James M. Cain: The “Love Rack” (The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 1)
James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice
First, a story: how a man with no writing samples landed a job The New York World in 1924 as the guy who just sits around "thinking up articles, ideas":
I said I knew articles didn't grow on trees. Surely it was practically a full-time job, thinking up articles for a newspaper. I went on like this, with Lippmann staring at me while I tried to talk myself into a job. I knew I was getting somewhere in a direction altogether different, that he was listening to what I had to say, and though disregarding it, he was meditating. I thought, What the hell is with this guy? He interrupted to ask if I had any specimens of my writing. Writing, I thought, what has writing got to do with it? I was still talking about thinking up articles. Later, when we got to be easy friends, I asked him about this first interview and he said, I began to realize as I listened to you talk, that none of your infinitives were split, all of your pronouns were correct, and that none of your participles dangled.
Evidence: the power of grammar.
Rather than for perfect English, however, James M. Cain is known for his "hard-boiled" manner of writing -- the writing that made him a bestselling author with The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and others.
I tried to write as people talk. That was one of the first arguments I ever had with my father -- my father was all hell for people talking as they should talk. I, the incipient novelist, even as a boy, was fascinated by the way people do talk.
Many of his novels were made into films. In contrast to Parker's categorical dismissal of Hollywood people, Cain identifies what Hollywood people have to teach a writer.
Enter: The "Love Rack"
Cain: The big influence in how I wrote The Postman Always Rings Twice was this strange guy, Vincent Lawrence, who had more effect on my writing than anyone else. He had a device which he thought was so important -- the "love rack" he called it. I have never yet, as I sit here, figured out how this goddamn rack was spelled . . . whether it was wrack, or rack, or what dictionary connection could be found between the world and his concept. What he meant by the "love rack" was the poetic situation whereby the audience felt the love between the characters. He called this the "one, two, and the three." Someone, I think it was Paul Goodman, the producer and another great influence, who once reminded him that this one, two, and three were nothing more than Aristotle's beginning, middle, and end. OK, Goody, Lawrence said, who the hell was Aristotle, and who did he lick? I always thought that was the perfect philistinism.
Interviewer: How did it work?
Cain: Lawrence would explain what he meant with an illustration, say a picture like Susan Lenox, where Garbo was an ill-abused Swedish farm girl who jumped into a wagon and brought the whip down over the horses and went galloping away and ended up in front of this farmhouse that Clark Gable, who was an engineer, had rented. And he takes her in. He's very honorable with her, doesn't do anything, gives her a place to sleep, put her horses away and feed them . . . He didn't have any horses himself, but he did have two dozen ears of corn to feed hers. Well, the next day he takes the day off and the two of them go fishing. He's still very honorable, and she's very self-conscious and standoffish. She reels in a fish (they used a live fish -- must have had it in a bucket). She says, I'll cook him for your supper. And with that she gave herself away; his arms went around her. This fish, this live fish, was what Lawrence meant by a "love rack"; the audience suddenly felt what the characters felt. Before Lawrence got to Hollywood, they had simpler effects, created by what was called the mixmaster system. You know, he'd look at her through the forest window, looking over the lilies, and this was thought to be the way to do it; then they'd go down to the amusement park together and go through the what do you call it? Shoot de chute?
Interviewer: Tunnel of love.
Cain: The tunnel of love, and all the rest of it. It was what was called the montage, and at the end of the montage they were supposed to be in love. Lawrence just wouldn't have this. He said this love rack had to be honest, it had to be real poetry. He revolutionized picture-writing in Hollywood; he hadn't been out there long before they all accepted his goddamn love rack.
So, after reading this tidbit, I tried to put the theory to test. I watched A&E/BBC's Victoria & Albert. Yep, there's a love rack -- two, even -- when Albert hands her a book of Byron at the start of his second visit and when they play the piano together soon after. What about something more contemporary and not about forever and monogamy, like Closer? I think the birthday balloon functions as a lovely love rack after Clive Owens takes Julia Roberts for a nymphomaniac. Hmm. I think Cain's got something here.
Cain isn't a believer in the teaching of writing, particularly the teaching that happens in workshops in the universities. He does believe that devices can be passed down. So it doesn't feel out of place to use this chance to say "love rack" one more time.
If someone (an agent, an editor, your workshop peers, your mother, her dog) has made the comment they can't feel the critical relationship of your book yet, that the prose is telling them there's love or sexual longing or the diminishment of either, but they aren't feeling it -- have you built your love rack?
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