Cain: The Biography of James M. Cain.

by rdjahn

Roy Hoopes, author of the 684 page Cain: The Biography of James M. Cain, died last December 1, at the age of 87. Here is a little bit about him:

[A] longtime Washington journalist who was the author of an acclaimed biography of crime novelist James M. Cain and more than 30 other books, died Dec. 1 of pneumonia at the AAA Atrium Classic assisted living facility in Silver Spring. He lived in Bethesda.

The very definition of a professional writer who lived by his typewriter, Mr. Hoopes contributed to hundreds of publications and held many jobs with magazines, newspapers and federal agencies. He wrote books about the Peace Corps, the steel industry, politics, sports and Hollywood, but he was best known for his 1982 biography of Cain, the author of such hard-boiled classics as “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” “Mildred Pierce” and “Double Indemnity.”

[...]

Mr. Hoopes found the all-but-forgotten novelist living alone in Hyattsville. He wrote a profile of Cain for Washingtonian magazine and set to work on his biography. He talked extensively with Cain before the 85-year-old author died in 1977.

I looked up Hoopes and found the above about five minutes ago. I wanted to see what else he’d done. A lot, as it turns out, though most of his stuff is out of print, including the Cain biography. You can, however, get it used at the link above for under five bucks.

Anyway, to the book: Hoopes’s respect for Cain and his work is evident throughout, as is — rare in biographies, I’ve found – his fondness for the man. There is no sense of distaste for Cain at any point, nor is there any dirt dishing (though Cain does not always come across well).

It’s a straight forward life story told from beginning to end. And the picture drawn is of a dedicated journeyman who sweated his way into a couple of classics while mostly failing. The Postman Always Rings Twice, his second or third attempt at a novel – the earlier attempts remaining incomplete – was first released when he was forty-two, and it is still the one he is best known for.

He spent seventeen years working in Hollywood, during which time he had only a couple partial credits on movies best forgotten, and while making some nice money wrote some other books: Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, Serenade, The Moth, Past All Dishonor. If he’d died in 1946, thirty-one years before his actual death, his reputation would likely be about what it is today, though he wrote many other books.

I suppose this is often the case. Jim Thompson had written most of the work he was known for by 1952. Stephen King’s most loved novel was released in 1978 (though, personally, I think he’s written much better books since). J.D. Salinger, who died yesterday, released only one novel — sixty years ago. Harlan Ellison is best known for his stories of the sixties. Joseph Heller is still best known for his first book. Kurt Vonnegut tapped out after Breakfast of Champions. And so on. But I suppose writers doing their best work early in their careers is a topic for a different time.

What was I talking about?

Okay. Right. So Cain wrote all the books he is known for while working in Hollywood. Then, with his fourth wife (opera singer Florence Macbeth), moved back home to Maryland, where he’d grown up, to finally leave the movie stuff behind and make it as a serious writer, while not knowing that all his serious writing was already behind him.

He would publish ten more novels in his lifetime, but none would have the impact of his earlier work. (I recently read Jealous Woman, a short novel about an insurance investigator who goes to Reno to look into a suspicious death, and while it’s a fun read, it’s simply a weak echo of some of his best stuff.) And he’d face a lot of rejection.

In the nine years between Galatea (1953) and Mignon (1962) he wrote three novels for which he simply could not find a publisher, no matter how many times he rewrote them, and he was an obsessive rewriter. Cain was old news, a has-been, an ex-writer who didn’t know he was dead and so kept on putting words on the page.

But then, in the years just before his death, there was a Cain resurgence. His best-known earlier stuff was released in an omnibus edition; Tom Wolfe, reviewing a Norman Mailer book, said Mailer was all right, but no James M. Cain; a book of critical essays about him was released (though he was stung by an essay written by Joyce Carol Oates: “Though he deals constantly with the Artistic, Cain, it will be said, never manages to become an artist; there is always something sleazy, something eerily vulgar and disappointing in his work.” Cain’s lucky he never knew of Raymond Chandler’s saying everything he wrote stunk of billygoat or he’d have really been stung). This resurgence was helped by one final successful novel, Rainbow’s End.

Cain is bloated in places, and I did, I admit, find myself skimming here and there, but overall it’s a surprisingly gripping read for a biography of a man whose life was not particularly interesting outside of the writing. I think what I like best about it is that it paints a picture of a man not born with genius, but who created classics nonetheless. I admire sweat and hard work more than genius. Geniuses can hardly take credit for their accomplishments; they’re born with great gifts even they don’t understand. But I can’t help but admire a man born with a moderate talent who works his fingers to the bone to make that small talent sparkle, and who, in the process, creates for himself a place in world literature.