Jim Thompson's Psychopathic Narrators

by Nate Flexer

After starting his career as a somewhat conventional novelist, Jim Thompson found his voice through a series of nihilistic crime novels depicting bloodlust and small-town desperation. With sleazy cover art and titles such as A Hell of a Woman, A Swell-Looking Babe, and After Dark, My Sweet, Thompson’s books often appeared indistinguishable from all the other cheap paperbacks being churned out by publishers like Gold Medal and Lion Books. On closer read, however, Thompson’s creative use of first-person narration transformed his books from trashy dime-store novels to unflinchingly original American literature.

Perhaps the most self-consciously modernist of Thompson’s work are the companion pieces The Killer Inside Me and Pop. 1280. In both novels, Thompson creates warped protagonists who spend their lives looking down on society from their high perches of self-righteousness. While the two protagonists have many commonalities—both are small-town sheriffs based loosely on Thompson’s own father—Thompson uses different literary devices to make each novel distinctive.

In The Killer Inside Me, Central City Sheriff Lou Ford relaxes by sitting in his dad’s old office and reading volumes of psychiatrist literature and solving physical chemistry problems. But in public, Ford puts on an act, mimicking a stereotypical small-town sheriff. Early in the book, we get a description of his appearance: "Lean and wiry; a mouth that looked all set to drawl. A typical Western-country peace officer, that was me. Maybe a little cleaner cut. But on the whole typical." In keeping with his created role, Ford speaks in over-the-top platitudes and clichés. In this way, he is able to torture his subjects through words, allowing him to repress his desire to torture "the real way."

It is important to note the different strategies that Thompson employs in each book. In The Killer Inside Me, we are in on the joke with Ford from the beginning, we understand that he is playing a part. While attempting to fool all the townspeople, Ford does not try and fool the readers. Narcissistically, Ford desires for the audience to appreciate how smart he is—and how dumb everybody else is. But he isn’t as clever as he makes himself out to be; occasionally there is a hint of transparency in his façade. "Watch yourself," Joseph Rothman, a local union president, says to Ford. "It’s a good act, but it’s easy to overdo."

While Lou Ford uses the reader as a sympathetic ear for his con, Pop. 1280’s protagonist, Nick Corey, does not share such secrets with the audience. He carefully cloaks his cunning and bloodlust. In this way it is easy to be drawn into the notion that Corey is exceedingly dim-witted and indecisive. "I’d sit down to a meal of maybe half a dozen pork chops and a few fried eggs and a pan of hot biscuits with grits and gravy, and I couldn’t eat it. Not all of it. I’d start worrying about those problems of mine, and the next thing you knew I was getting up from the table with food still left on my plate…So I says to myself ‘Nick,’ I says, ‘Nick Corey, these problems of yours are driving you plumb out of your mind, so you better think of something fast’…So I thought and I thought, and then I thought some more. And finally I came to a decision. I decided I didn’t know what the heck to do." Corey plays it straight throughout. We believe that he is harmless, we sympathize with his plight. This makes his sudden fits of violence all the more shocking.

Corey describes his murders matter-of-factly, with an almost comedic touch. "That’s one thing people always know, I guess. They know when they’re going to die. And Moose and Curly knew that they were going to. ‘Good night, ye merry gentlemen,’ I said. ‘Hail and farewell.’ The Ruby Clark whistled. By the time the echo died, Moose and Curly were in the river, each with a bullet spang between his eyes." And so it goes. We find ourselves grinning as Nick Corey kills various unsavory characters. Thompson uses the first-person narration to his advantage: no matter how despicable the protagonist is, we can’t help but identify with and cheer for him.

In The Killer Inside Me, the narrator’s violent rampages are described in a vastly different way than Pop. 1280. Ford details the murders in excruciating detail. In keeping with his modus operandi, Ford "tortures" the reading audience by drawing out the descriptions as long as possible. In fact from the start of chapter eighteen, when Ford states: "I killed Amy Stanton on Saturday night on the fifth of April, 1952, at a few minutes before nine o’clock," it takes him a full ten pages to complete the telling of her death. And considering the repressive time period in which the book was written, the prose itself is remarkably brutal: "I hit her in the guts hard as I could. My fist went back against her spine, and the flesh closed around it to the wrist. I jerked back on it, I had to jerk, and she flopped forward from the waist, like she was hinged."

Interestingly, by the end of both books, it could be argued that Nick Corey is the more frightening of the two. While Lou Ford acknowledges his "sickness" and is resigned to hoping for another chance in the "Next Place," Corey shows a chillingly grandiose sense of self-worth. At the end of the book, instead of fearing damnation, Corey seems to believe that he is the messiah himself: "It was all so clear to me. Christ knew it was clear: love one another and don’t screw no one unless they’re bending over, and forgive us our trespasses because we may be a minority of one. For God’s sake, for God’s sake—why else had I been put here in Potts County, and why else did I stay here? Why else, who else, what else, but Christ Almighty would put up with it?"

Jim Thompson famously promised his wife he’d be famous ten years after his death. He proved to be prophetic. For his strikingly innovative use of first-person narrative, Thompson deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as not only Hammett, Chandler, and Cain, but Faulkner, Hemmingway, and Fitzgerald. As Thompson once said, "There are 32 ways to write a story, and I have used every one, but there is only one plot: things are not what they seem."

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Copyright © Nate Flexer 2008

Check out an extract from Nate Flexer's The Disassembled Man

Sources:

Polito, Robert. Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.

Thompson, Jim. The Killer Inside Me. New York: Lion Books, 1952

Thompson, Jim. Pop. 1280. Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Gold Medal, 1964.

The Killer Beside Me: The Jim Thompson Resource Page. http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/6437/jim.htm

Born in New York City , NATE FLEXER currently lives in Colorado where he teaches high school English. He has had several short stories published in such crime magazines and e-zines as Crime Spree, Thuglit, Hardluck Stories, and Darkest Before Dawn. He recently completed The Disassembled Man and is seeking a publisher or agent.
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