Our Government (1930)
Cain Electronic Exhibit
Cain learned the craft of fiction by writing satirical dialogues and sketches, first for H. L. Mencken's American Mercury, then for the Sunday section of the New York World. These dialogues between imaginary politicians were collected and published in 1930; the result is Our Government, Cain's first book.
Double
Indemnity (1936)
Because screen writing in Hollywood occasionally dried up, Cain often
found himself in need of money; Double Indemnity was written during
one of those dry periods. Cain worked quickly to finish this tale of sex
and murder, and managed to sell it to Liberty magazine, where it
ran as an eight-part serial in 1936. The serial was sensationally popular,
reportedly adding eight million to the circulation of Liberty. It
was first published in book form in 1943 in Three of a Kind, along
with The Embezzler
(serialized by Liberty in 1940) and Career in C Major, (published
in American, April 1938). Double Indemnity remained popular
for years, and was reprinted frequently in paperback.
All three novelettes in the book were made into films: Career in C Major
was first filmed in 1939 as Wife, Husband and Friend, starring Loretta
Young, Warner Baxter and Cesar Romero, and again in 1949 as Everybody
Does It, with Paul Douglas, Linda Darnell and Celeste Holm. The
Embezzler was filmed under it's original title Money and the Woman
in 1940. 
But it is 1944's Double Indemnity which stands as the true classic.
Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck star as the murderous couple, and Edward
G. Robinson as MacMurray's boss who thwarts the plan. The promotional photograph
for this film is from the Baltimore News-American photograph collection.
Published in 1934, this novel became an immediate critical and popular success. Today it is generally regarded as a high point of hard-boiled writing, in part because its frank and graphic treatment of sex and violence broke new ground in fiction. It is a testament to the quality of Cain's skills that even today, when violence and sexuality are regularly depicted in popular media, many scenes still convey dramatic and shocking power.
The
novel was filmed twice: the first time in 1946, and again in 1981. The
1946 version starred John Garfield and Lana Turner, and while it only hinted
at the novel's sexuality, the movie is today considered one of the classic
examples of film noir. The 1981 version starred Jack Nicholson and Jessica
Lange and restored the novel's graphic sex, but is a lesser artistic achievement.
The University of Maryland copy of the first edition contains a presentation inscription written
on the front free-endpaper, where Cain mentions the event which inspired
the novel. The promotional photograph is from the Baltimore News-American photo archive.
Cain's second novel examined many of the same themes as The Postman
Always Rings Twice. This time, the story focuses on a failed opera
singer adrift in Mexico, and the naive prostitute who loves him. 
Cain
writes in the presentation inscription on this copy: "This story goes
back to my try-to-be-a-singer days (1914), when the idea occurred to me.
It cooked until 1937, when I went to Mexico & got it over with."
A poor film version of this novel was made in 1956 starring Mario Lanza.
The striking dust-jacket for this novel was designed by W. A. Dwiggins,
a famous and influential book designer and illustrator. The University
of Maryland at College Park has built a special collection of books featuring
"WAD's" designs, making this book doubly important to the collections.
Mildred
Pierce was published in 1941, three years after Serenade. The
novel was a departure in subject matter from The Postman Always Rings
Twice and Serenade, and there were no brutal sex scenes to scandalize
the public as there were in those previous novels. Cain remarks in his
inscription on this copy, "'There's one story that's never failed
yet,' said my friend James K. McGuinness one day, 'and that's the story
of the woman who uses men to gain her ends.' That was the beginning of
this.--I thought it would only have [profit?] if she was utterly, hopelessly
banal, but could manipulate men just the same." Apparently Cain was
never totally happy with this book. It achieved only moderate success,
and is best remembered today as a classic film noir, starring Joan Crawford
in the title role (for which she won an Academy Award).
First published as a follow-up to Mildred Pierce, the novel was
neither a critical nor a commercial success. "I fell in love with
the idea of a man's stealing a town by controlling a girl who controlled
the mayor. The thugs [things?] in Los Angeles gave me some help & I
was off. It did fair," Cain writes in the book's inscription. The
novel's obvious pulp fiction sensibilities made it an attractive one to
reprint during the paperback boom of 1950's, as the 1957 paperback edition
on display suggests. The novel was also filmed in 1956 and released as
Slightly Scarlet, starring John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, and Arlene
Dahl.
Cain's first attempt at a historical novel transferred his perennial
theme of a good man ruined by a scheming woman to a Western setting. Cain
thought that this novel would be the most effective statement of the theme
which predominated his novels: the wish that comes true and the heavy price
paid by the wishers. At the time, Cain thought that this was his best novel.
The novel was a great success; it eventually sold more hardcover copies
than any of Cain's other works. Curiously, it was never purchased for the
films, despite Cain's popularity with the public and with Hollywood.
This novel of incest and revenge in the deep South was begun in 1939,
but problems with the plot postponed its completion and publication until
1947. "This one goes back to my days as a labor reporter in West Virginia,
my term as a miner, etc. ... It came off O.K., & was quite a hit,"
Cain remarks in the presentation inscription in the book. Actually, the
book sold very well and Cain reportedly considered it his best. The reviews
were generally favorable, with considerable attention paid to the book's
preface, where Cain takes his critics to task, vehemently denying that
he owes his style to Dashiell Hammett and Ernest Hemingway. "I belong
to no school, hard-boiled or otherwise, and I believe these so-called schools
exist mainly in the imagination of critics, and have little correspondence
in reality anywhere else," he writes in this preface, and it seems
that he truly believed it. The novel was made into a film in 1981, starring
Stacey Keach and Pia Zadora.
The
Moth (1948)The Moth was unlike anything else Cain had ever written, or would
ever write. The novel tells the picaresque tale of John Dillon, a young
Baltimorean during the Depression, who is wrongly accused of seducing the
twelve-year old girl he secretly loves. He flees from Maryland to California,
rising from drifter and panhandler to oil executive. Unusually for Cain,
the novel actually has a happy ending! The novel received mostly bad reviews,
however, and sales were sluggish. This was particularly dissapointing because
Cain had crafted his most autobiographical novel to date. Formerly a consistent
best-seller, Cain had begun to lose his critical and popular appeal.
Written partly because he needed the money, and partly because of his
conviction that paperback sales were as ephemeral as newspaper or magazine
articles, Cain published three novels as paperback originals in the late
1940's and early 1950's. These novels had been (in one form or another)
turned down for more "legitimate" publication; Cain was not particularly
proud of any of these works, but as he once said in defense of their publication,
"There is only one book that really hurts a writer, and that is no
book."
"This is a bit of camouflaged autobiography," writes Cain
in this copy's inscription, "I once weighed 244 lb. in my birthday
clothes. Now 188--I went on the wagon and stayed there." This novel,
set in southern Maryland, tells the story of Duke Webster, a boxing trainer.
Webster has gone to work for a restaurant owner whose wife, a former beauty
queen, has become grossly overweight. Webster decides to apply his training
techniques to help the wife lose weight. The plan works and the two fall
in love; those familiar with Cain's plots can guess the progress from there.
Galatea was not a best seller, although it's sales did prompt a
paperback reprint in 1954.
Cain had been writing a Civil War novel off and on since the publication
of Past All Dishonor in 1946, but had run into problems with plot
and narrative voice. Cain finally submitted it to his publisher of twenty-five
years, Knopf, in 1957; Knopf rejected it. Cain rewrote it, and in 1960
he submitted it to Knopf again, who rejected it again. The novel was finally
published in 1962 by Dial. Although the book sold moderately, Cain had
labored for a dozen years on it and considered it a major novel, therefore
deserving of great success. The critics were mixed; many found it confusing
and confused. Cain loved the novel and couldn't understand why it failed.
Eventually he came to doubt the novel's quality as well, as reflected in
this book's inscription: "This grew out of reading on the Red River
expedition in 1864--when the Army & Navy forgot about the Rebs, &
began fighting each other. Didn't really come off--I'm sorry."
After the failures of Galatea and Mignon, Cain returned
to the themes and plots that had brought him his greatest artistic success:
two illicit lovers who plot to murder the woman's husband, and the consequences
of their actions. Despite unavoidable reminders of The Postman Always
Rings Twice, and Double Indemnity, this novel contains some
of the Cain's best hard-boiled writing, and it moves swiftly and with excitement.
The novel was a dismal failure critically and commercially, and Cain would
not publish again for nine years.
Between 1965 and 1974 Cain wrote a number of books that were deemed
unpublishable. He broke through again in 1974 with Rainbow's End,
a novel about a bank heist gone awry. The critics genrally hailed the book
as a return to greatness, and it sold well enough to warrant a paperback
reprint.
Accepted for publication at the same time as Rainbow's End, this
novel about a University of Maryland professor's quest for fame and fortune
was an embarrassing failure. Cain considered it an important novel, and
couldn't understand why the critics that enjoyed Rainbow's End dismissed
The Institute.
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