Pandora & Pappy

THE BUTTERFLY (165 pp.)--James M. Cain--Knopf ($2).

James Cain's previous novels (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce) gave readers more than a peek into the nature of sadism, masochism and homosexuality. His new novel, which he calls a "small morality tale," reads just like its predecessors, and claims to be about incest. In his introduction, Cain says: "I like it better than I usually like my work, and yet I have an impulse to account for it. ... The many fictions published about me recently bring me to the realization I must ... be less reticent about myself.

"I am 54 years old, weigh 220 pounds, and look like the chief dispatcher of a long-distance hauling concern. I am a registered Democrat. I drink.

"I belong to no school, hard-boiled or otherwise, and I believe these so-called schools exist mainly in the imagination of critics. . . . [Writing] is a genital process . . . intra-abdominal. ... I have read less than twenty pages of Mr. Dashiell Hammett in my whole life. ... I owe no debt ... to Mr. Ernest Hemingway . . . Matterhorn of literature. . . .

"I write of the wish that comes true ... a terrifying concept. I think my stories have some quality of the opening of a forbidden box, and that it is this, rather than violence, sex . . . that gives them the drive."

Author Cain's introduction is so spirited that readers are likely to start his new novel with respect and sympathy. Unfortunately, they will find that The Butterfly, despite its air of dealing frankly with the delicate and ancient Oedipus theme, is about as incestuous as Tarzan of the Apes.

Like Sophocles' King Oedipus, who marries his own mother without knowing who she is, Cain's Jess Tyler bumps into his handsome daughter, Kady, without recognizing her, after 20 years' separation. When he does find out, he does his best to keep away from her.

But rather than disappoint his readers, Author Cain does some thimblerigging with family birthmarks, and soon fixes things so that Kady is not Jess's daughter after all, and they may step out together hand in hand to enjoy more commonplace sins of Cain, such as adultery, bigamy, perjury, moonshining, arson, mayhem and murder. "She was anybody's woman," mutters Jess gloomily--after he has neatly exploded Kady's real father with a large charge of dynamite, and she has run away with a more tolerant sort of man--"and all I've got to say is, I love her as much as he does." This is about all Author Cain has to say, too.

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