The Moth

by James M. Cain

A sweeping tale of love, loss, and the pursuit of beauty during the Great DepressionFrom birth, Jack Dillon is a golden child. Blessed with blond locks, glittering eyes, and a perfect voice, he is the most popular child singer in Baltimore. But when puberty robs him of his voice and the stock market wipes out his family fortune, Jack is forced to rebuild.Over the next fifteen years, Jack will see it all. From Maryland to California and back again, he will become a football star, a soldier, and a tramp. Through it all, he never loses his eye for beauty, or his hunger for a woman he has known since childhood. To find happiness in the face of the Depression, Jack will have to remember that no matter how the world has changed him, part of his soul remains as pure as the first note he sang.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Crime

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

James Mallahan Cain (July 1, 1892–October 27, 1977) was an American journalist and novelist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hard-boiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the "roman noir."

He was born into an Irish Catholic family in Annapolis, Maryland, the son of a prominent educator and an opera singer. He inherited his love for music from his mother, but his high hopes of starting a career as a singer himself were thwarted when she told him that his voice was not good enough.

After graduating from Washington College where his father, James W. Cain served as president, in 1910, he began working as a journalist for The Baltimore Sun.

He was drafted into the United States Army and spent the final year of World War I in France writing for an Army magazine. On his return to the United States he continued working as a journalist, writing editorials for the New York World and articles for American Mercury. He also served briefly as the managing editor of The New Yorker, but later turned to screenplays and finally to fiction.

Although Cain spent many years in Hollywood working on screenplays, his name only appears on the credits of three films, Algiers, Stand Up and Fight, and Gypsy Wildcat.

His first novel (he had already published Our Government in 1930), The Postman Always Rings Twice was published in 1934. Two years later the serialized, in Liberty Magazine, Double Indemnity was published.

He made use of his love of music and of the opera in particular in at least three of his novels: Serenade (about an American opera singer who loses his voice and who, after spending part of his life south of the border, re-enters the States illegally with a Mexican prostitute in tow), Mildred Pierce (in which, as part of the subplot, the only daughter of a successful businesswoman trains as an opera singer) and Career in C Major (a short semi-comic novel about the unhappy husband of an aspiring opera singer who unexpectedly discovered that he has a better voice than she does).

He continued writing up to his death at the age of 85. His last three published works, The Baby in the Icebox (1981), Cloud Nine (1984) and The Enchanted Isle (1985) being published posthumously. However, the many novels he published from the late 1940s onward never quite rivaled his earlier successes.

Reviews

[Otto Penzler · Rating 4 out of 5]

James M. Cain is recognized as one of the most important writers of American crime fiction. His stories of lust, greed, desperation and murder have become some of the genre’s most memorable stories. Although he is best known for Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce and The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cain’s later work has much of the same human complexity and gritty storytelling. The Moth, one of his more ambitious novels, spans over 35 years during the Great Depression and WWII. The protagonist, Jack Dillon, was born a golden child–with the voice of an angel. It seemed he could do no wrong but, as he grows up, he looses his singing voice and must struggle to find an identity during this incredibly difficult period in American history.

[Deborah Sheldon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a difficult novel to rate. To me, it read like three totally different stories stitched together. While the writing was gorgeous throughout, the protagonist's love for a 12-year-old girl was tough to overcome, and the degree of dry and technical detail in the "oil" chapters felt boring. However, the "hobo" chapters were fabulous.

[Gwynplaine26th · Rating 3 out of 5]

James M. Cain definisce "La falena" il suo romanzo più compiuto e riuscito, affonda con sapienza quasi nel romanzo di formazione.

A lungo battuta la via del romanzo hard boiled e del noir, e con estrema sapienza aggiungerei, qui ci discostiamo un po' per seguire Jack Dillon, protagonista girovago dalla Baltimora del 1908, fino alla crisi del '29, e poi ancora oltre, vagabondando attraverso gli anni e le incertezze, cercando disperatamente qualcosa in cui credere per andare avanti.

Personalmente, non ho trovato la verve narrativa briosa e arguta come altri suoi testi quali Mildred Pierce, La morte paga doppio, Il postino suona sempre due volte, o Serenata. È sicuramente un romanzo da annoverare in libreria se già si apprezza e conosce l'autore.

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tough to rate. More than any of Cain's books (at least the ones I have read), this one seems to take the big swing at being "serious literature"--if the symbolism of the moth doesn't signal this, then its heft (nearly 300 pages, very long for Cain) and evident attempt to encompass the Great Depression send up flares. And it doesn't really succeed. While Cain does move away somewhat from the noir tropes that define most of the stuff of his I've read (a lot, but mostly earlier, and by no means all), others are rather too depressingly present. Most unsatisfying, perhaps, is the general misogyny of the text--or at any rate of the narrator. We even have a take on the brassy (or coppery, in this case--she is thoroughly tanned when we first meet her) dame, who our narrator willingly boffs but clearly also holds in contempt. Said narrator is John Dillon, who we follow almost picaresquely through a series of rises and falls--as a successful child singer, until his voice breaks; as a successful football player, until his knee breaks (presumably the potentially effete artsiness is offset by the he-man athletics); as a man on the rise in the hotel business, complete with an engagement to the owner's rather unlikable daughter, until his heart breaks--and this is only about the first third of the book. Without summarizing the plot, let's just say Dillon goes through a LOT, suffering terribly (couple of years as a hobo), succeeding amazingly (ending up running an independent oil company) until his past bites him in the ass, and he loses it all, only to go off and become a hero in WWII. Yes, Johnny can do it all, and is naturally a chick magnet, even earning an excessive amount of interest, as an adolescent, from his luscious young music teacher. Indeed, dicey sexual content recurs, most notably in Dillon's falling for the twelve-year-old (!) sister of his fiancee. Cain goes to great pains to present Dillon's attachment in romantic rather than sexual tones and orchestrates their eventual coming together (as it were) by having Dillon meet her some ten or more years later, not realize who she is, and fall in love with her again--as a woman, NOT a child, ostensibly taking the curse off it. At the end, they run off to get married, with Dillon about to invent the frozen ready to eat meals (which in fact did happen around of shortly after the novel weas published). Throughout the book he is basically an asshole, arrogant, short-tempered, and willing to do some pretty shitty stuff to get ahead (admittedly, two years as a hobo during the Depression would probably have a similar effect on most people). Cain tries to own this and make us buy it by eventually having Dillon admit he's a heel but having Dillon's father argue that the great literary and historical heroes were also heels. (There's that reach for "serious art" status again.) That said, Cain is god at keeping one turning the pages, and he does ring some changes on expectations, just not enough to pull it off.

[Bill Jenkins · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF

I gave up on this novel during the middle of chapter 4. I have read several Cain stories about singers and I wasn't about to read another. All that crap about Ave Maria and hitting E above top C means nothing to me and I'm a musician.

I've read many James M Cain novels and this just seemed different to me. The narration just went on and on with no breaks and no dialog. I'm not interested in reading about someone's childhood, at least not four chapters plus worth. I have since compared this novel with other Cain novels sentence by sentence and I find the difference is the lack of dialog.

Here is an example of how the book reads and this is in chapter 10:

She was a tiny, dowdy little woman, in a rusty black coat and felt hat, maybe sixty years old, who giggled and laughed and took it all on herself that Helen had done what she had, and never even suspected that maybe there were a couple of other angles to it.

I think I would have hung in there if Cain had left out the music bit.

[Megan Shulby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn’t finish it, sadly. One of the few books that I just had to eventually put down. The story twists and turns but does not captivate.

[Axel Ainglish · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quite unknown and so underrated in some ways autobiographical book. James Cain was the author of some very well known and respected titles of the thriller and psicologichal genre. For several of his novels, as Mildred Pierce or The Postman Always Ring Twice, were taken into movies with famous actors as protagonists. Can't tell up to what point this romantic love story is a self biography, but there are various details that he took from his own life, apparently. Anycase, it is a touching matter this one . It goes on at fast pace. A medium sized work, the insurances agent Cain was, gets rid in this case of the thriller genre, be it for a single time. The skilled plots artisan Cain was, shows up here, too. It is a sort of magic life happening in the thirties, this one. A plausible one, however. An adventures life as well, if you wish. Interest is well kept, it never decays. So, if you like romance and adventures, you will love this. The author of Dead Insurance or The Emblezzer (works I've liked also quite a lot), almost never fails you. Love is a Lovely Counterfeit, another of my prefered ones, was a bit more difficult to read, because it used a lot of old American slang. Easily understandable as all them, anycase. A wandering or road novel in the way an Insurances Agent could write, it is. No slang here, not another of that kind. Neither in the others I read. Only The Butterfly (a tattoo the girl coprotagonist had) among the five or six I read of this writer, was weaker than the average. What may explain the success he had, in the States and elsewhere. The Moth is a title Cain choosed because there is an old superstition there is in the States - can't tell if in the whole Anglo Saxon world too - that implyes good luck in your life, if you meet one. So, if you can find a sample in some stock lot, used or not, go and get it. Can also be read by teens, but it's a good read for adults.

[Pino Sabatelli · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un libro noioso come pochi, scritto con uno stile macchinoso e rigido, con una scarsissima attenzione all’equilibrio d’insieme del testo. Infatti mentre alcune parti vengono liquidate in poche e frettolose pagine (ad esempio quella sulla guerra), altre rasentano la pignoleria più pedante (come quella sui pozzi di petrolio. Per inciso: se non sapere la differenza fra “ingolfamento” e “imballamento” di una trivella è stato per anni il vostro cruccio esistenziale, questo è il vostro libro. Basta andare a pagina 243). Per non parlare poi del finale: un vero e proprio coup de théâtre del tutto estraneo al tono complessivo dell’opera.
La recensione completa su http://www.ifioridelpeggio.com/americ...

[John Burns · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretty tame. I felt it was the most muddled JMC book. The others all had a pretty consistent through-thread, usually about a relationship, say the relationship between the lovers in Postman or between the mother and daughter in Mildred Pierce. This one just drifted along aimlessly though. The main relationship is one that's something of an irrelevance for 80% of the book length. It just felt unfocussed compared to his usual stuff - too episodic.

It's probably roughly as well written as his best stuff but it's certainly not as exciting or gripping. For JMC fans I'm not sure this one is worth reading and for those of you who haven't really read much JMC there are much better books to start off with.

[Justin Patrick]

This was a masterful work of high style. It tells the life story of a man from his elementary school days to his mid-thirties. Cain loved women a lot and it shows in these pages from the viewpoint of the character. It didn't matter whether they were young, old or his own age. The recurring symbol of The Moth was quite effective. The main character was a real romantic. For those interested in the era of the Great Depression this book also spends a good portion of it in that time frame with the Dillon hoboeing around the country.

[Phil Noble · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first Cain novel I've read, and I did so because I read a review by author Tom Wolfe who said he thought Cain wrote better than Hemingway and others. I'd say after reading it Cain was a masterful writer, and wrote in the style of the average man better than anyone I've read. This story was frustrating to me to read at times because I thought he went into too great detail about the process of drilling oil and other subjects, but overall it is a splendid work.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The broadest Cain story I've read yet. Covering over 35 years in the life of the protagonist, there are multiple-novels worth of settings and characters here, all soaked in period detail that raises dozens of questions in this amateur historians mind as well.

[Brenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, but not up to Cain's potential.