James_M_Cain_Speech

James M. Cain Intro: Goodmorning/afternoon Mrs Turnbull and Extension 1 English The author I have chosen to present to you today is James Mallahan Cain. Cain is one of the most famous of the hard-boiled crime fiction writers who came to prominence in the United States during the 1930s and 40s. His contribution to the genre is further assured by the film adaptations of three of his novels, which quickly became classics in film noir, these include Double Indemnity, produced in 1944, Mildred Pierce 1945, and The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946. Life: Cain was born in Annapolis, Maryland on the 1st of July 1892, the son of James W. Cain, a renowned professor, and Rose Cain, an opera singer. In 1903, Cain’s family moved to Chesterton, where his father acted as President of Washington College. Cain attended the same college, receiving his B.A. at the age of eighteen in 1910, and masters in 1917 at age 25. Cain worked various jobs before settling on a writing career, some of these include work as a meat packer, a clerk and a teacher, he was even employed as a singer for a brief period. During the last year of World War I, Cain served in the U.S. Army as the editor of the 79th Division newspaper Lorraine Cross in France, where his passion for writing initially evolved. During his time in the army, Cain experienced numerous horrific things, many of which inspired his crime writing in later years. In 1917, after the war, Cain was employed by the Baltimore American as a police reporter, and then by The Baltimore Sun in 1919 for four years, where he covered political and industrial strife in West Virginia. A report he wrote on the trial of William Blizzard, a young coal miner, gained national recognition, this was Cains first baby step to becoming a world renowned prestigious writer. From 1923 to 1924 Cain acted as Professor of Journalism at St. John's College, Annapolis. In 1924 he became the editorial writer for the New York World under Walter Lippmann. In 1928 H.L. Mencken, Cain's mentor and friend, whom he met while working for the Baltimore American, published Cains story ‘Pastorale’ in the American Mercury. Mencken called Cain "the most competent writer the country ever produced". Following the end of the New York World, where Cain wrote acclaimed editorials, he joined the New Yorker staff in 1931. However, he found the environment uncongenial and moved to Hollywood after Paramount Studios offered him $400 a week, compared to the $200 he made at the New Yorker. It was from this point that Cain wrote his famous crime novels, three which were adapted into blockbuster films. Cain continued writing up to his death. However, the many novels he published from the late 1940s onward never rivalled his earlier successes. He died an alcoholic, aged 85. Cain was referred to by most as one of the crucial founders and developers of hard-boiled crime fiction, a tough, unsentimental style of American crime writing that brought a new tone of earthy realism or naturalism to the field of detective fiction. Hard-boiled fiction uses graphic sex and violence, vivid but often sordid urban backgrounds, and fast-paced, slangy dialogue. Three pillars of the early hardboiled scene are often seen in Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Raymond Chandler. Where Hammet is said to have originated the consummate hardboiled detective of the hardboiled novel, Chandler is said to have refined him. James M. Cain’s seminal contribution is thought by many to have helped distinguish the genre’s literary merit; his contribution is so earthy, he is sometimes called “the twenty-minute egg of the hardboiled school.” With the wars and great depression a mere fading memory to today’s society, many are questioning why the works of so many authors from this period and genre remain listed among the classics. Through the study of these three writers, pillars of the Hardboiled Crime fiction, it is possible to begin to understand the intrinsic strengths of this genre, strengths which are now sometimes found buried beneath layers of cliché. A critic wrote “Cain and other hard-boiled writers, wrote not only about but mainly to the masses, giving violent impetus to their forbidden dreams, dramatizing their darkest temptations and their basic physical drives.” In other words, Cain was one of the first to do what none before had dared, he risked to write about the dirty, promiscuous, twisted fantasies readers craved to experience from the safety of their own lounge rooms. People had experienced the war and depression, and had no desire to ever live through it again, they wanted thrills that they didn’t have to undergo firsthand and they got them from Cain’s novels and movies. This developing crowd-pleasing style was later employed and adapted by other crime writers, labeling Cain as one of the core inventors and refiners of hard-boiled crime fiction. Cain’s most famous works include his previously mentioned novels, Double Indemnity, produced in 1944, Mildred Pierce 1945, and The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946. He also wrote other famous novels such as London Bloomsbury 1997 and London Orion 2002 . Critics have pointed out that there is a basic formula pervading most of Caine's fiction. Almost always, with the notable exception of Mildred Pierce, a man falls for a woman -- the femme fatale (highly attractive and dangerous) -- becomes involved in criminal activity with the woman, and is eventually betrayed by her. Invariably, Cain’s novels are about sex, crime and violence. William Rose Benet likened Cain’s characters to the people you read about in the daily newspapers. “They are chiefly stupid, slightly pathetic, capable of rape, arson, or murder in a sort of dumb, driven way. They have glimmers of decency, passions that overcomes them, and are chiefly selfish and morally composed of gelatin while being big, husky brutes to outward view.” Kevin Starr describes the typical Cain story: “A Cain story rushes forward with the headlong pace of a writer who has left everything save narrative on the cutting room floor. Yet we put Cain down with a conviction of social density and accomplished experience; for he triggers in us an act of imaginative cooperation. Convinced that Cain’s fables of lust, murder and money are true to the epistructure of life in the urban-industrial complex, the reader amplifies and visualizes the details, like a director working from the bare bones of a story line” In response to these comments, Cain merely states "I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I merely try to write as the character would write, and I never forget that the average man, from the fields, the streets, the bars, the offices and even the gutters of his country, has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent, and that if I stick to this heritage, this logos of the American countryside, I shall attain a maximum of effectiveness with very little effort." Cain was so successful in building crime fiction to what it is today, not particularly through his fame or gift of words, but principally through his ability to feed and fuel the desires of the masses through generic novels full of sex and violence that allowed readers to experience thrill from a safe distance. I write of the wish that comes true – for some reason, a terrifying concept. James M. Cain