James Crumley’s Followers (311)

James Crumley

Born

in Three Rivers (Texas), The United States

October 12, 1939

Died

September 17, 2008

Genre

Crime, Fiction

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James Arthur Crumley was the author of violent hardboiled crime novels and several volumes of short stories and essays, as well as published and unpublished screenplays. He has been described as "one of modern crime writing's best practitioners", who was "a patron saint of the post-Vietnam private eye novel"and a cross between Raymond Chandler and Hunter S. Thompson.His book The Last Good Kiss has been described as "the most influential crime novel of the last 50 years."

Crumley, who was born in Three Rivers, Texas, grew up in south Texas, where his father was an oil-field supervisor and his mother was a waitress.

Crumley was a grade-A student and a football player, an offensive lineman, in high school. He attended the Georgia Institute of Te James Arthur Crumley was the author of violent hardboiled crime novels and several volumes of short stories and essays, as well as published and unpublished screenplays. He has been described as "one of modern crime writing's best practitioners", who was "a patron saint of the post-Vietnam private eye novel"and a cross between Raymond Chandler and Hunter S. Thompson.His book The Last Good Kiss has been described as "the most influential crime novel of the last 50 years."

Crumley, who was born in Three Rivers, Texas, grew up in south Texas, where his father was an oil-field supervisor and his mother was a waitress.

Crumley was a grade-A student and a football player, an offensive lineman, in high school. He attended the Georgia Institute of Technology on a Navy ROTC scholarship, but left to serve in the U.S. Army from 1958 to 1961 in the Philippines. He then attended the Texas College of Arts and Industries on a football scholarship, where he received his B.A. degree with a major in history in 1964. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at the University of Iowa in 1966. His master's thesis was later published as the Vietnam War novel One to Count Cadence in 1969.

Crumley had not read any detective fiction until prompted to by Montana poet Richard Hugo, who recommended the work of Raymond Chandler for the quality of his sentences. Crumley finally picked up a copy of one of Chandler's books in Guadalajara, Mexico. Impressed by Chandler's writing, and that of Ross Macdonald, Crumley began writing his first detective novel, The Wrong Case, which was published in 1975.

Crumley served on the English faculty of the University of Montana at Missoula, and as a visiting professor at a number of other colleges, including the University of Arkansas, Colorado State University, the University of Texas at El Paso, Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

From the mid-80s on he lived in Missoula, Montana, where he found inspiration for his novels at Charlie B's bar. A regular there, he had many longstanding friends who have been portrayed as characters in his books.

Crumley died at St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Montana on September 17, 2008 of complications from kidney and pulmonary diseases after many years of health problems. He was survived by his wife of 16 years, Martha Elizabeth, a poet and artist who was his fifth wife. He had five children – three from his second marriage and two from his fourth – eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

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Combine Editions
James Crumley’s books

Average rating: 3.94 · 20,439 ratings · 1,913 reviews · 60 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Last Good Kiss (C.W. Sughrue, #1) 4.05 avg rating — 8,657 ratings — published 1978 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Wrong Case (Milo Milodragovitch, #1) 3.95 avg rating — 1,905 ratings — published 1975 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Mexican Tree Duck (C.W. Sughrue, #2) 3.71 avg rating — 1,272 ratings — published 1993 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dancing Bear (Milo Milodragovitch, #2) 4.08 avg rating — 1,128 ratings — published 1983 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bordersnakes (C.W. Sughrue, #3; Milo Milodragovitch, #3) 3.89 avg rating — 725 ratings — published 1996 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Right Madness (C.W. Sughrue, #4) 3.70 avg rating — 610 ratings — published 2005 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Final Country (Milo Milodragovitch, #4) 3.87 avg rating — 580 ratings — published 2001 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	One to Count Cadence 3.91 avg rating — 386 ratings — published 1969 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lone Star Noir (Akashic Noir) by James Crumley, Luis Alberto Urrea (Goodreads Author), Joe R. Lansdale (Goodreads Author) 3.46 avg rating — 199 ratings — published 2010 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Muddy Fork & Other Things: Short Fiction and Nonfiction 3.63 avg rating — 70 ratings — published 1991 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by James Crumley…

Series by James Crumley

C.W. Sughrue (4 books)
by

James Crumley

3.98 avg rating — 11,262 ratings

Milo Milodragovitch (4 books)
by

James Crumley

3.96 avg rating — 4,338 ratings

Quotes by James Crumley (?)

“Son, never trust a man who doesn’t drink because he’s probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They’re the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They’re usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they’re a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can’t trust a man who’s afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It’s damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he’s heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl.”
― James Crumley

tags: cowardice, drinking, humility, morality, philosophy, self-righteousness

296 likes

“When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.”
― James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss

tags: drinking, first-sentence

58 likes

“Stories are like snapshots, pictures snatched out of time, with clean hard edges. But this was life, and life always begins and ends in a bloody muddle, womb to tomb, just one big mess, a can of worms left to rot in the sun.”
― James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss

tags: life, storytelling

21 likes

See all James Crumley's quotes »

Polls

December 2013/January 2014 Group Read

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3 votes, 1.1%

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278 total votes

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James Crumley’s Followers (311)

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