The last of Cain's novels, this so-called "lost" work was assembled from a number of undated manuscripts by archivist and novelist Charles Ardai.[4][5][6]
The Cocktail Waitress resembles Cain's 1941 novel Mildred Pierce in plot and theme, but, in contrast, employs a first-person point-of-view to tell the tragic story of heroine Joan Medford rather than the third-person narration he used in the earlier work.[7][8]
Upon completing his penultimate novel, The Institute (1976) in 1975, Cain began writing a historical novel story similar in plot and theme to his successful 1941 novel Mildred Pierce. This work would appear 37 years later as The Cocktail Waitress.[9][10]
Cain, conflicted as to what narrative point-of-view he would employ, began the story using the third-person. Unsatisfied with the effect, Cain “once and for all” committed himself to a first-person confessional narration, rewriting the work in the “lingo” of his female protagonist, Joan Medford.[11][12]
Cain worked on The Cocktail Waitress throughout 1975. He sent a manuscript to his agent Dorothy Olding. Publisher Orlando Petrocelli requested a rewrite of the ending, and when Cain failed to deliver satisfactory edits, Petrocelli and Olding shelved the novel.[13][14][15] The Cocktail Waitress existed in several incomplete and undated drafts when Cain died on October 27, 1977, at age 85.[16]
Novelist and archivist Charles Ardai was alerted to the existence of these manuscripts by Cain biographer Roy Hoopes in 2002.[17] He discovered the “long lost” drafts and assembled The Cocktail Waitress, published in 2012, 35 years after the author's death.[18][19]
Critical assessment
Critic Len Gurkin on The Cocktail Waitress:
If even Cain’s best novels were, as Joyce Carol Oates sternly insists in a 1967 essay, a little too trashy to be literature — “there is always something sleazy, something eerily vulgar and disappointing in his work” — his later work fails even to be sleazy. No longer eerily vulgar, these tedious efforts are instead eerily amateurish, even incompetent. Where did the ear go? Where is the vaunted craft? I know of no other major writer who so completely lost his touch. Which brings us to The Cocktail Waitress...”[20]
“... the femme fatale tells her own story, the narration coming direct from Joan in the form of a self-taped statement setting the record straight. The setup leaves the reader to decide whether Joan is telling the truth, or only the truth as she sees it…the plot seams occasionally show or are seen coming far in advance of the denouement. Though narrated by Joan, the story is at times stilted and awkward, as if the author has lost the thread of his character’s voice.[21]
↑ Gutkin, 2012: “The Cocktail Waitress, the last thing Cain wrote and his third novel to be posthumously released.”
↑ Connelly, 2012: “...his very last book…’ And: “Now along comes the author’s ‘lost’ and last novel, The Cocktail Waitress.”
↑ Tucker, 2012: “Ardai had heard the story of the lost book in 2002. He hunted through old letters, talked to people, searched Cain’s papers at the Library of Congress. He found bits and pieces of the manuscript...”
↑ Gutkin, 2012: “The Cocktail Waitress in many ways resembles a first-person rewrite of Mildred Pierce”
↑ Tucker, 2012: “...Cain started 100 pages of the book in third person, then switched to first person, his favored narrative style.”
↑ Hoopes, 1982 p. 537: “After he finished the final rewrite of The Institute [in 1976], he went immediately into another novel…his last as it turned out - The Cocktail Waitress.”
↑ Tucker, 2012: “Cain mentioned the book in a 1975 interview with biographer Roy Hoopes, which was published in the Washingtonian. “I started a book that was supposed to have a background in [Prince George’s] county politics . . . a book came out of it — ‘The Cocktail Waitress’ — which I am finishing now, but it is completely different from the book I started to write.”
↑ Hoopes, 1982 p. 538: “...there was the old first-person, third-person problem. Initially tried it in the third-person…” Cain toned down any confessional descriptions of her sexual encounters.
↑ Gutkin, 2012: “The Cocktail Waitress in many ways resembles a first-person rewrite of Mildred Pierce”
↑ Tucker, 2012: “Now his long-lost last novel, [published] 35 years after [Cain] died at age 85.” And: “Ardai assembled the book, based on this manuscript, a task made more difficult because the drafts were not dated.”
↑ Connelly, 2012: “The published novel was drawn together by the editor Charles Ardai from multiple manuscripts and notes found in places thousands of miles apart.”
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.
Michael Joseph Connelly is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. Connelly is the bestselling author of 38 novels and one work of non-fiction, with over 74 million copies of his books sold worldwide and translated into 40 languages. His first novel, The Black Echo, won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992. In 2002, Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the movie adaptation of Connelly's 1997 novel, Blood Work. In March 2011, the movie adaptation of Connelly's novel The Lincoln Lawyer starred Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller. Connelly was the President of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.
Charles Ardai is an American businessman, and writer of crime fiction and mysteries. He is founder and editor of Hard Case Crime, a line of pulp-style paperback crime novels. He is also an early employee of D. E. Shaw & Co. and remains a managing director of the firm. He was the former chairman of Schrödinger, Inc.
Mildred Pierce is a 1945 American melodrama/film noir directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, and Zachary Scott, also featuring Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, and Bruce Bennett. Based on the 1941 novel by James M. Cain, this was Crawford's first starring role for Warner Bros., after leaving Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1996, Mildred Pierce was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected for preservation in the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry.
Double Indemnity is a 1943 crime novel by American journalist-turned-novelist James M. Cain. It was first published in serial form in Liberty magazine in 1936 and later republished as one of "three long short tales" in the collection Three of a Kind.
Waking the Dead is a 1986 novel by Scott Spencer. The book, Spencer's fourth, was adapted in 2000 into a film of the same name, starring Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly.
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 1935 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.
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.
Love's Lovely Counterfeit is a hard-boiled short novel by James M. Cain published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1942. 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.
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.
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.
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. The work is the last of Cain’s four novels to feature opera as a central element of the story; the others are Serenade (1937), Mildred Pierce (1941) and Career in C Major (1943) At over three-hundred pages, The Moth is Cain’s “most personal, most ambitious and longest book” in his oeuvre, 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.
Rainbow’s End is a crime novel by American writer James M. Cain published in 1975 by Mason-Charter publishers, with an introduction by Tom Wolfe
The Enchanted Isle is a novel by James M. Cain published by The Mysterious Press in 1985.
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