James M. Cain asked that question--What else you got?-- repeatedly in his conversations with Henry Sapienza and John McAleer. It comes across as curious, demanding, and engaged--even in his 80s. These conversations were interviews for a potential biography that never came to fruition. The notes and transcripts disappeared until Professor McAleer had his son pull the files on P. G. Wodehouse.
Presto! James M. Cain sharing a file folder with P. G. Wodehouse. The juxtaposition blows my mind. I'm not sure Cain could've got much more out of that story. One thing though--he would've been less prolix then I've been. He would've used words like prolix or fruition if that's how the character sounded.
Cain isn't counted as one of the big three of hard-boiled crime fiction. I think that's really too bad.
He didn't write about detectives. He wrote about the the criminals or the victims. Two out of three of his most famous protagonists are murderers--and saps. The third isn't criminal, merely criminally blind to her daughter's nature, and that makes her a sap, too.
While Cain differed greatly in his protagonists, he was as good as a writer as Macdonald. Both of them achieved tragedy by the use of the fatal flaw and its baleful, destructive power in the lives of their characters. Their characters are real people though more ordinary in Cain's world. Neither writer flinches from the inexorable consequences of their character's actions.
Cain had a better grip on dialogue than Hammett. In his PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEW, Cain said he was interested not in how people were supposed to talk, but rather in how they really did talk. Let's hear it for parental influence. Cain's parents emphasized correct speech; he observed how it sounded. Because the eye is not the ear, characters in fiction can't really speak on a page as they do in real life. Characters have to "sound" natural to the eye. Cain was a master of dialogue that fits that bill. In so doing, he was also the master of voice. Each character is identifiable by his or her voice, his or her distinctive "sound".
In terms of plot, Cain had it all over Chandler. First, Cain could plot. More important, nothing extraneous exists in his prose. It isn't beautiful or descriptive or utilitarian merely to be so. Every word serves to move that plot forward. No existential posturing, no using violence as a mere plot point, no needless or endless confrontations, no childish silences. Desperate characters doing desperate things because that's all they've got to work with--in character and from character.
Now, that plot doesn't always grow organically from his characters. In MILDRED PIERCE, there's an oddball epiphany for Veda--from pianist to full-blown coloratura in six months. In any other hands, it would be a story stopper. However, this epiphany goes to illuminate Veda's totally self-absorbed character. It also allows Mr. Treviso to explain Veda's sociopathy in terms of being a diva--a gimme, gimme, gimme coloratura. Only Mr. Treviso understands Veda's character, even if he doesn't care for it. He spells it out to Mildred. We get it; Mildred won't.
This brings me back to what i consider Cain's real genius--his ability to make me care about saps. In THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, Frank gets caught up in lust with Cora Pappadakis, who's bored and got pretensions to better things than a roadside diner. She leads Frank around by his dick--the only thing with which he can think. IN DOUBLE INDEMNITY, Walter Huff has seen and worked all the angles in the insurance business. He's cynical and clever, yet he commits the perfect murder for a woman, Phyllis Nirdlinger. It's a case of a rabbit smitten by a rattlesnake--Huff's own description. Both of these guys get played. Frank gets it because he's so mind-numbingly stupid that he can't see he's not the player he thinks he is. Legend in his own mind. Walter gets it because his conscience reasserts itself and he falls in love with a good woman, not that she loves him. I can only shake my head and scream, "How can you be so stupid, so blind?"
I'm not asking myself why I care. Cain gave me the same fascination he gave Frank and Walter Huff. He did it by use of a single point of view and the confession. Everybody wants to listen in on a confession. It's so deliciously salacious.
That case of voyeurism--we'd call it rubbernecking if we saw the wreck on the highway--that Cain could give his readers opened doors to other writers. I can't see Patricia Highsmith or Chester Himes or George V. Higgins without James M. Cain. In the case of the Himes and Higgins, they join Cain in the notion that the cops (or in the case of DOUBLE INDEMNITY, the insurance company) are just the other gang. Cops, insurance--it's a racket.
MILDRED PIERCE is a different novel. It's a grim book of the Great Depression. It's no less brutal and desperate than THE GRAPES OF WRATH. Here, the protagonist is a woman--a woman, who through her limited talents claws her way to success. She's willing to learn, and she's willing to take anybody as a teacher. She's better than the men. Bert's got some gumption until it goes sour; he can't get over the death of his dreams. Monty's a gigolo who can't deal with his loss of money. Only Wally's a modest success. That's only because he's a survivor, an average little poisonous snake who bites before he's bitten. The real antagonist is another woman--Veda--and she wins. Or does she simply defeat Mildred? The weakness of others also harm Mildred, but, mostly, Mildred fails because she won't stop wanting from Veda what Veda can never give to anybody.
Cain wasn't writing feminist novels, but he wasn't writing misogyny, either. That was Chandler's specialty. Cain's female characters are tough broads because they have to be. The men are too often failures or weak sisters.
I don't know why Declan Hughes or John Connelly didn't include James M. Cain on their top ten list. Perhaps he's just not easily pigeon-holed. Fair enough. However, I think I should ask them, rather more skeptically now, "What else you got?"