Customer Reviews

Three by Cain: Serenade, Love's Lovely Counterfeit, The Butterfly

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you're a fan of Cain's prose these three short novels will satisfy. These are quite different from his more famous noir novels(Postman; Double Indemnity) but they still contain his unique brand of hard-boiled writing: minimalist sentences, crisp dialogue, and spare, economical description.

Serenade deals with an American opera singer (Cain trained as an opera singer before turning to journalism) who falls for a Mexican prostitute and brings her illegally back into the states where he begins a meteoric rise to fame, until something goes horribly wrong.

Love's Lovely Counterfeit is a tale of small town crime. A solid thriller.

The final novel, The Butterfly, is the most unique as it deals with the subject of incest in a West Virginia coal mining town. A nineteen year old girl shows up at a man's farm claiming to be his daughter, and takes things a little far with her sexual teasing. The plot takes several turns in its slim 90 pages, but I've never read another book quite like The Butterfly. The subject matter lends itself to Cain's spare, objective prose, because you need some distance from a topic like incest, and Cain hadles it well.

The book also contains a short preface to The Butterfly, where the author talks a bit about his biography and his approach to writing.

All three books are a solid 'B' grade, and fans of Cain, especially his writing style, should seek this book out.

If you like Cain, after plowing through the big three - Postman, Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce - you should soon find your way to these classics. IMHO two of the three books here are just about first-rate. Serenade is terrific, and Butterfly is daring and powerful. Good stuff!

There is no such thing as a bad Cain book. One of my favorite authors and these stories are great stuff.

Once you start reading Cain, you have trouble stopping. He's a genius at communicating a lot in few words. Highly recommended.

I got this book because the novella, "Serenade" was the story that resulted in a Mario Lanza movie (bearing the same name) from the 1950's. Due to the deviations from the written story (in the 1950's, a gay relationship, however repulsive from the protagonist's pov, was not 'MGM' fare) I thought the story might make a good plot for an opera or musical today- if the leading cinematic tenor of his day could make it persuasive, imagine what a REAL singer could do... Well, it still is possible as a musical vehicle, but not from me.

Reading Cain's novella was like stepping back into the era of 'cinema noir'. Every bit of grit and grime that one could possibly feel, was present in his story, including the lowlifes who seem to be the focus of that genre. Never having read this author, therefore, it was a given that I was in uncharted territory. But I soon realized I didn't WANT to be in this territory.

I felt the utter lack of empathy of the Author for the main character- who tries (unsuccessfully) to leave his homosexual liaison with an influential critic/socialite, without resorting to murder- may have been 1950's 'realism,' but for me, Cain's novella made the main character far less a man than even the Lanza remake- in short, you wondered why the writer went to such troubles, if his creation was so unloveable. Moreover, the protagonist's talismanic relationship with the female lead was very bizarre, in that one got the impression he never even loved her, but rather saw her as his 'erotic salvation,' in an almost totally depersonalized fashion. Perhaps that is how gays saw marriage and heterosexuality in the 1950's...I can't say. But is was just weird reading it from the distance of half a century.

In short, there was no grace, no humanity, no aspect of redemption to it (the story) at all- and thus, I found it totally unbelievable. As an Opera plot, Bizet did it far better with Carmen's Don Jose- at least you knew he was a goner with Carmen, and everyone could see WHY he was a goner, even if you wouldn't have gotten in the mix with her, and would rather have gone home with Micaela. In this story of Cain's, however, the female was a short, dumpy Mexican Indian, for whom an American Anglo of the 1940's could rarely (if ever) find psychic and/or erotic satisfaction, unless his warped nature was truly THAT warped.... and if it were so, then the homosexual relationship with the dilettante rich snob at least offered wealth, glamor and an easy life. You almost wondered why he was fighting it, or, if it meant that much to him, to give it all up, and enter a monastery to at least repent for his sins....

Cain's writing style, OTOH, kept me interested until about thirty pages before the end of the book. But the thin veneer of an analogy to Carmen, and a latter-day homosexed Don Jose made me (singers, bullfighters, Latin lovers, etc.) realize Cain had not invented something new, but was just re-hashing an already created masterpiece of another sort; kind of like an early version of a Lloyd-Webber 'Sunset Boulevard'. Trouble is, with all the music, WIlder's B/W film still is head and shoulders above AL-W. In a much more profound way, Bizet and Meilhac are way better than Cain...by a mile.

I have only read Serenade out of the three novels in this book, so that is what this review concerns.

James M. Cain wrote in the first person, from the criminals perspective. His storytellers are not usually hardened criminals, yet through circumstances commit the most atrocious of crimes. He writes about down trodden, out of luck schmucks, who fall for the wrong kind of girl. Interestingly, it is usually his women who are tough, manipulative, and full of lust for crime. The men tend to be suckered in by their seductive charms.

Serenade centers around a down and out opera singer, John Howard Sharp. He is so down on his luck that he's been singing in a small club in Mexico, before, even they, kick him out. His luck seems to change when he meets a cheap whore, whom he falls with. His love for her causes his once faultering voice, to come back. What follows is a transcontinental series of adventures cataloging John's skyrocket rise in both movies and the New York opera, and his subsequent fall.

There is plenty to like about Serenade. Cain's terse, cynical prose moves across the page like a song. He accurately portrays John's love and hatred for his Mexican whore. There are plenty of nice character moments. Moments that give just the right details that give meaning to ordinary events. Much of the "action" of the story revolves around the little moments of life: sitting in a room talking to friends, stroking the hair of a girl, listening to music. Cain understands that much of life is filled with these types of moment and that great changes and meaning can be found in them.

Before Cain became a writer, he was trained as a singer. In part, this novel seems to be an attempt for him to allow his musical knowledge and training come to some use. Throughout the book John converses about, or describes internally, music he likes and hates, musicians, and his own singing. Some of this is vitally important to the story, for he is a professional singer, and the plot concerns his successes as such. Yet it is so infused with information that it, at times, feels more like a trade magazine than a proper story. At only 136 pages, it is superfluous to fill so many with discussions on Puccini and Mozart.

There is a revealing moment about John's character in the last third of the book. Even while reading this in 2005 it seemed shocking. Yet it is treated with aplomb, handled with an experts hand. The feelings that arise out of the character seem true, if no entirely kind. It is also interesting to see how that particular issue was handled at that time.

Overall, Serenade is an interesting read. It is well written and the characters are well drawn. However, if you have never read anything by James M. Cain, I would recommend picking up The Postman Always Rings Twice and then Double Indemnity before I began reading this

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