The Cocktail Waitress
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 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | James M. Cain |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Hardboiled novel |
| Publisher | Hard Case Crime |
Publication date | 2012 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| ISBN | 978-1-78116-032-9 |
The Cocktail Waitress is a novel by James M. Cain published posthumously in 2012 by Hard Case Crime press.[1][2][3]
The last of Cain's novels, this so-called "lost" work was assembled from a number of undated manuscripts by archivist and novelist Charles Ardai.[4][5][6]
The Cocktail Waitress resembles Cain's 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.[7][8]
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.[9][10]
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.[11][12]
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.[13][14][15] The Cocktail Waitress existed in several incomplete and undated drafts when Cain died on October 27, 1977, at age 85.[16]
Novelist and archivist Charles Ardai was alerted to the existence of these manuscripts by Cain biographer Roy Hoopes in 2002.[17] He discovered the “long lost” drafts and assembled The Cocktail Waitress, published in 2012, 35 years after the author's death.[18][19]