James M. Cain

I wanted to talk about the Director's Cut, Once Upon a Time in America, but one of the previous callers mentioned Obsession.

Obsession was a 1942 black and white Italian movie by Lucchino Visconti, which was a an early adaptation of their postman always rings twice, the James Cain novel.

Bit of history there.

And the director's cut of Once Upon a Time in America, is that Quentin Tarantino there, Shane?

You don't like detectives?

[laughs] Hard-boiled type, huh? James Cain, Raymond Chandler.

Dashiell Hammett, please.

Who are you?

The film in question is The Spirit of St. Louis, named after the monoplane which Lindbergh flew nonstop from New York to Paris in 1927.

The film Double Indemnity, based on a novella by James M. Cain, was adapted into a screenplay by which famous writer of noir fiction, who also appeared in a brief cameo?

Chandler.

Raymond Chandler.

So you'd think the audiobook would be a shortcut, but no, he, you know, he, he, he knows what the stuff should look like.

You know, like James Cain had that, that talent of knowing how to make dialogue look like it's happening really fast-

Mm-hmm

... by making it look jagged on the page and, you know.

For, Raymond Chandler did not like, um, James Cain, but he praised him.

He praised Cain for having the talent of making the page work visually, you know?

Yeah.

Included on the list are reprint editions of books by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Dos Passos, George Orwell, John O'Hara, Paul Hyde Bonner, Emile Zola, Arthur Koestler, and Joyce Cary.

The current list also includes Serenade by James M. Cain, Mister Roberts by Thomas Heggen, From Here to Eternity by James Jones, What Makes Sammy Run by Budd Schulberg, The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw, Native Son by Richard Wright, and The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

In some places, notably Detroit, Peoria, and the suburbs of Boston, the organization has enlisted the local police to threaten booksellers who are slow to cooperate.

This campaign of intimidation has no legal basis.

We are looking at the ultimate outlier on this list

listWe are talking about James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Yes, indeed.

Published in 1934, and this represents a massive, jarring shift in our deep dive.

But the 1981 audience, however, was living in a deeply cynical post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, sexually liberated era.

They actively distrusted authority and demanded the gritty, unvarnished, ugly truth of human nature.

James M. Cain's book didn't change a single word between 1946 and 1981.

The society that was adapting the book changed.

I have certainly enjoyed appearing here this evening on Suspense, and I want to tell you how much I'm looking forward to hearing next week's broadcast in the series.

My friend, James M. Cain, who wrote Double Indemnity, and the film version of which I had the honor of appearing this year, is the author of another wonderful Suspense story called Love's Lovely Counterfeit.

You will hear it next Thursday, and your star will be Mr. Humphrey Bogart.

Remember him? I used to knock him off every morning before breakfast.

...

James M. Cain, "Don't you hate what Hollywood's done to your books?" He goes, "They've done nothing to my books.

They're there on the shelf."

Ah.