Koontz on Cain

One of the first books I read about writing was Dean Koontz's How to Write Best Selling Fiction (Writer's Digest Books, 1982). It must have been 1984 or 1985, when I was maybe 12 or 13, and I borrowed it from the Frankford Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia. I picked up a copy a while back and last night, in a post-turkey haze, thumbed through it again. I was really happy to find this bit about James M. Cain:

The Postman Always Rings Twice is as readable and poignant and relevant as it was when it first saw print. Indeed, Postman reads as if it were written last week! Cain was so in touch with the people about whom he wrote, so intimately familiar with the fears and desires of the masses in the 1920s and 1930s, that he seems to have known not only how the common man and woman talked and thought at the time, but also how they would talk and think for decades to come. I am not aware of another American writer of our century whose books have been so utterly untouched by the passage of so many years, as have Cain's.

What was true in 1982 is still true today; Cain's novels (especially his earliest) are as crisp and raw as they were during the last time America tumbled a severe economic downturn (a.k.a., The Great Depression).

And Koontz's guide is still full of excellent advice. Copies are hard to track down these, but if you can find one, I heartily recommend it. The last chapter, "Read Read Read," was a real eye-opener, because it was as if Koontz was subconsciously planting a reading list (Bester, Chandler, Ellison, Hammett, Leonard, Levin, MacDonald, McBain, Stark) in my brain that I'd follow for the next, oh, 25 years.