Tue 14 Dec 2021
Stories I’m Reading: JAMES M. CAIN “Pastorale.â€
Posted by Steve under Stories I'm Reading[6] Comments
JAMES M. CAIN “Pastorale.†Short story. First published in The American Mercury, March 1928. Reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 1945. Collected in The Baby in the Icebox (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1981). Also reprinted in Best American Noir of the Century, edited by James Ellroy & Otto Penzler (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), as well as perhaps other anthologies.
The introduction to this story in the Ellroy/Penzler edition claims it was Cain’s first published work of fiction, but that’s not so. The tale with that particular distinction seems to have been “Trial by Jury,†which appeared in January 1928 issue of The American Mercury.
But no matter. It’s still a story of some great interest to noir fans. I’m sure that everyone reading this knows that one of Cain’s primary themes in the stories he told was that of a man falling for a woman who then persuades him to commit a crime for him. And how does that work out? Not well. Not usually. Not well.
And guess what? That’s exactly the kind of story this is, even at this early date (1928). I won’t go into details. This is only a short story, after all. I did think the story ends on a flatter note than I expected, but it’s still a good one.
December 15th, 2021 at 9:02 am
James M. Cain may have been better at novels than short stories. Either way, Cain knew how to write noir.
December 15th, 2021 at 4:29 pm
You may be right. It’s certainly true for quite a few writers I can think of. It’s hard for me to say, though. This is the first short story by Cain that I remember reading.
December 15th, 2021 at 7:58 pm
Cain is incredibly uneven for me, love one book, bored by another, but it’s because he writes a wider variety of more mainstream work than the classic noir authors.
The short form stripped the cumulative effect of his novels down too much for the same impact. He was never an O Henry type writer, never punchy in the way a good pulp writer is.
The novella was about as short as his best work got. The short stories always feel incomplete.
December 15th, 2021 at 11:21 pm
Steve,
Funny that you posted this yesterday as I was listening to Sirius/XM radio in my car today and they played a version of Cain’s “Loves Lovely Counterfeit” (Bogie version) and as I was listening I was thinking back a few years when I read almost ALL of Cain’s
early novels (up to 1951’s “The Root of His Evil”) and loved every damn one of them!! I think the only early novel I didn’t read was “Past All Dishonor”. I’m sure I’ve read at least a couple short stories as well but don’t remember which ones. Certainly the ones published in EQMM. I really must go back and read them all again. A really great writer who used to be touted with Hammett and Chandler on the covers of those great old paperbacks as the best in hardboiled fiction.
December 16th, 2021 at 10:49 pm
I always consider James M. Cain, Horace McCoy and anyone else writing pre-war to be strictly “proto-” noir authors. Visionaries ahead of their time…
December 16th, 2021 at 10:57 pm
Lazy,
I think proto noir fits Cain well since he also wrote historical fiction and even the largely comic CAREER IN C MAJOR. He, McCoy, and W.R. Burnett were mainstream writers (Westerns and historical fiction in Burnett’s case) who also wrote crime and noir fiction, probably their best books and most famous ones, but only part of their output.
A noir sensibility underlies most of their work and certainly their best known works, but books like MILDRED PIERCE and SERENADE are at best associational to the genre with more in common with books like Robert Wilder’s FLAMINGO ROAD than say Hammett or Chandler.