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The characters are pure noir: Pat, a 鈥渄ark, heavily handsome thick-shouldered" young man; Myra, a 鈥渃heesecakey鈥� woman whose 鈥渢hick blonde hair" fell 鈥渙ff her bare head to brilliant brassy effect.鈥�
And they talk the way crime fiction characters used to talk, as crafted by James M. Cain, in a short story rarely seen until now.
鈥淗ello there,鈥� she said.
鈥淗颈测补.鈥�
鈥淵ou looking for someone?鈥�
鈥淪ure am.
For Johnsie.鈥�
鈥淗e just now left.
鈥淚n the taxi?鈥�
鈥淔or the concert. He likes egghead music.鈥�
Cain's 鈥淏lackmail鈥� is featured in the new issue of , a quarterly which has unearthed obscure works by , William Faulkner, and many others. Written over the latter part of his life and left unpublished, 鈥淏lackmail鈥� tells of a blind Korean War veteran known as Johnsie; Pat, the former comrade who now employs him; and Myra, a woman from the past with some hard-boiled ideas about money, and love.
鈥淗ere, Cain serves up vintage noir 鈥� complete with gritty dialogue, a damaged war hero, and a young femme fatale who thinks she鈥檚 a lot harder than she really is 鈥� only to then turn the tale on its head in the very final scene,鈥� Strand managing editor Andrew Gulli wrote in a brief introduction.
The themes in 鈥淏lackmail鈥� of betrayal, violence, rough sexuality 鈥� and blackmail 鈥� echo such Cain classics as 鈥淒ouble Indemnity鈥� and 鈥淭he Postman Always Rings Twice.鈥� Paul Skenazy, a professor emeritus of at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has written books on Cain and Raymond Chandler among others, called the story minor, but compelling.
鈥溾�楤lackmail鈥� is the perfect title for a James M. Cain story,鈥� Skenazy said. 鈥淐ain really had few other subjects: forbidden desire, the violence it leads to, the secrets we hide from ourselves and others, the price we pay to hide who we are and what we鈥檝e done.鈥�
鈥淭hese are all wounded figures,鈥� he added: 鈥渁 man blinded in Korea, his friend whom he rescued, a mysterious woman from the past who enters their lives looking to make a quick buck.鈥�
Cain, who died in 1977 at 85, is widely regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest crime fiction writers and would describe his work as having "some quality of the opening of a forbidden box.鈥� Born in Baltimore in 1892, he wrote for years for The American Mercury and other magazines and newspapers before he published his first fiction, in his mid-30s. Starting with his million-selling debut novel, 鈥淭he Postman Always Rings Twice,鈥� he was a prolific fiction writer and screenplay writer in the 1930s and 1940s, and saw 鈥淒ouble Indemnity,鈥� 鈥淢ildred Pierce鈥� and other of his books adapted into classic Hollywood movies.
By the 1950s, his popularity was in decline and his style was seen as outdated. Cain had lived in Los Angeles over the previous two decades, but returned to Maryland and quit such longtime vices as drinking and smoking. Skenazy noted that 鈥淏lackmail,鈥� set in Washington, D.C., has a more forgiving view of human nature than in his earlier work.
"In Cain鈥檚 best work,鈥� he said, 鈥漬o one is exempt from Cain鈥檚 irony and life鈥檚 brutality. Here, the exemptions abound. Those exemptions don鈥檛 make for his best writing but do provide a more generous, sentimental, even humane ending than we generally expect from Cain.鈥�
Hillel Italie, The Associated Press
