Style
Thompson's stories are about grifters, losers, sociopaths and psychopaths—some at the fringe of society, some at its heart—their nihilistic world-view being best-served by first-person narratives revealing a frighteningly deep understanding of the warped mind. There are no good guys in Thompson's literature—most everyone is abusive, opportunistic, or simply biding time until an appropriate opportunity for such behavior presents itself.
Despite some positive critical notice, Thompson's novels were essentially lost in the crowd among dozens of peer writers such as??? who also were churning out crime novels; only after his best years as a writer did Thompson achieve a measure of fame. Yet that neglect might stem from his novels' style: the crime novels are fast-moving and compelling but sometimes sloppy and uneven. Thompson wrote quickly with little revision or editing (many novels were written in a month); using his newspaper experience he wrote concise, evocative prose quickly and with little editing.
Yet at his best his novels were among the most effectively and memorably written genre pieces. He also managed unusual and highly successful literary tricks: for example, halfway though A Hell Of A Woman, the first-person narrator Frank "Dolly" Dillon has a mental breakdown; the sides of his personality then take turns narrating the story's chapters, alternately violently psychotic (telling the sordid tale that actually happened) or sweet-natured and patient (telling the idealized fantasy that did not happen). In the final page of the original manuscript the two sides of Dillon's broken personality appear together as two separate columns of text. The publisher disliked that, and instead alternated the two narrations in one, long paragraph, alternating standard Roman type and italicised type. Thompson disliked the change, thinking it confusing and difficult for the reader.
For most of his life Jim Thompson drank heavily; the effects of alcoholism often featured in his works, most prominently in The Alcoholics (1953) which is set in a detoxification clinic. Donald E. Westlake, who adapted The Grifters for the screen, observed that alcoholism had a great role in Thompson's literature though it tended to be tacit and subtle. Westlake described typical personal relationships in Thompson novels as pleasant in the morning, argumentative in the afternoon, and abusive at night—behavior common to the alcoholic Thompson's style of life but which he elided from the stories.
Read more about this topic: Jim Thompson (writer)
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“I am so tired of taking to others
translating my life for the deaf, the blind,
the “I really want to know what your life is like without giving up any of my privileges
to live it” white women
the “I want to live my white life with Third World women’s style and keep my skin
class privileges” dykes”
—Lorraine Bethel, African American lesbian feminist poet. “What Chou Mean We, White Girl?” Lines 49-54 (1979)
“On the first days, like a piece of music that one will later be mad about, but that one does not yet distinguish, that which I was to love so much in [Bergotte’s] style was not yet clear to me. I could not put down the novel that I was reading, but I thought that I was only interested in the subject, as in the first moments of love when one goes every day to see a woman at some gathering, or some pastime, by the amusements to which one believes to be attracted.”
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