Cain X 3

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.^[1]

Cain’s literary oeuvre had drifted into obscurity by the late 1960s, and as a novelist he was at his nadir. Then renewed interest in the hardboiled fiction of the 1930s by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler drew attention to Cain’s contributions to the genre.^[2]

Alfred A. Knopf publishers responded by offering this anthology of three of Cain’s most successful novels, Cain X 3: The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), Double Indemnity (1936), and Mildred Pierce (1941). Enthusiasm for Cain’s early work persisted into the 1970s and 1980s.^[3]

Critical Assessment

Literary critic Tom Wolfe’s fulsome praise for Cain in a 1962 review of author Norman Mailer‘s An American Dream (1965) prompted Knopf to include a laudatory introduction to Cain X 3 by Wolfe.^[4][5] Cain X 3 garnered effusive praise from the Time, The Nation, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Minneapolis Tribune and the Village Voice.^[6]

Footnotes

Sources

• Hoopes, Roy. 1982. Cain. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. New York. ISBN 0-03-049331-5
• Skenazy, Paul. 1989. James M. Cain. Continuum Publishing Company. New York. ISBN 0-8044-2821-2