The Magician's Wife is one of only three of Cain's fourteen novels published in his lifetime that he wrote in the third-person narrative form; the others are Mildred Pierce (1941) and Love's Lovely Counterfeit (1942). The bulk of his novels are written from his preferred first-person point of view.[4]
Despite Dial's efforts to revive Cain's career with The Magician's Wife, it proved a commercial and critical disappointment. Cain would not see another of his novels published until 1975.[5]
Cain modeled The Magician's Wife on the same formula he employed in his novels of the 1930s: "An adulterous triangle, the murder of the husband…an animal abandon to sexuality, a fixation on eating [and] the two lovers turn on each other, and both die."[6]
Cain began The Magician's Wife as a first-person narrative, delivered by the lead protagonist, Clay Lockwood. He reconsidered after examining his 1941 novel Mildred Pierce and decided to switch the point-of-view of his work in progress to a third-person narrative.[7][8] This decision would contribute to the "excessive verbiage" that characterizes the novel.[9]
"Sally Alexis is an extreme version of Cain's violence-charged, dominant, animal-like females. When she helps force a car off the road, an 'odor' appears, an over-secretion, she explains: 'Things affect that way sometimes…Gives me a funny smell—like a rattlesnake, kind of. Want some nice rattlesnake love?'"—Paul Skenazy's James M. Cain (1989)[10][11]
The editorial management at Dial was in disarray when Cain began writing The Magician's Wife in 1963. Jim Silberman Dial's editor, left for Random House, and Dial saw a succession of chief editors: Richard Baron, Henry Robbins, and E. L. Doctorow, limiting the timely guidance Cain requested for revisions.[12][13]
A first draft of The Magician's Wife was completed in November 1963, and Cain sent it to his agent Ivan von Auw. HIs response was cool, questioning the credibility of the characters. Cain rewrote the novel, changing the ending from a happy one into one that involves a double homicide and the death of the hero. Dial approved the revised version for publication pending some unspecified changes. The newest chief editor, E. L. Doctorow, demanded detailed edits, and according to Cain, gave him a "writing lesson." By early 1965, Cain was making major revisions to The Magician's Wife, though Dial appeared to be indifferent as to whether completed the novel or not.[14]
During this period, Dial published Norman Mailer's An American Dream (1965). In critic Tom Wolfe's New York Herald Tribune's Book Week review of the work, he commented that Mailer's literary style emulated that of James M. Cain, but regretted that he "could not match Cain in writing dialogue, creating characters, or carrying character through a long story…"[15]
This high praise from a Wolfe, a "darling" of the devotees of New York's "New Journalism" prompted Dial to capitalize on this "rediscovery" of Cain's oeuvre, and moved quickly to publish The Magician's Wife in 1965, investing in a major promotion of the novel.[16]
Critical assessment
The Magician's Wife, which plot-wise is "almost a rewrite" of The Postman Always Rings Twice, lacks the 1934 novel's deft rendering of character. In The Magician's Wife Cain requires "lengthy expressions" to convey insights into his protagonist's backgrounds and motivations.[17][18] The novel is a "flabby, mangled version of the same basic structure" employed by Cain in his 1934 magnum opusThe Postman Always Rings Twice.[19][20]
Despite efforts to rescue Cain from "literary obscurity", the reviews for The Magician's Wife were mixed, and the sales mediocre. A reviewer at Time declared that Cain's body of work was always "bordering on a trash heap" but had advanced to "pure trash" with his latest publication.[21] Despite efforts by his agent Harold Norling Swanson, the film studios emphatically rejected the novel.
According to biographer Roy Hoopes, The Magician's Wife "brought the curtain down on Cain's efforts to make something of himself as a serious writer..." Cain would not see published another of his book for ten years, though he continued to write them.[22][23]
↑ Skenazy, 1989 p. 113: "...many of Cain's novels seem rewrites of previous material . The Magician's Wife imitates Postman..." And p. 121: "...almost a rewrite of Postman…"
↑ Madden, 1970 p. 58: "The Magician's Wife...modeled on The Postman..." And p. 62: "...the same formula" as his 1934 novel.
↑ Skenazy, 1989 p. 16: "In The Magician's Wife, Cain attempts to return to the love triangle of adultery and violence that proved so successful in Postman." And p. 121
↑ Skenazy, 1989 p. 121: "...the novel approaches self-parody. Cain's decision to write in the third-person, rather than in first-person, results in excessive verbiage."
↑ Madden, 1970 p. 58: The Magician's Wife "received with contempt…Cain admitted 'It wasn't too good an effort." And p. 62: "...an almost complete lack of success…"
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 serial form in Liberty magazine in 1936 and later republished as one of "three long short tales" in the collection Three of a Kind.
"The Baby in the Icebox" is a 1932 short story by James M. Cain and the first of his many works set in California during the Great Depression.
“Pastorale” is a short story written by James M. Cain and published in 1927 by editor H. L. Mencken in The American Mercury. Written in the Ring Lardner style, the tale is told in a first-person narrative, delivered in the dialect of a resident of rural America. Both the point-of-view and the use of colloquial dialect for his protagonists, fully established in “Pastorale”, would be applied in many of Cain’s novels.
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 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.
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. 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.
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.
Jealous Woman is a mystery novel by James M. Cain published in 1950 by Avon.
The Enchanted Isle is a novel by James M. Cain published by The Mysterious Press in 1985.
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