Don't be fooled!
Nick
Corey might pass himself off as a good-natured hick sheriff intent on
doing right but looking ever so slightly deeper we'll detect author Jim
Thompson has given us a searing portrait of a man who is the embodiment
of cruelty, ruthlessness and sheer evil.
According to Stephen Mache, Pop. 1280
offers up “a preposterously upsetting, ridiculously hilarious layer
cake of nastiness, a romp through a world of nearly infinite deceit.”
And there's cool cat Mark Monday characterizing the novel as “bleak and misanthropic and evilly hilarious.”
Whoa, bubba, with this noir classic, Jim Thompson deserves to be celebrated as America's “dimestore Dostoevsky.”
For
a Texas taste or Oklahoma oomph of what Nick Corey and the other folks
in this top dog Thompson tale are all about, I'll mosey on over to Potts
County, population 1280, and share the following Pop. movie trailer:
DARTH VADER TRICKSTER
As
soon as Nick Corey opens his mouth, everyone judges Nick a dope. A
stranger on a train wearing classy black-and-white checker suit and
white derby tells Nick he can't use the washroom since it's being used
by “a naked woman on a spotted pony” and a town pimp calls Nick a
“two-bit clown.” Oh, people, if you only knew the high sheriff of Potts
County plays dumb to lure you into his deadly trap. After all, Nick
Corey has plans, big plans.
LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS
Nick tells
us he's so worried he can barely eat, all the while chomping down a
breakfast of “half a dozen pork chops and a few fried eggs.” Later on,
after he gets off the train, Nick's worries continue, so worried he
still can's eat but manages to chow down on a plate of corn bread and
fried catfish. Goodness, Nick has eaten enough food for six men. Jim
Thompson lets us know Nick isn't an out-and-out liar so much as a man
who has colossal appetites and needs, so needy, he has to hide himself
from himself.
BRUTAL BACKSTORY
Jim Thompson clues us in on his character's backstory but his usual practice is to hold off until the end of the novel (The Killer Inside Me, The Kill-Off, Savage Night). With Pop. 1280,
things are different; Jim has Nick reflect on his childhood a few
chapters in, telling us he's haunted by being a kid “getting beat half
to death every time he (his father) could grab me.” Nick's father also
blamed Nick for killing mom who died while giving birth to Nick. Now,
there's an explosive combination: Nick's a victim of extreme physical
and emotional abuse along with living with a heavy burden of guilt.
DESPICABLE RACISM
Warning:
Jim Thompson doesn't hold back regarding how these white countryfolk
view their Black brethren: subhuman, barely more than farm animals. And
the language they use, even out in public, even speaking to Blacks
directly. A novel not for the easily offended.
PSYCHOPATH
Up
in their apartment, Nick's wife Myra launches into another one of her
tirades against good-for-nothing Nick but she stops short suddenly when
she sees something in Nick's eyes. Myra is stunned and immediately turns
all sweet and nice. What does Myra see? Does she detect, perhaps for
the first time, she's in the presence of a psychopath? Keep a lookout
for this scene - so much goes unstated. Also, one of the more comical
bits in Pop.: Nick relaying the way Myra, bless her egotistical heart, trapped Nick into marrying her.
RETELLING REVELATION
"The
reason I went to see Ken Lacey, for example, wasn't the one I let on
that it was. I'd done it because I had a plan for him - and you've seen
what that plan was." Here Nick recycles back to let us know he purposely
mislead us about the reason for his visit to see Ken Lacey. Thus we're
wise as readers not to be too quick in assuming Nick will always tell us
the truth, to keep a constant lookout on how Nick will not only
double-cross the women and men he encounters (and entraps) in Potts
County but Nick could also be double-crossing us as readers.
WHAT NOT TO SAY TO A PSYCHOPATH
At
one point beautiful sweetheart Amy tells Nick she knows very well he
committed murder and he arranged things to look like Ken Lacey did the
killing. Nick responds, "What if I just can't help myself, Amy? What if
it's him or me?" To which Amy replies, "Then, I'd be very sorry, Nick.
It would have to be you." Oh, lady, to tell a psychopath that if you
were given the choice between sentencing him or his victim to the
electric chair, you would choose to fry him - not a sensible choice if
you yourself want to stay alive. Such a telling scene, revealing our
tendency to underestimate people, their capacity for both good and evil.
THE POTTS COUNTY SAGE SPEAKS
Toward the end of Pop.,
Nick shares his philosophy of life prompted by an overwhelming sense of
emptiness. "And then suddenly it wasn't here, it was everywhere, every
place like this one. And suddenly the emptiness was filled with sound
and sight, with all the sad terrible things that the emptiness has
brought the people to." What Nick cities as specific instances of what
the emptiness has brought people to is heart-wrenching. But then the
shock: Nick's answer to cosmic emptiness. And even more shocking: Nick's
statement in the novel's concluding sentence.
What am I alluding to here? For each reader to discover.
American novelist Jim Thompson, 1906-1967
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