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The Cocktail Waitress
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Wikipedia article
'The Cocktail Waitress' is a novel by James M. Cain published posthumously in 2012 by Hard Case Crime press.Hoopes, 1982 p. 537Connelly, 2012Gutkin, 2012
The last of Cains novels, this so-called lost work was assembled from a number of undated manuscripts by archivist and novelist Charles Ardai.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 authors 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 Cains papers at the Library of Congress. He found bits and pieces of the manuscript...
'The Cocktail Waitress' resembles Cains 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.Gutkin, 2012: The Cocktail Waitress in many ways resembles a first-person rewrite of Mildred PierceTucker, 2012: ...Cain started 100 pages of the book in third person, then switched to first person, his favored narrative style.
Plot
Publication History
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'.Hoopes, 1982 p. 537: After he finished the final rewrite of The Institute [in 1976], he went immediately into another novelhis 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 Georges] 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.
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.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 desciptions of her sexual encounters.Gutkin, 2012: The Cocktail Waitress in many ways resembles a first-person rewrite of Mildred Pierce
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.Hoopes, 1982 p. 202, 205, 538-539Tucker, 2012: ...Cain started 100 pages of the book in third person, then switched to first person, his favored narrative style.Connelly, 2012 The Cocktail Waitress existed in several incomplete and undated drafts when Cain died on October 27, 1977 at age 85.Skenazy, 1989 p. xix
Novelist and archivist Charles Ardai was alerted to the existence of these manuscripts by Cain biographer Roy Hoopes in 2002.Tucker, 2012 He discovered the long lost drafts and assembled 'The Cocktail Waitress', published in 2012 long dash 35 years after the authors death.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.
Critical Assessment
Critic Len Gurkin on 'The Cocktail Waitress':
Literary critic Michael Connelly on 'The Cocktail Waitress':
Footnotes
Sources
*Connelly, Michael. 2012. 'Last Call'. The New York Times. 23 September 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/books/review/the-cocktail-waitress-by-james-m-cain.html Retrieved 10 July 2022.
*Gutkin, Len. 2012. 'The Terrifying Wish that Comes True: On Cain's 'The Cocktail Waitress.' The Los Angeles Review of Books. 16 September 2012. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-terrifying-wish-that-comes-true-on-cains-the-cocktail-waitress/ Retrieved 10 July 2022.
*Tucker, Neely. 2012. 'Long lost James M. Cain novel published'. The Washington Post. 27 September 2012. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/long-lost-james-m-cain-novel-published/2012/09/27/dd1046c4-074e-11e2-858a-5311df86ab04_story.html Retrieved 10 August 2022.
Category:2012 novels
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