discourage the Hemingway comparisons: “I owe no debt,” he wrote, “beyond the pleasure his books have given me, to Mr. Ernest Hemingway,” and he goes on to document the fact that his style was established in the mountain of newspaper and magazine writing he did for The Baltimore Sun, The New York World, and The American Mercury long before Hemingway appeared on the scene.
But the tough guy legend persisted and was finally cemented forever by David Madden, who, in the late 1960s, included Cain in his anthology of literary essays, The Tough Guy Writers of the Thirties, and wrote his own valuable literary study James M. Cain, in which he described him as the “Twenty Minute Egg of the Hard Boiled School.” Cain was still alive, of course, when Madden was developing his tough guy studies and protested mildly—although he and Madden eventually became good friends and Cain helped him with the biographical aspects of his stud
y.
So Cain passed into history in 1977 firmly labeled as perhaps the most eminent of the tough guy, hard-boiled school of writers, and I do not intend to argue otherwise. But I will state, for the record, that Cain did not start out that way. And it might all have turned out otherwise—if, for example, Postman had been seen by the critics and readers more as Cain saw it: the story of a couple of jerks who were cursed with “the wish that came true,” which Cain said was what most of his novels were about. Frank Chambers finally won the girl he lusted after and Cora achieved respectability with her restaurant. But they could not afford the price they had to pay. And it is good to remember what Wilson also said, that Postman, although it included “brilliant moments of insight,” also had elements of “unconscious burlesque” and was “always in danger of becoming unintentionally funny.”
This was also true of Double Indemnity and Serenade, and the question is: Just how unintentional was Cain’s predilection for comedy, burlesque, and humor? If you go back to the beginning of his career, almost 20 years before Postman was published, and search for his roots as a writer, you will find that Cain really began as a satirist and humorist who, at the same time, was always conscious of the tragedy forever lurking on the fringes of our lives.
When Cain graduated from Washington College at the age of 17, he had no intention of making a career of writing. He did, however, write his first published work there—a tongue-in-cheek prediction of what his college classmates might be doing 15 years in the future. It was titled “Prophecy” and is reprinted below.
Prophecy
I had been out of this country since the week after I graduated from college, being a foreign agent for Henizerling Bros., banking establishment. I had left the London office in such shape that I thought I could come back to America for a while and see how things looked, for although I have been abroad for nearly fifteen years I have always considered myself an American. I stepped out from Broad Street Station in Philadelphia and proceeded up to The Walton. I registered, and stood for a moment looking over the register. A familiar signature caught my eye—Edw. C. Crouch, Alaska. That was queer; however, I went up to see him. I found that he had been doing a big job of engineering up there and, like myself, had come down to see what the country looked like. We talked and smoked for a while and then went down to dinner. That done we went for a stroll. Going down Broadway we saw a rather portly and flashily dressed man get out of an automobile and stand for a moment looking in our direction. There was something familiar about him in spite of the bald head and portly dimensions. In a moment Etick and I both yelled “Peejee!” Then he recognized us.
“Hallo, boys. Glad to see you.”
Then followed some small talk, after which he said, “Come in and see my establishment. It’s just around the block.”
We followed him into a sort of marble palace. Above the doorway was inscribed: “J. P. Johnson—Stock Broker.”
Once inside we saw a maze of green tables, roulette wheels, and excited men and women.
“That sign is just to get around the law and make the police have an easy conscience,” said Peejee.
At one table we saw Johnny Hessey looking wild, excited and, truth to tell, rather seedy. He didn’t look very changed.
“Johnny is an awfully good sucker,” said Peejee with a chuckle. “Want to play?”
We declined after sizing up our chances and, as Peejee seemed occupied with a rather florid-looking lady, took occasion to leave.
We returned to the hotel, and going through the lobby encountered Leo Brown, who had just finished lunch. He was looking rather grey, but otherwise was the same old Leo of 1910. After a hearty greeting we sat down and began to chat. We asked what he was doing. He began to laugh and asked if we had heard about it.
“About what?” we queried.
“About the Ruskin Bright Warren Bankruptcy Case,” he replied. “I’m the state’s attorney in this village and court convenes at three o’clock.” After a little thought, he continued, “Ruskin must have taken it hard, for he sneaked away and all trace of him was lost. But old sleuth Massey located him all right, peeling tomatoes with the other Bohics in Langsdale’s cannery.”
Then we asked how Langsdale was getting along.
“Oh, pretty well. He’s quit drinking, and married. Married Reeda Stoops, and they seemed to be having a ducky-lucky time of it when I saw them last. But I understand the apple of discord entered at the same time as the kid. Reeda wanted him named Ruskin, and Corty insisted upon Anheuser Busch. It’s five years old now and as yet has no name.”
We gave our regards to Mrs. Brown (a former belle of Chestertown) and then went out to see the final game of the world championship series between the Athletics and Pittsburgh. We got a good seat and in looking over the Athletics’ outfield, saw a spidery-looking object in center field. A high fly was knocked to him, which he gathered in, gracefully throwing the runner out at home. We heard the grandstand shouting, “Jump! Jump!” Then we knew it was the Kid.
In the ninth inning, with two out, the bases empty, and the score 2 to 3 in the Athletics’ favor, the Pittsburgh second baseman drove a hard ground-ball into center; it went straight through Jump’s legs. A groan went up from the bleachers, for it looked good for a home run. But the Kid sprinted, got the ball and lined it to the catcher, who nabbed the runner in the nick of time. It was a beautiful throw and the fans nearly went crazy.
After supper we went out to the theatre. It was a vaudeville show. A man in a grotesque evening suit came out and began to sing, “Upidee-i-dee-i-da!” and then he forgot the rest. We were in a box near the stage, and when the singer hesitated I involuntarily gave him the cue. Not until afterwards did I realize that it was Jim Turner singing, and that I had been so used to prompting him in the Glee Club at college, that it had become a sort of a second nature with me. The audience thought it was part of the show and applauded wildly. A poor comedian was next, who tried in vain to amuse the audience by making himself ridiculous. Etick nudged me.
“That looks like Soc.”
And so it was! He was hissed off the stage.
The next day being Sunday we decided to remain at the hotel, but glancing at a paper, we saw where “The Great Evangelist” would preach in Philadelphia.
“Let’s go!” said Etick.
So we went to hear him, and it was Johnny Knotts. We went to him after service and congratulated him. When he saw us he dropped his clerical dignity, winked his eye and led us into a small room. There he pulled out a bottle of the “rale old shtuff,” as he termed it, and invited us to drink. We drank to his success and left him, giving spiritual comfort to a group of old women.
Etick proposed that we take the train down and see our College. Accordingly we got aboard, and after having secured our parlor-car seats we made ourselves comfortable. The conductor, an old grey-headed man with several stripes, came down the aisle and punched our tickets. It was his impressive way of talking that made us take a second look at him. It was Gibson. We shook hands, but he seemed to be in a hurry and went on.
When we got on the Chestertown Accommodation, the same old jerkwater as in our college days, we ambled slowly on toward our destination. Finally we reached a little station called Massey. Here, standing with the other loafers, was Maddox. It was unmistakably Maddox, for all the weeks’ growth of beard and seedy clothes. We got out and spoke to him. He took a rusty nail, which served as a toothpick, from his mouth and began his tale of woe. He ended up with the tragic whisper, “Say, got any tobacco?”
We each gave him a box of cigarettes and hopped aboard the train. Arriving in Chestertown we immediately proceeded to my home for the night.
Everybody seemed glad to see us, as of course they should, and after spending the evening relating our experiences, we turned in.
The next morning we went over to see the College. There were several new buildings, but Smith Hall was still the recitation hall.
In the corridor coming out of Dr. Sanborn’s roo
m we met Miss Clough. She did not seem to be so light-hearted as in years gone by, and she had aged considerably. She did not seem especially glad to see us, but in the course of the conversation we found out that she was studying for her Ph.D. in Philosophy. We left her and went over to lunch.
Here the narrative ends, on account of the unfortunate death of Mr. Cain, who was run over by an automobile.
(Pegasus, 1910—Washington College Yearbook)
This little piece is written in a competent short-story format and an intriguing, sardonic style. Its prophecies, at least in two cases, were quite good: Mary Clough, his girlfriend and later first wife, did go on to get her Ph.D.; and the narrator, James M. Cain, was almost run over by an automobile in New York, but was saved by his boss, an editor named Walter Lippmann. Cain never did learn what actually happened to most of his classmates, a fact which he immortalized in one of the two light verses he wrote 20 years later for The New Yorker.
Cain made his decision to be a writer while sitting on a park bench in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, in 1914. He went back to Chestertown, took a job teaching English in the prep school at the college, and spent his spare time writing short stories, which came back from the magazines as fast as they were sent out. Unfortunately, these unpublished stories were not saved, so there is no evidence to show how the 23-year-old Cain was developing as a writer. Discouraged, he went up to Baltimore and took a job as a reporter, first for The American and then The Sun. But this career was aborted by World War I and the year and a half he spent in France with the American Expeditionary Force.
He returned to his old job on The Sun in 1920, and now we begin to see young Cain developing as a very talented and sardonic writer with an excellent eye—and ear—for the human comedy as well as tragedy. His first major assignment was to cover the trial of William Blizzard, a young West Virginia coal miner who had been charged with treason. Blizzard had led a band of 600 coal miners against the “deputies” hired by the coal miners to resist the efforts of the unions to organize the miners. In carrying out their orders, the deputies attacked and killed some of the miners, and Blizzard’s mob was essentially responding to the brutalities of the deputies. Cain did not think this amounted to treason, and he also thought the miners were being falsely labeled as “radical” and “revolutionaries” by the establishment press. His viewpoint came out in his reporting, which not only was accurate, fair, and objective but also underscored the comic-opera nature of the war between the miners and the coal company deputies.
Career in C Major: And Other Fiction Page 1