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The Incomplete Cain
BORIS DRALYUK
on the grim hardness of a neglected noir master.
Photographer Unknown
Paul Cain
The Complete Slayers: Fast One and the Complete Short Stories of Paul Cain
Centipede Press, February 2012. 300 pp.Coleman said: “Eight ball in the corner.”Somebody always takes it about as far as it’ll go, and no one took the hard-boiled farther than Paul Cain. Cain’s entire contribution to the genre — a slim novel and 14 stories, some of which haven’t seen print since the 1930s — is now available as The Complete Slayers from Centipede Press.
There was soft click of ball against ball and then sharper click as the black ball dropped into the pocket Coleman had called.— Paul Cain, “Murder Done in Blue” (1933)
Raymond Chandler tagged Cain’s only novel, Fast One (1933), as “some kind of high point in the ultra hard-boiled manner.” They use that as a blurb; to my mind, those qualifications — “some kind,” “ultra” — reek of anxiety. Stacked pound-for-pound against Cain’s lean and war-hardened antihero Gerry Kells, Chandler’s Philip Marlowe comes off like a flabby, eccentric chatterbox — more Sydney Greenstreet than Humphrey Bogart.
The novel’s title says it all: Fast One. Some have called it A Fast One or The Fast One, but that’s not it. There’s neither need nor time for articles. Someone or something, in the singular, is fast. Fast and singular. And the chase is on:Kells walked north on Spring. At Fifth he turned west, walked two blocks, turned into a small cigar store. He nodded to the squat bald man behind the counter and went on through the ground-glass-paneled door into a large and bare back room.There’s so much momentum in those first lines — so little besides movement — that the reader can hardly keep up, much less take a pause. A pause might raise some questions. Just how does Kells get through that ground-glass-paneled door? Does he open it? Bust right through it? Roll through it as if it didn’t exist? But, of course, the door doesn’t exist. Cain’s language is stripped so bare it’s hardly referential. That’s the central paradox of the hard-boiled style: For all its reputed hardness, the universe it conjures is eerily immaterial — verbal, not substantive. Hard-boiled protagonists throw punches indefatigably, get blackjacked unconscious at the end of one chapter only to emerge with a slight headache at the start of the next, and keep moving to the last.
"Gripe, gripe, gripe, all you ever do is gripe,” she retorted, and he laughed, teeth gleaming white through the filthy stubble of his beard, joyful only to be with her again. They were silent then, except for the wordless yelling of battle, merging with the dirty mob of the advancing forces. But he was conscious of her at his side, battle-cold and bright, filled with concentrated fire, and he wondered how he had ever thought her plain."
Highlighted by Lachlan Hardy in The Ladies of Mandrigyn: The Sun Wolf and Starhawk Series (Book One) by Barbara Hambly
"Her own horror at what she had done turned to fury, fed by the weariness of her long night’s terrified searching. Through darkness and clouds of weakness, Sun Wolf could see almost nothing, but his senses, raw as if sandpapered, brought him the feel of her rage like a wave of heat. For a moment, he wondered if she would kick him where he lay or lash at him with the riding whip in her hands."
Highlighted by Lachlan Hardy in The Ladies of Mandrigyn: The Sun Wolf and Starhawk Series (Book One) by Barbara Hambly
"I thought of bullets and fire, and a deep pit full of darkness. I wished I could see the stars."
Highlighted by Lachlan Hardy in Bullets and Fire by Joe R. Lansdale
"And I don’t remember it all, but the bullets cut all around me and one went through my left arm and it hurt like hell, and the next thing I know it’s hanging at my side, and I got the AK-47 lifted, pushed up against my hip, and I’m rockin’ and rollin’ and bodies are jumping."
Highlighted by Lachlan Hardy in Bullets and Fire by Joe R. Lansdale
"I picked up the AK-47. I had shot one before. I had learned a lot about guns from my sensei, the one who told me that guns are about romance and power more than they are about self-defense or constitutional amendments. He also said, “Boys like their toys, the more dangerous and explosive the better."
Highlighted by Lachlan Hardy in Bullets and Fire by Joe R. Lansdale
"Dad told me once, that if people don’t care about where they live, the way they act, people they associate with, they get lost in the dark, can’t find their way back cause there’s no light left. I had taken a pretty good step into the shadows tonight."
Highlighted by Lachlan Hardy in Bullets and Fire by Joe R. Lansdale
"‘Threats, Mr Barrow, are the preserve of blowhards and cowards. I am neither.’ He approached Barrow until they were toe to toe. ‘I don’t even give warnings.’ He turned and left."
Highlighted by Lachlan Hardy in Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard
"For it is true, deer reader, I have cast off the shakles of maternal luv (uuurgh, pas the sik bag, matron) and flown off like a free bird. (Ha ha like a big fat gopping vulture ha ha, sa my brother victor who hav just red this over my shouldier. Like he would kno, he run skreaming from the interesting natural history progs on the telly, AND NOW WE SEE MOTHER NATURE RED IN TOOF AND CLAW nash, snarl, blood eveeriwhere, the dulcit tones of Victor sobbing in FEER in the kitchin. But I digres.)"
Highlighted by Lachlan Hardy in Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard
"‘Maleficarus. Self-styled warlock and Great Beast. Actually, rather a … what’s the term? Wanker."
Highlighted by Lachlan Hardy in Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard
