Customer Reviews

Serenade (in French)

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James M Cain's 1937 novel "Serenade"is, as the title suggests a love story, but a very dark and devious love story it is indeed. In keeping with its musical motif, it seems to be constructed in the symphonic form, thus:Chapters I-IV Andante Chapters V-VII Allegro Chapters VIII-X Scherzo Chapters XI-XIV Adagio. The hero-narrator John Howard Sharp is suppose to be an operatic baritone, but he talks and acts like a film noir P.I. Not that opera singers can't be macho, but I have a little difficulty picturing Humphrey Bogart playing Rigoletto. Prepare yourself for a very politically incorrect tone: A homosexual is a fag, a Japanese is a Jap, and a Mexican is a "spig" -- I assume he means spick. (This is 1937 so "gay" means "happy".) The mood is quite masculine, as are 95% of the characters, so it comes as a surprise when it's revealed that the hero has indulged in what use to be coyly called the love that dare not speak its name. The only major female character is Juana, the puta whom Sharp meets in Mexico City in the opening chapter. Throughout the story she seems to be the "dumb muchacha" she describes herself as; but she abruptly becomes a femme fatale, her desperate act of hatred driving the plot to its somber conclusion. The story opens and ends in Mexico, the interim describing the hero's entertaining though somewhat implausible successes in California and New York. In the Scherzo section, when Sharp is being courted by both the Met and the movies, Cain treats the Met with deference but his contempt for Hollywood is palpable. (Ironically enough, in 1956 Warner Bros used "Serenade" as the basis for a Mario Lanza musical. One can only imagine Cain's reaction to this sudsy mess.) Incidently, Cain's novels are included in Crime and Mystery sections. Appropriate, perhaps, but don't expect Miss Marple.