Love's Lovely Counterfeit is a hard-boiled short novel by James M. Cain published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1942.[1] The story is set in a Midwestern town where rival gangsters struggle to maintain control of their criminal enterprises. The work is one of only three of Cain's novels told from the third-person point-of-view.[2][3]
The story takes place in the Midwestern metropolis of Lake City, population 220,000. Ben Grace is chauffeur and factotum for racketeer Sol Caspar who controls the city government and presides over local gambling and prostitution. Ben is resentful of his exploitation by Sol and schemes to be more than a mere "chiseler." When a political reform party arises led by a local dairyman Jansen, Grace infiltrates the movement and enlists the support of reformer June Lyons to destroy Sol politically. June falls in love with Ben and, under his influence, betrays Jansen. Grace assumes control of the syndicate's illicit operations. Though cruel to June, Ben conducts his racketeering with a gentle touch. When June's evil sister Dorothy arrives, she betrays June by initiating a sexual liaison with Ben. Sol appears, and Dorothy kills him when he attempts to rape her. Ben and Dorothy plan to flee with Sol's hidden cache of money, but Ben is gunned down by the police. He marries Dorothy on his deathbed.[5][6]
Publication History
At the end of 1941, Cain was struggling to recover from a life-saving surgery for an ulcerated stomach .[7] Financially in distress and hoping to cover his hospital bills, he embarked upon writing a story intended to serve both as a magazine serial and for Hollywood film adaption. Love's Lovely Counterfeit is unique in that it is the only story "he ever wrote with a movie sale specifically in mind."[8] Cain completed the work on December 6, 1941.[9]
American publishers and film studios found that Love's Lovely Counterfeit of "the seamier side of city politics" lacked the patriotic wartime themes favored after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into World War II. Cain's agent failed to generate interest in the story.[10] Following the success of a collection of Cain novellas, Three of a Kind published in 1941, Alfred A. Knopf reconsidered and paid Cain $1500 for Love's Lovely Counterfeit. The novel was released in 1942, despite its unflattering portrayal of corruption in the American heartland.[11][12]
A film adaption of Love’s Lovely Counterfeit, entitled Slightly Scarlet, would not appear until 1956. [See section Film adaption].
Critical appraisal
In writing Love’s Lovely Counterfeit, Cain deviated from the narrative point-of-view that characterized some of his most successful novels. Biographer Roy Hoopes observed that "The most characteristic aspect of Cain’s novels is the fact that they are all written in the first-person. Only three are not: Mildred Pierce, Love’s Lovely Counterfeit, and The Magician’s Wife."[13] David Madden makes this critique:
Cain’s third-person novels seem to be periodic attempts to depart from [the first-person] mode that he knew was almost too easy for him…very little is distinguished about the style of Love's Lovely Counterfeit...[here] Cain most awkwardly indulges in the omniscience of the third-person narrator."[14]
Ray Hoopes reports that Love's Lovely Counterfeit was widely panned by critics from The New York Times, The New Yorker and Time. The Saturday Review cautioned Cain that his reputation would suffer if he could not produce "a better book."[15][16]
Critic N. L. Rothman compared Cain's Love's Lovely Counterfeit unfavorably to the immensely successful 1934 novel The Postman Always Rings Twice: a "hasty and overconfident production [lacking] the real pulsing vitality" of Cain's previous work.[17] Knopf reported that by the end of 1942, the book had sold only 7,500 copies and the publisher "thought it was dead."[18]
Theme and Style
Love's Lovely Counterfeit demonstrates Cain's preoccupation with personal struggles among his male and female characters in contrast to the social and economic sources that underlay the political corruption he describes.[19] Biographer David Madden points out that "Cain never deals directly with society's ills…his most effective social criticism emerges from his treatment of…character portrayal…it is the dramatic thrust of characters in action that intrigues him, and they add up to an impressive gallery of American public types."[20] Literary critic Paul Skenazy writes:
One has only to compare Love's Lovely Counterfeit to Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest, also about gang violence and corruption in a small town, to realize the very different minds and premises of these two writers. Cain is compelled by issues of power in the political sphere, particularly in the relationship between men and women; politics does not activate his imagination.[21]
And as in virtually all of Cain's novels, the male protagonist is "doomed by his love and dependence" on women.[22][23]
Point-of-View
Paul Skenazy notes that in the 1930s, Cain's work "became synonymous with a style of a short, intense, first-person narrative in which the male protagonist confesses his sins, allowing the reader to peek indiscreetly at his immoral life…reviews of Cain's work became more respectful with each subsequent publication."[24] With Mildred Pierce and Love's Lovely Counterfeit in the early 1940s, Cain departed from his highly successful use of a first-person confessional mode to the more conventional third-person omniscient.[25] Biographer David Madden writes:
The failures of Cain’s style are seen mainly in the third-person works, in which he is sometimes as bad as a writer can be… purple passages are rampant in his third-person novels, especially Love’s Lovely Counterfeit…Cain has more control over himself when he is pretending to be [his male protagonists] than when he is pretending, as in the third-person, to be a literary creator.[26]
Love’s Lovely Counterfeit demonstrates "Cain’s "continuing problems with point of view, and his developing tendency to over-complicate his plots."[27]
Film adaption
Though Cain had written Love's Lovely Counterfeit in 1941 with Hollywood in mind, the studios showed no interest. Cain later remarked, "I thought, and still think [it's] a slick plot for a movie." The story was published as a novel by Alfred A. Knopf in 1942.[28]
The story was adapted by screenwriter Robert Blees and directed by Alan Dwan. Biographer Roy Hoopes commented that Slightly Scarlett was "probably the worst picture with which Cain's name was ever associated."[30]
Critic Bosley Crowther described Slightly Scarlet as "an exhausting lot of twaddle", but exonerated Cain by noting that any resemblance between the film adaption and Love's Lovely Counterfeit was purely coincidental.[31]
Footnotes
↑ Madden, 1970 p. 65: "Love’s Lovely Counterfeit a "short novel written in a hard-boiled manner."
↑ Skenazy, 1989 p. 13: "...about political corruption and gangsterism in a Midwestern town."
↑ Hoopes, 1982 p. 548: "The most characteristic aspect of Cain’s novels is the fact that they are all written in the first person. Only three are not: Mildred Pierce, Love’s Lovely Counterfeit, and The Magician’s Wife."
↑ Hoopes, 1982 p. 651: "...written as a serial and possible movie…", See Filmography notes.
↑ Skenazy, 1989 p. 88-90: Summary sketch and some analysis of plot.
↑ Hoopes, 1982 p. 312: Cain underwent a "double operation" to remove gallstones, as well as a " pylorectomy."
↑ Hooper, 1982 p. 307-308: The proceeds from his novel "Mildred Pierce would come to the rescue." And p. 310: Surgery paid for with the "$5,000" he received for Mildred Pierce. And: p. 315 And: p. 382: "He had written only one novel, Love's Lovely Counterfeit, with Hollywood in mind, but that was originally intended as a magazine serial, not a book."
↑ Hoopes, 1981 p. 217: Love's Lovely Counterfeit "...neither the magazines nor the studios were interested in a critique of American institutions, and the story never sold." Hoopes, 1982 p. 321: The impending war in 1941 "made it somehow in bad taste to attack a specific place [in the US], even a fictitious one...it was dead in the [film] studios and with the magazines."
↑ Hoopes, 1981 p. 217-218: "...criticizing American institutions…"
↑ Skenazy, 1989 p. 90 And: p. 87-88: "Cain’s only gangster novel, it is of less interest for its story of racketeering than for its revelation of Cain’s continued preoccupation with sexual rivalries."
Mildred Pierce is a psychological drama by James M. Cain published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1941.
James Mallahan Cain was an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter. He is widely regarded as a progenitor of the hardboiled school of American crime fiction.
The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1934 crime novel by American writer James M. Cain. The novel was successful and notorious upon publication. It is considered one of the most outstanding crime novels of the 20th century. The novel's mix of sexuality and violence was startling in its time and caused it to be banned in Boston.
Double Indemnity is a 1943 crime novel by American journalist-turned-novelist James M. Cain. It was first published in Liberty magazine in 1936 as an eight part serial, and later republished as one of "three long short tales" in the collection Three of a Kind.
Career in C Major is an opera-themed novella by American writer James M. Cain, first published in 1938. First appearing as a serial in The American Magazine entitled "Two Can Sing", this comic romance is a departure from Cain's first novels, Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) and Double Indemnity (1936), both hardboiled crime stories that included premeditated murder. Redbook magazine, disappointed that Cain had exchanged his hard-boiled themes involving sex and murder for a "comedic adventure", declined to purchase the novella but Liberty obtained the piece and carried it as a serial in 1935.
Three of a Kind is a collection of three novellas by James M. Cain, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1943. Each originally appeared as serials in magazines during the 1930s. The collection includes Double Indemnity, first published in 1936 as a serial for Liberty magazine; Career in C Major, originally entitled "Two Can Sing" when it appeared in The American Magazine in 1938; and The Embezzler, appearing in Liberty as "Money and the Woman", also in 1938.
Serenade is a novel by James M. Cain published in 1938 by Alfred A. Knopf. and one of four Cain novels to feature opera as a plot device. Loosely based on Bizet's Carmen, the story explores the sources of artistic development, in particular the role played by sexual orientation in the development of artistic talent.
The Embezzler is a 1938 short novel by James M. Cain. The work first appeared as a serial in Liberty magazine in 1940 under the title Money and the Woman. In 1943, Alfred A. Knopf published the work as The Embezzler in a collection of novellas by Cain entitled Three of a Kind.
The Butterfly is a hard-boiled novel by author James M. Cain published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1947. The story is set in rural West Virginia in the late 1930s and concerns a mystery surrounding an apparent case of father and daughter incest.
Our Government is a collection of satirical dialogues and sketches by James M. Cain published in 1930 by Alfred A. Knopf as part of The American Scene series. Our Government is the first of Cain's many books.
The Postman Always Rings Twice is a play by James M. Cain, based on his best-selling 1934 novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. The work was first performed at the Lyceum Theatre in New York City in 1936. The play saw a brief revival in 1953.
Sinful Woman is a detective novel by James M. Cain that appeared originally as a paperback in 1947 by Avon publishers. Sinful Woman was the most commercially successful of three paperbacks Cain wrote for Avon in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Galatea is a romance novel by James M. Cain published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1953. The story alludes to the mythological Galatea in which the sculptor Pygmalion falls in love with the ivory figure of a woman he has crafted. In Cain’s modernized version of the Greek legend, an overweight woman is transfigured through a program of weight reduction into a goddess-like beauty.
The Root of His Evil is a novel by James M. Cain published in paperback by Avon in 1951.
The Moth is a novel by James M. Cain published in 1948 by Alfred A. Knopf. At over three-hundred pages, The Moth is Cain’s “most personal, most ambitious and longest book” in his œuvre, attempting to convey a “broad, social landscape” of America in the 1930s.
Mignon is a historical novel by James M. Cain published by the Dial Press in 1962. Along with Past All Dishonor (1946), Mignon is one of Cain’s two historical novels set during the American Civil War.
The Magician's Wife is a novel by James M. Cain published in 1965 by Dial Press.
Cain X 3 is a collection of three previously published novels by James M. Cain, reissued in 1969 by Alfred A. Knopf, with an introduction by Tom Wolfe.
The Institute is a novel by James M. Cain published in 1976 by Mason-Charter. The Institute is a story of academia and high finance set in the community of College Park, Maryland concerning members of the Washington, D. C. political establishment.
Jealous Woman is a mystery novel by James M. Cain published in 1950 by Avon.
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