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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
A really fun book to read, assuming you're not too prudish. Imagine an old western movie, though this seems to be set in the rural South, then add a main character that acts like Gomer Pyle, has the sex appeal of a Clint Eastwood character, and who thinks like Peter Falk's Columbo, with all of it written in a style reminiscent of Twain's adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I'm anxious to watch Bertrand Tavernier's 1981 film remake, Coup de Torchon, even if it's setting has been moved to French West Africa.
this book is interesting. I'm not certain I completely understood, but the story telling us phenomenal. the characters are interesting and the plot is unpredictable. I laughed quite a bit on this read.
Wow. Pop. 1280 knocked me plum on my ass, as the narrator might put it.
Pop. 1280 is literature dressed up to look like pulp fiction (specifically crime fiction). I went into it expecting something in the general vein of Chandler, Christie, or Hammett with perhaps a bit more humor and silly hijinx mixed in (I'd read the description on the back cover and knew it wasn't a regular whodunit). As you get into the book though it becomes clear that reading Pop. 1280 is much more than "mere" genre fiction.
It's not news that "genre" novels can also be literature. Cormac McCarthy (among others) successfully forced fancy-pants literary types to acknowledge the "western" novels can also be literature. Sci-fi is a genre that's been explored by so many great writers that it has (almost) managed to become respectable.
McCarthy's easy enough to recognize as a writer for literary types. His dialogue for some character is written in the vernacular but Blood Meridian had me running to the dictionary to look stuff up way more often than anything by David Foster Wallace. Pop. 1280 isn't like that. The narrator sounds like an uneducated Southern Sheriff from the early 20th century (or an exaggerated parody thereof).
So what makes this literature? I reckon it's the same stuff that makes anything literature. Namely that the author deals with serious topics: good and evil, religion, race, prejudice, etc. in an insightful and thoughtful way. Of course, if you want to read it as an amusing slapstick story about a goofball sheriff who engages in a mess of Br'er Rabbitesque trickery you can do that. I probably would have thought this book was hilarious when I was in 5th grade, but I think I also would have missed a lot of stuff and failed to appreciate how the layers of insight beneath much of the slapstick humor.
I'm not going to try to include quotes in this review because they're impossible to appreciate without context. A lot of the language is also not appropriate for what's sometimes called "polite company" so if you're looking for something that'll go over well in a 19th-century literary salon this ain't it. It's coarse, vulgar, contains racism (though the book itself isn’t racist it contains and parodies, racist characters).
This is the first thing I've read by Thompson but it won't be the last. My main worry is that having set the bar so high his other books will be a letdown, but it's a risk I'll have to take.
So umm, yeah, I enjoyed the book. Five stars.
p.s. According to Wikipedia Yorgos Lanthimos, the Director behind the equally weird and brilliant The Favourite, The Lobster, and Dogtooth is developing a film adaptation of Pop. 1280. I couldn't imagine a better director for the project. It's going to be weird and probably amazing and will (hopefully) also help get more people to read the novel.
Pop. 1280 is literature dressed up to look like pulp fiction (specifically crime fiction). I went into it expecting something in the general vein of Chandler, Christie, or Hammett with perhaps a bit more humor and silly hijinx mixed in (I'd read the description on the back cover and knew it wasn't a regular whodunit). As you get into the book though it becomes clear that reading Pop. 1280 is much more than "mere" genre fiction.
It's not news that "genre" novels can also be literature. Cormac McCarthy (among others) successfully forced fancy-pants literary types to acknowledge the "western" novels can also be literature. Sci-fi is a genre that's been explored by so many great writers that it has (almost) managed to become respectable.
McCarthy's easy enough to recognize as a writer for literary types. His dialogue for some character is written in the vernacular but Blood Meridian had me running to the dictionary to look stuff up way more often than anything by David Foster Wallace. Pop. 1280 isn't like that. The narrator sounds like an uneducated Southern Sheriff from the early 20th century (or an exaggerated parody thereof).
So what makes this literature? I reckon it's the same stuff that makes anything literature. Namely that the author deals with serious topics: good and evil, religion, race, prejudice, etc. in an insightful and thoughtful way. Of course, if you want to read it as an amusing slapstick story about a goofball sheriff who engages in a mess of Br'er Rabbitesque trickery you can do that. I probably would have thought this book was hilarious when I was in 5th grade, but I think I also would have missed a lot of stuff and failed to appreciate how the layers of insight beneath much of the slapstick humor.
I'm not going to try to include quotes in this review because they're impossible to appreciate without context. A lot of the language is also not appropriate for what's sometimes called "polite company" so if you're looking for something that'll go over well in a 19th-century literary salon this ain't it. It's coarse, vulgar, contains racism (though the book itself isn’t racist it contains and parodies, racist characters).
This is the first thing I've read by Thompson but it won't be the last. My main worry is that having set the bar so high his other books will be a letdown, but it's a risk I'll have to take.
So umm, yeah, I enjoyed the book. Five stars.
p.s. According to Wikipedia Yorgos Lanthimos, the Director behind the equally weird and brilliant The Favourite, The Lobster, and Dogtooth is developing a film adaptation of Pop. 1280. I couldn't imagine a better director for the project. It's going to be weird and probably amazing and will (hopefully) also help get more people to read the novel.
Ol boy is an evil doofus that goes around killin townspeople and bein’ real folksy. It’s super small-town racist Texas hijinks. Pretty gnarly and evil. And rad.
Nick Corey is the High Sheriff of Potts County and kind of a simpleton. He doesn't arrest anyone and mostly stays out of trouble, other than affair he's having with another man's wife. Or is his genial nature a cover for something more sinister... ?
Yes. Yes it is. It's a front for the fact that he's a manipulative, cold-blooded killer. He kills two pimps and tricks another sheriff into taking the blame. He launches a smear campaign against another man running for sheriff. He does a handful of other despicable deeds and is so slick you almost forget what a scumbag he is.
Jim Thompson is an undiscovered gem, light years ahead of the other pulp writers of his day. Pop. 1280 is told in the first person and to say Nick is an unreliable narrator is putting it lightly. Even though he's clearly a psychopath, the book has quite a few blackly comic moments. Even though he's a scumbag, watching the master manipulator in action is something to behold. It's definitely a page turner after the first couple of pages.
Jim Thompson is the real deal. I can't recommend this enough to fans of crime fiction.
Yes. Yes it is. It's a front for the fact that he's a manipulative, cold-blooded killer. He kills two pimps and tricks another sheriff into taking the blame. He launches a smear campaign against another man running for sheriff. He does a handful of other despicable deeds and is so slick you almost forget what a scumbag he is.
Jim Thompson is an undiscovered gem, light years ahead of the other pulp writers of his day. Pop. 1280 is told in the first person and to say Nick is an unreliable narrator is putting it lightly. Even though he's clearly a psychopath, the book has quite a few blackly comic moments. Even though he's a scumbag, watching the master manipulator in action is something to behold. It's definitely a page turner after the first couple of pages.
Jim Thompson is the real deal. I can't recommend this enough to fans of crime fiction.
- twisted, brutal humor circa - the old west
- not as enjoyable as his 'The Grifter's (4/5 stars) which I read last weekhis
- not as enjoyable as his 'The Grifter's (4/5 stars) which I read last weekhis
Bait and switch, southern stupid replaced with true thinking and uncomfortable positions on philosophical ideals.
Classic Jim Thompson. Far darker, seedier and corrupted than any of the samey, conservative crime procedurals that clog up the bestseller charts.
If you fancy trying some authentic American Noir this is a great place to start.
If you fancy trying some authentic American Noir this is a great place to start.
If you've seen "The Grifters", "The Getaway" or most recently "The Killer Inside Me", you are familiar with Jim Thompson's work. Plumbing the minds of psychopaths, sociopaths and other unsavory characters (both on the fringe of and pillars of society), Thompson wrote thriller crime novels that were more deserving of the pulp fiction / dime-store tag with which they were labeled for years.
"Pop. 1280" is a dark tale told by an unreliable narrator that isn't nearly as daft as he lets on. At times funny, violent, sexy or a combination of all three, Thompson's characters are all slathered in countrified small-town worldviews and always a step behind Nick Corey, the protagonist and narrator. I loved the ending of the book - completely different than what I was expecting and caused me to re-read the last three pages a second time.
"Pop. 1280" is a dark tale told by an unreliable narrator that isn't nearly as daft as he lets on. At times funny, violent, sexy or a combination of all three, Thompson's characters are all slathered in countrified small-town worldviews and always a step behind Nick Corey, the protagonist and narrator. I loved the ending of the book - completely different than what I was expecting and caused me to re-read the last three pages a second time.
Pretty brutal, pulled no punches. One of those that you keep thinking it can't get any worse.