POP. 1280
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Review
WWW.TANGLED-WEB.CO.UK featured a review of POP. 1280 on their site from the 21st March 03. This included a summary of the plot. WRITER'S JOURNAL will be publishing a large feature on Jim Thompson and will be mentioning our new titl
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
Published on the centenary of his Jim Thompson's birth, a classic crime novel from 'the best suspense writer going, bar none' New York Times
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Bleak, abject, amoral bodies ripened with sleaze, coated in bluebottle skins. Jim Thompson grapples small town life to the sewer pipe whilst choking it in its effluence. Out then tumbles incest, lust for power, hypocrisy of elites, caustic gossip, double cross scheming, endemic everyday brutal racism and heightened sexual tensions. The book explores the limits of power through the eyes of its main protagonist, Nick Corey the town sheriff. Jim strips the small town bare in his inner blasted world, twisting the knife into the spaces between the ribs.
Nick Corey lives within a web of obligations, trammeling his existence. Trapped by his upbringing, beaten into a sociopathic pulp by a father who blamed him for killing his mother. Anything the boy achieves is then thrown at him as proof of his guilt. Sentence pronounced by a critical parent, he is forever guilty.
Jim understood the psychology of the ordinary, like no other, all formed through basic social interaction. Daddy was a white bullying brute whilst the black nanny suckled him with sustenance and love. Nick always has a pang of remorse at the casual racism delivered on a daily basis in his social environment. This does not stop him from blasting anyone who is a potential threat to meeting their self constructed maker. Child beating, black lynching and incest are all cultural norms, a constitutional right according to one denizen.
Women are sexual pawns, seemingly victims, who lure men to destruction on their sexual rocks. Men enact casual wife beating revenge in a dailectic of alienation. Women constantly strip off for the sherrif, he becomes trapped within his obligations, see? Whilst he writhes in their grasp he creates sub plots to turn the tables. As he is the non empathic man in charge, the legacy of his bitter child within, he has the final say. Trapped into marriage by his sexual member, lured by a femme fatale, she tames her beast with her lure. Hog tied in marriage she celebrates her victory by bringing psychologically challenged brother Lenny to laud it over her prey.
The stories trajectory grows from this varied soil as we see the sherrif plot and scheme with the vehemence of Lady Macbeth as he seeks to remain in office at all costs. Jim follows the contours of Nick Corey's descent into expressing his internal rage externally onto male and female victims in a post moral world.
In the Thompson planet it is all about the will to power. Emotions and feelings just plumb getta man inta trouble when he least can afford it.
The casual brutal racism is not to kill a mockingbird redemption. It is embedded in the whole panoply of the social arrangements. Sex and power are just two key intersections. The dignitaries having casual sex with the schoolteachers, the local bordello kept as a special place to stop decent women from being attacked. The out of town bullying sherrif unable to understand the effects of his belittlement. The whole society is based on discrete lies told to itself.
This is a book set in the early part of the 20thC. It still resonates into the 21stC because Jim understood psychology of power like no other. It is not a crime novel but a psychological landscape for all criminologists, sociologists, cultural study readers, english literature and american studies students to imbibe before they begin their quest for inner knowledge.
It lies far beyond the law as these are stories lying beyond the usual moral "I told you so" maze.
Nick Corey lives within a web of obligations, trammeling his existence. Trapped by his upbringing, beaten into a sociopathic pulp by a father who blamed him for killing his mother. Anything the boy achieves is then thrown at him as proof of his guilt. Sentence pronounced by a critical parent, he is forever guilty.
Jim understood the psychology of the ordinary, like no other, all formed through basic social interaction. Daddy was a white bullying brute whilst the black nanny suckled him with sustenance and love. Nick always has a pang of remorse at the casual racism delivered on a daily basis in his social environment. This does not stop him from blasting anyone who is a potential threat to meeting their self constructed maker. Child beating, black lynching and incest are all cultural norms, a constitutional right according to one denizen.
Women are sexual pawns, seemingly victims, who lure men to destruction on their sexual rocks. Men enact casual wife beating revenge in a dailectic of alienation. Women constantly strip off for the sherrif, he becomes trapped within his obligations, see? Whilst he writhes in their grasp he creates sub plots to turn the tables. As he is the non empathic man in charge, the legacy of his bitter child within, he has the final say. Trapped into marriage by his sexual member, lured by a femme fatale, she tames her beast with her lure. Hog tied in marriage she celebrates her victory by bringing psychologically challenged brother Lenny to laud it over her prey.
The stories trajectory grows from this varied soil as we see the sherrif plot and scheme with the vehemence of Lady Macbeth as he seeks to remain in office at all costs. Jim follows the contours of Nick Corey's descent into expressing his internal rage externally onto male and female victims in a post moral world.
In the Thompson planet it is all about the will to power. Emotions and feelings just plumb getta man inta trouble when he least can afford it.
The casual brutal racism is not to kill a mockingbird redemption. It is embedded in the whole panoply of the social arrangements. Sex and power are just two key intersections. The dignitaries having casual sex with the schoolteachers, the local bordello kept as a special place to stop decent women from being attacked. The out of town bullying sherrif unable to understand the effects of his belittlement. The whole society is based on discrete lies told to itself.
This is a book set in the early part of the 20thC. It still resonates into the 21stC because Jim understood psychology of power like no other. It is not a crime novel but a psychological landscape for all criminologists, sociologists, cultural study readers, english literature and american studies students to imbibe before they begin their quest for inner knowledge.
It lies far beyond the law as these are stories lying beyond the usual moral "I told you so" maze.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
While some of Jim Thompson's other work (The Grifters, The Killer Inside Me) hews more closely to the classic themes of noir fiction, Pop. 1280 is the most definitive example of his oeuvre. Thompson's bizarre mix of crude humor, biting wit and horrifying crime is perfectly balanced in this book. One of the few texts I've ever seen that manages to distill America in all it's fiendish glory into something that can be assimilated in a few hours. Almost Blakean in it's nightmarish vision of life, death and spirituality.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Just when you think Thompson's characters have scraped absolute bottom, they find a way to go even lower. A splendid book about the very worst in human nature. Fast, funny, disturbing.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Good book
Definitely worth reading. Not as good as his other one, then name of which escapes me, but a good story nevertheless. An easy read. Jim Thompson is a great author.
Published 20 months ago by G. R. Mccaw
Sociopathic Noir - but a lot of fun
This book kept me awake all night the first time I read it. At first from wide-eyed amazement at the callousness and bleakness, though by the end I was chuckling away... Read more
Published on 15 May 2005
A trip through the black heart of the American south
A lazy and corrupt sheriff in a small town (population = 1280) is not getting any respect neither from the local farmers and hoodlums, his superiors nor his wife (who is cheating... Read more
Published on 31 July 2004 by Danny De Raymaeker
Fascinatingly Amoral
This was the first novel I have read by Thompson, and I'm not sure if I should read another. I fear for my moral fibre. Read more
Published on 7 Jan 2004 by "equazor"
Sarcastically Typically Thompson
After I read the interesting »The Killer Inside Me«, I had appetite for more Jim Thompson, and my choice fell on »Pop. 1280«. Read more
Published on 19 Jan 2001
Very Dark
I admire this book, but I do think it pales in comparison with The Killer Inside Me, easily Thompson's masterpiece. Still very much worth reading. Read more
Published on 11 Jun 1999
Cynical and hilarious
Thompson's book is laugh-out-loud funny and impossible to put down. A totally dark picture of what drives people -- lust and the urge to be "on top" every which way.
Published on 3 Oct 1997
Mind-numbing, beautiful dementia
The most exciting book I have read in years. I have begun to teach it in my classes. Thompson writes novels the way Odysseus tells stories: you're can be sure that if his fingers... Read more
Published on 22 Jun 1997
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