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INTERVIEWER
Have you read the two writers who have so often been identified with you—Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler?
CAIN
I read a few pages of Dashiell Hammett, that's all. And Chandler. Well, I tried. That book about a bald, old man with two nympho daughters. That's all right. I kept reading. Then it turned out the old man raises orchids. That's too good. When it's too good, you do it over again. Too good is too easy. If it's too easy you have to worry. If you're not lying awake at night worrying about it, the reader isn't going to, either. I always know that when I get a good night's sleep, the next day I'm not going to get any work done. Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational.
Find the complete James M. Cain interview in The Paris Review Interviews, I available now from Picador. |
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| Authors Mentioned |
| Luigi Pirandello, James Thurber, Thornton Wilder, Lewis Carroll, Joseph Conrad, William Schwenck Gilbert, Arthur Krock, Sinclair Lewis, Walter Lippmann, H. L. Mencken, Frank Merriwell, Ogden Nash, John O’Hara, Robert Riskin, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain |
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