Rating: 
Summary: One of Thompson's Best
Review: POP. 1280 is in the tradition of other great Thompson books, such as THE KILLER INSIDE ME. The protagonist is a seemingly respectable, law-abiding citizen -- small-town Southern sheriff, Nick Corey. He's been pushed around by his wife, brother-in-law, and most other town folks. In the beginning it's clear that Corey has been a very passive sheriff, and his anger at being considered weak is building. The book chronicles how he slowly and dramatically strikes back. Corey's much smarter than most of the town thinks, but he's also probably delusional, which is what ultimately makes this book such a black comic gem. There are more laugh-out loud moments in this book than in most Thompson books. The plot depends on a number of coincidences and stretches of logic, but it's great fun and there are some truly great surprises along the way. Overall, I think it's one of Thompson's most enjoyable and funny books, with some memorable moments and characters.
Rating:
Summary: debauchery abounds! a delight.
Review: Published in 1964, Thompson's Pop. 1280 is one of his finest efforts. This book is unusually lucid and often hilarious. Thompson's humor ordinarily leaves you wondering whether or not he meant to be funny, or whether it was mental illness that brought it out. That isn't the case here. Pop. 1280 was obviously designed to be a black comedy from the beginning. Nick Corey is one of Thompson's best characters. There is, of course, the usual sex, crime & insanity(and plenty of booze), but it's unlike any other Thompson book I've read. It's bizarre and intentionally funny. He's thrown a bit of theology and philosophy into the mix. Pop. 1280 lampoons the back-biting, racism & hypocrisy of Small Southern Town, USA, where people only take their masks off behind closed doors. It's an incredibly fast & easy read. If you need a break from Thompson's paranoia and tension, well, here it is. Pop. 1280 is certainly one of Thompson's finest!
Rating: 
Summary: Gee shucks ma'am, didn't mean to kill you.
Review: Reading Jim Thompson drags you into a deep ugly sordid world where nothing is quite right. All plans go awry, everyone is a suspect and the worst in humanity is sure to find you.This Thompson book is a little different in that the person doing the plotting is the main character and he's successful. He's successful mostly because he doesn't let on to the reader what he's doing until he does it. For most of the book you think that this guy is an idiot, yet things work amazingly in his favor. When he stands revealed, his philosophy out for all the readers to see you still aren't sure if he's saying everything. Some gratuitous "Southern yokel" humor thrown in does not detract from the main point of the book. In many ways this reminds me of the Michael Caine movie "Shock to the SYstem" but this book is much much more disturbing.
Rating:
Summary: a mild variation on a proven theme..
Review: The Killer Inside Me, a slick novel about a psychotic deputy sheriff in a small Texan town, is perhaps Jim Thompson's best known and most admired work. Several years later he wrote Pop. 1280, a story about, hmmm..., a psychotic sheriff in a small town. Deja vu? Yeah, sort of. But there are differences... Unlike The Killer Inside Me, our monster law enforcement officer is not a compulsive killer but rather a hideously clever womanizer who quite thoroughly justifies his dirty deeds ... albeit using very twisted logic. The man comes off as a lazy idiot to all around him, yet he is incredibly sly and evil. Most of Pop. 1280 makes for great reading, with only the ending being somewhat flat. Bottom line: amongst Jim Thompson's better works, which means it stands head and shoulders beyond other 'noir' mystery novels. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: a mild variation on a proven theme..
Review: The Killer Inside Me, a slick novel about a psychotic deputy sheriff in a small Texan town, is perhaps Jim Thompson's best known and most admired work. Several years later he wrote Pop. 1280, a story about, hmmm..., a psychotic sheriff in a small town. Deja vu? Yeah, sort of. But there are differences... Unlike The Killer Inside Me, our monster law enforcement officer is not a compulsive killer but rather a hideously clever womanizer who quite thoroughly justifies his dirty deeds ... albeit using very twisted logic. The man comes off as a lazy idiot to all around him, yet he is incredibly sly and evil. Most of Pop. 1280 makes for great reading, with only the ending being somewhat flat. Bottom line: amongst Jim Thompson's better works, which means it stands head and shoulders beyond other 'noir' mystery novels. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Mind-numbing, beautiful dementia
Review: 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 aren't crossed behind his back it's because he's holding a weapon
Rating:
Summary: Noir genre at its best
Review: This book explores evil as a mundane, workaday series of events by a character whose view of the world is doing what it takes to get him where he wants to go. It is not the evil a Hannibal Lecher or even the real life Jeffery Dahmer. Rather it is the evil of ordinary folks, offered up in a folksy way. Jim Thomson shows us people he knows and knows of. The victims are victims of life and sometimes their own foilbles and sometimes just the bad luck to come accross those who have no qualms when it comes to taking a life as part of getting ahead -- even if the rewards for a death are so small for those who commit murder. It trivializes the lives taken and scares the living daylights out of the reader long after the book has been put away.
Rating:
Summary: Masterful Dark Comedy
Review: This is Thompson's blackly funny version of his previous masterpiece, "The Killer Inside Me." It's the same plot, but this time played for (ghastly) laughs. This time the sheriff in his madness begins to believe he is the second coming of a certain deity, and dispenses "justice" accordingly. There are passages describing the interior life of this character that will shake you to your bones in their depiction of insanity as a reasonable response to such a cruel world. This novel was made into a movie by the French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier titled "Clean Slate" and the location was moved from Texas to colonial West Africa. It's a pretty good movie, but it's not the sick masterpiece of Thompson's book.
Rating:
Summary: Cynical and hilarious
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Exceptionally well written with a strong hand of control
Review: What I enjoyed most about this book was the initial sense of timelessness. It was several chapters before I could accurately place when this was taking place. By then I was drawn into Nick Corey's internal world so well that I realized that I was in the mind of a sociopath, not an unlikeable one at that. What redeems him in the eyes of the reader is that he is playing these games with equally evil people who all have committed some type of crime that is glaringly apparent. Perhaps the girl who got away, cunning though she is, is the only one who proves to be close to innocent or good in the book. The story does successfully hold the reader in suspense as to everyone else's motives because we only see this world through the eyes of Corey. Perhaps that is also a slight failing of teh novel, Corey redeems himself with his perception and no one speaks or does anything to contest this, it's almost as if Corey is the Devil and all of these people don't realize that they're in Hell yet, his pawns for manipulation. The motives for manipulation are a little thin too---beyond simple malice so Corey comes off a little too smart for his own good, he wasn't really challeneged by anyone, he simply decided one day to pull the pin on everyone. I think that perhaps even crazy/evil people get frustrated with people, get challenged. All in all still an excellent exercise in concise writing, dialogue and manipulation, I even went and got the French film just to see what I had imagined, and see how someone else had imagined it. Would be great to see as a movie today but it's too Un-American towards the old west for anyone in teh bubblegum Hollywood to risk.
|
