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Roughneck
This fictionalized account retraces the author's zigzag path across the prairie states in the 1930s and 1940s as he consorts with corpses and con men, outruns railroad bulls, shakes down debtors, and writes labor history for the W.P.A.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1954
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About the author
Jim Thompson
160 books1,630 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
James Myers Thompson was a United States writer of novels, short stories and screenplays, largely in the hardboiled style of crime fiction.
Thompson wrote more than thirty novels, the majority of which were original paperback publications by pulp fiction houses, from the late-1940s through mid-1950s. Despite some positive critical notice, notably by Anthony Boucher in the New York Times, he was little-recognized in his lifetime. Only after death did Thompson's literary stature grow, when in the late 1980s, several novels were re-published in the Black Lizard series of re-discovered crime fiction.
Thompson's writing culminated in a few of his best-regarded works: The Killer Inside Me, Savage Night, A Hell of a Woman and Pop. 1280. In these works, Thompson turned the derided pulp genre into literature and art, featuring unreliable narrators, odd structure, and surrealism.
The writer R.V. Cassills has suggested that of all pulp fiction, Thompson's was the rawest and most harrowing; that neither Dashiell Hammett nor Raymond Chandler nor even Horace McCoy, author of the bleak They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, ever "wrote a book within miles of Thompson". Similarly, in the introduction to Now and on Earth, Stephen King says he most admires Thompson's work because "The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn't know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave lets inherent in the forgoing: he let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it."
Thompson admired Fyodor Dostoevsky and was nicknamed "Dimestore Dostoevsky" by writer Geoffrey O'Brien. Film director Stephen Frears, who directed an adaptation of Thompson's The Grifters as 1990's The Grifters, also identified elements of Greek tragedy in his themes.
James Myers Thompson was a United States writer of novels, short stories and screenplays, largely in the hardboiled style of crime fiction.
Thompson wrote more than thirty novels, the majority of which were original paperback publications by pulp fiction houses, from the late-1940s through mid-1950s. Despite some positive critical notice, notably by Anthony Boucher in the New York Times, he was little-recognized in his lifetime. Only after death did Thompson's literary stature grow, when in the late 1980s, several novels were re-published in the Black Lizard series of re-discovered crime fiction.
Thompson's writing culminated in a few of his best-regarded works: The Killer Inside Me, Savage Night, A Hell of a Woman and Pop. 1280. In these works, Thompson turned the derided pulp genre into literature and art, featuring unreliable narrators, odd structure, and surrealism.
The writer R.V. Cassills has suggested that of all pulp fiction, Thompson's was the rawest and most harrowing; that neither Dashiell Hammett nor Raymond Chandler nor even Horace McCoy, author of the bleak They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, ever "wrote a book within miles of Thompson". Similarly, in the introduction to Now and on Earth, Stephen King says he most admires Thompson's work because "The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn't know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave lets inherent in the forgoing: he let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it."
Thompson admired Fyodor Dostoevsky and was nicknamed "Dimestore Dostoevsky" by writer Geoffrey O'Brien. Film director Stephen Frears, who directed an adaptation of Thompson's The Grifters as 1990's The Grifters, also identified elements of Greek tragedy in his themes.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 60 reviews
February 19, 2016
Reviewed in conjunction with link: La Douleur.
Sometimes you read a book that makes you feel ashamed of your life, every time you thought you were unlucky or that you deserve more or that you should get more. Whatever you have suffered, however genuine it be, suddenly becomes as nothing, its place clearly fixed in the universe as the measliest dot the world ever has seen. Roughneck does that. It describes a portion of his life in the pared down, straightforward way Thompson tells all his stories. Nothing is oversized, filled with extra words so that you can feel like you are getting more than you paid for. You are, of course. But not in word count.
As is so often the case, the small story about a few, packs so much more punch than big numbers. This one starts before the Great Depression and takes us through that period. Not that I should be calling it a story. I groaned when I realised I’d picked up an autobiography, not a novel. Live life, don’t read about others, p-llllease. But I was too mean not to read it, serves me right for not looking carefully when I bought it. And before two pages were up I was goggle-eyed, gaping-mouthed hooked.
The man’s a genius. He can even make biography bearable. I’m not going to review this, for the simple reason that I’m not worthy too. The human suffering he writes about, what Americans did to Americans, even white Americans to white Americans, would be demeaned by anything I said about it. I don’t think I ever realised so clearly the extent to which poverty and wealth create the same barriers, the same hate as race or religion, maybe even worse. Watching the way wealthy Americans treated those they were exploiting in this period made my stomach churn. I think that’s the most incredible aspect of it. It is so easy to understand poor people might hate rich. But this book brings home the other side of this and it is truly ghastly to watch.
This is a wildy entertaining book, but it is about people who were rich, watching, exploiting and being despicable to their poor neighbours. It is about people unnecessarily half starving, living in the most desperate circumstances and heart in mouth hoping they pull through. It makes you ashamed to be human.
So I thought.
But then, I hadn’t picked up La Douleur yet.
‘Shit.’ That is what I did say out loud, irritated when I picked this up, the very next book after Roughneck. Another hasty purchase, another %$^#$ autobiography. A slightly wanky one, if it comes to that, I felt as I started it – after the plain matteroffactness of Thompson, Duras seemed on the hysterically dramatic side.
Then again, who wouldn’t be? Thompson writes about the half starved. Duras writes of the 95% starved. I don’t know how to put that. People who are literally skin and bones as they come back, those few who do, from the camps of Nazi Germany, people who are so close to death that food is going to kill them as surely as lack of it will, people whose skeletons can’t bear the tiny weight on them. I have no way of describing the horrors recorded here and to quote bits and pieces would seem plain disrespectful.
I did need some pages to adjust to the girly, introspective way Duras sets out her story here, but then, it was never supposed to be a story, not like that. It was what she wrote at the time for herself, trying to hang on to what was left of her sanity as she waited for her husband to come back during the period in which the prisoners were set free from the Nazi camps. She has some moments of marvelous acidity as she describes how some of the French take advantage of the new political situation. She is no friend of de Gaulle, who sounds like a right creep the way she tells it.
It turned out that being ashamed of America in the Depression wasn’t the half of it.
Lately I seem to keep on – completely coincidentally – reading books that pair each other in some significant way and here again, it’s happened. It’s an odd request, but I’m making it. These books go together. Get them and read them back to back. It’ll be totally worth it, I promise!
Sometimes you read a book that makes you feel ashamed of your life, every time you thought you were unlucky or that you deserve more or that you should get more. Whatever you have suffered, however genuine it be, suddenly becomes as nothing, its place clearly fixed in the universe as the measliest dot the world ever has seen. Roughneck does that. It describes a portion of his life in the pared down, straightforward way Thompson tells all his stories. Nothing is oversized, filled with extra words so that you can feel like you are getting more than you paid for. You are, of course. But not in word count.
As is so often the case, the small story about a few, packs so much more punch than big numbers. This one starts before the Great Depression and takes us through that period. Not that I should be calling it a story. I groaned when I realised I’d picked up an autobiography, not a novel. Live life, don’t read about others, p-llllease. But I was too mean not to read it, serves me right for not looking carefully when I bought it. And before two pages were up I was goggle-eyed, gaping-mouthed hooked.
The man’s a genius. He can even make biography bearable. I’m not going to review this, for the simple reason that I’m not worthy too. The human suffering he writes about, what Americans did to Americans, even white Americans to white Americans, would be demeaned by anything I said about it. I don’t think I ever realised so clearly the extent to which poverty and wealth create the same barriers, the same hate as race or religion, maybe even worse. Watching the way wealthy Americans treated those they were exploiting in this period made my stomach churn. I think that’s the most incredible aspect of it. It is so easy to understand poor people might hate rich. But this book brings home the other side of this and it is truly ghastly to watch.
This is a wildy entertaining book, but it is about people who were rich, watching, exploiting and being despicable to their poor neighbours. It is about people unnecessarily half starving, living in the most desperate circumstances and heart in mouth hoping they pull through. It makes you ashamed to be human.
So I thought.
But then, I hadn’t picked up La Douleur yet.
‘Shit.’ That is what I did say out loud, irritated when I picked this up, the very next book after Roughneck. Another hasty purchase, another %$^#$ autobiography. A slightly wanky one, if it comes to that, I felt as I started it – after the plain matteroffactness of Thompson, Duras seemed on the hysterically dramatic side.
Then again, who wouldn’t be? Thompson writes about the half starved. Duras writes of the 95% starved. I don’t know how to put that. People who are literally skin and bones as they come back, those few who do, from the camps of Nazi Germany, people who are so close to death that food is going to kill them as surely as lack of it will, people whose skeletons can’t bear the tiny weight on them. I have no way of describing the horrors recorded here and to quote bits and pieces would seem plain disrespectful.
I did need some pages to adjust to the girly, introspective way Duras sets out her story here, but then, it was never supposed to be a story, not like that. It was what she wrote at the time for herself, trying to hang on to what was left of her sanity as she waited for her husband to come back during the period in which the prisoners were set free from the Nazi camps. She has some moments of marvelous acidity as she describes how some of the French take advantage of the new political situation. She is no friend of de Gaulle, who sounds like a right creep the way she tells it.
It turned out that being ashamed of America in the Depression wasn’t the half of it.
Lately I seem to keep on – completely coincidentally – reading books that pair each other in some significant way and here again, it’s happened. It’s an odd request, but I’m making it. These books go together. Get them and read them back to back. It’ll be totally worth it, I promise!
February 2, 2024
10/2018
Jim Thompson wrote this memoir in the '50s about being a young man in the Depression years (he was born in 1906). Thompson had always been a writer, but was distracted during these tough times by the need of food etc. This book covers his life up to writing his first novel in his mid thirties. There were great parts in this, but there were times when it felt a bit odd and disjointed.
Jim Thompson wrote this memoir in the '50s about being a young man in the Depression years (he was born in 1906). Thompson had always been a writer, but was distracted during these tough times by the need of food etc. This book covers his life up to writing his first novel in his mid thirties. There were great parts in this, but there were times when it felt a bit odd and disjointed.
December 8, 2020
And so the Year of Jim Thompson ends with him getting the last word in his other autobiographical work. This, along with Bad Boy is a great piece of storytelling as Thompson reminisces on his challenging life as a vagabond, sounding like a Huck Finn from Hell. Funny and sad, depressing and mad, Thompson’s work on his life encompasses the critical side of sentimentalism and stands out as some of his best stuff.
April 22, 2024
A document of Depression-era life in the US. Some of it feels embellished or contrived; other parts seem way too real.
Have to say—prior to this book was not familiar with this author (which say more about my vast ignorance that Thompson's fame).
Gets an extra star just for pluck and grit.
Have to say—prior to this book was not familiar with this author (which say more about my vast ignorance that Thompson's fame).
Gets an extra star just for pluck and grit.
September 26, 2019
Jim Thompson may be famous in the field of crime novels but his name was new to me. I was drawn to his autobiographical tale of Oklahoma in the Depression period more for his hard-drinking, hobo reputation than his literary output. My main complaint is that the book is too short and ends abruptly right as he is about to achieve some stability in his professional life. Until that time, the reader is led on a journey of odd jobs, bad luck and even worse acquaintances. It is alternately hilarious and heart-breaking.
November 12, 2025
Roughneck by Jim Thompson… tells the story of a young adult trying to make his way and make ends meet at the time of the great depression… The title is somewhat oddly named. While certainly roughing it in a rough place and time, Jim Thompson exemplifies a tender soul, and much humanity, a bit surprising for this fan of his hard boiled stories, and twisted characters.
“ a sweltering August day in 1929. —Now Pop was in Texas and his money was there, too, sunk into one oilless well after another. As for me—me and Mom and my kid sister, Freddie.…. —It seemed I was stubborn, wilful, a consistent and deliberate flouter of convention. I seemed never to have used my very good mind for anything but involving myself in trouble. As a youth in my first long pants, I was an associate of chorus girls, grifters, gamblers, and other ne’er-do-wells. With equal ease, I could quote the Roman lyric poet Catullus, or the odds against making four the hard way. I was not yet sixteen when I became a night bellboy in a luxury hotel—earned big money there—and acquired still more by gambling… — At eighteen, I broke down with tuberculosis, acute alcoholism and complete nervous exhaustion. I bummed through west and far west Texas for three years, slowly getting my health back —returned to Fort Worth.” Next. “I had the alternative of paying up or getting my head beaten off… or, of course, leaving town. —a little less than a hundred dollars— I loaded Mom and Freddie into the car and headed north. Our destination was Nebraska… —The crankcase was filled with sawdust and tractor oil. It had been doctored thusly to conceal a flat crankshaft—the one incurable ailment of the Model-T Ford. It took us two days to get to Oklahoma City, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles. It also took almost seventy of our one hundred dollars. Here we sat, nominal beggars in a broken-down Ford…” Tuition money. —“The last man in the world to deceive is the man you hope to get money from. If he has it and you don’t, the odds are that he is at least as shrewd as you and probably a hell of a lot shrewder. Dr. Crawford refused my offer to give him a note for the money. When a man’s sole collateral is his word, why bother with his signature?”
Help where you find it. “The poor girl was undoubtedly a moron; I have seen very few prostitutes who were not. But as she began dropping in on me daily and we got to know each other better, I acquired a high regard for her intelligence in at least one respect. Moron or no, Trixie was a damned good literary critic.” But her pimp, “wondering if it might not be an excellent idea to leave town for a while. —Shorty —“It’s there… More than five thousand feet of high grade casing. And it’s free— —Shorty was a driller, and jigs a tool dresser—a full cable-rig crew. They needed a third man—to help with the rigging up, and serve as boilerman and roust-about. —Early the next morning we a caught a freight south.” At the site… “Well, I can’t explain it, how we got the necessary help. All I can do is tell you about it. — men would come plodding through the tangles of underbrush and blackjack. Negro and white, sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Poor ragged devils, even poorer than ourselves if that were possible, bonily emaciated with the ravages of hookworm and malaria. Exactly the right number came to get the job done—no more, no less. They expected no pay and they seemed surprised and embarrassed by our thanks. — It was an eerie phenomenon, one that I have observed nowhere else but in the “lost country” of the Deep South. — They knew what we were going to do before we did! — Unlike Shortly and Jiggs, I could not shrug off this weird state of affairs as “just one of them things.” There is a peculiar twist of my mind which impels me to fly into every puzzle as though dear life depended on it. I never got a straight explanation of the riddle, I did achieve some understanding of it. The “how” I never learned. But the “why-for,” to use the dialect of the section became clear. — “Just said I was goin’ to he’p him.” “How do you people know things like that?” I asked. And he shook his head awkwardly: he didn’t know; he couldn’t say; he didn’t like to talk about it. “If you knew this cave-in was coming, why didn’t you warn Lije? Maybe he could have stopped it.” “Caint,” — “Suthin’s what’s goin’ to be, it is.” “I caint—I don’t rightly know how to—to—” “Put it in your own words. How do you folks know when somebody needs help?” — “Got to,” he said, bluntly. That was the end of his explanation. It was enough.”
The Task. “If it blew up, I would be the one to be blasted into the next county. —it was agonizing to think of going back to Oklahoma City empty-handed. But I naturally preferred returning empty-handed to not going back at all. “All right,” I said. “I think I’m making a hell of a mistake but—all right.” —I turned the blower on full blast, opened the water-injector valve to its widest. And ran. We had lost our head of steam. And the pipe had not moved an inch. Maybe, by all the laws of physics, the pipe should move, but apparently it was not law-abiding pipe. — The boiler began to quiver and shimmy, but I kept on. And at last I had what Shorty wanted. The grates were clean, the firebox full, the stoker loaded. All at the same time. There was as much steam as could be got, and the steam would hold. Every tiny cell and molecule of the equipment had been stretched and squeezed to its limits. There was no longer any give in them, no room for friction nor clashing, and hence it was silent. The only noise was the hissing of steam. Around me the earth began to tremble, I had heard about this all my life and now I was seeing it; the legendary meeting of the irresistible force and the immovable object. “Sure, it’s moving! It’s stretching!” “Stretch? Why, goddammit, it couldn’t—Yeeow!” yelled Shorty. And he led the race for the bushes. For, fantastic as it seemed, the pipe was stretching. And suddenly it snapped. It soared up out of the hole, some forty feet of “indestructible” twenty-four inch casing. It came down on the rig, splintering braces and crossbraces, leaving the derrick a wobbling ruin. It landed thunderously amidst the machinery… and, for all practical purposes, that machinery ceased to be. There was nothing to salvage. The rig was utterly and completely beyond repair. — Case-hardened wretches that we were, we were that near to weeping. Our farmer friend took the disappointment much more philosophically. “Didn’t lose nothin’,” he pointed out, as he fed us a farewell banquet of jackrabbit stew. “Didn’t have nothin’ to begin with.”
“I received several small manuscript checks in a row that summer, and Mom fell heir to a modest sum. She and Freddie came down to Oklahoma City, bringing my wife and baby with them, and we continued on together to Fort Worth, Texas. Pop had got a job of sorts there. I got one, hotel doorman. It was easily the lousiest job I have ever had. I worked a seven-day, eighty-four-hour week. My salary was fourteen dollars per, less certain arbitrary deductions by my employer… it was a starvation wage… I could go to eat or to the toilet if I chose to. But if the motoring guest checked out during my absence, his garage charges were on me. After paying one gentlemen’s nine-dollar bill out of my twelve-dollar wage, I chose to stick to my post. —This is one period of my life I don’t like to talk about. A few pennies at a time, I saved enough money to rent a typewriter and buy some fancy letterheads. I circulated the quality business magazines, and got a number of assignments. From business writing, I gradually moved into the relatively high-paying field of fact-detective stories. — I had for a long time inclined to a youthful bemusement with the genus Texan, and as a result I failed to achieve the high Texas standards of character and intelligence. —Fact-detective stories cannot be sold without pictures, and I had found it convenient to become acquainted with many newspaper photographers. They were invariably firstclass workmen. They could get stuff from their morgues that was ordinarily unobtainable, and they didn’t charge me anything. — In the spring of 1936, I heard of a chief of police who was making a big name for himself in a small Oklahoma city. —his exploits were so many and so well handled as to comprise the stuff for a long serial. I moved my family to Oklahoma City (there would be much research to do in the capital’s appeals court files). I did my writing there, traveling back and forth to the police chief’s town for the numerous interviews we had to hold. —was almost three months getting it done and my slender financial resources were exhausted. I was anything but worried, however. I had forty thousand words of the best damned detective story I had ever written. —And it couldn’t come at a better time. My wife and I could have a real home for the second baby we were expecting. —For throughout its forty thousand words, it held the chief as a model of public officialdom—a man unflinchingly honest, unswerving in his devotion to duty. — He had lived a lie for years, and the lie had at last caught up with him. I came to a trash receptacle, tossed the thick, carefully prepared manuscript inside. I boarded a bus for Oklahoma City. A police chief—and he had been head of an interstate auto theft ring! A police chief—and now he was locked up in his own jail!” Reluctantly, and without any real hope of landing a job, I applied at the writers’ project office. I was hired immediately. —Eighteen months later I was appointed director—“boss of the shebang.” And having some kind of steady income, however small, meant a great deal to my wife. I stayed on the job, writing detective stories in my off-weeks. Little by little, we acquired a degree of solvency.”
Field Research. “I can’t recall the name of the stuff now. But it was made, I learned later, from a base of corn and saliva. The squaws chewed corn to a pulp and spit it into the pot. When they had a sufficient quantity of this mash, they filled the pot with water, added sugar and allowed it to ferment. That was all there was to it, except for an occasional skimming. In a few weeks the stuff had a kick like an army mule. —somehow or another we were divested of our clothes ... breechclouts, and someone—or several someones—decorated us from head to foot with bright clay paint. — There was a wild war whoop; the squaws began a rhythmic stamping and clapping and the dance was on. Indian at the head of our line danced down the aisle and made a whirling leap over the flames…everyone had performed but Tom and me. We decided to do a duet. Every time we revolved in the dance one of us socked or kicked the other, our leap arrived we were off-balance and groggy. We leaped, anyway, whirling and whooping. Tom’s flailing feet booted me in the back. we soared up and above the fire. We hung poised over it for a moment; then, our forward momentum lost, we dropped smack down into the fire. —The Return Trip. —car had slid onto the rain-caved shoulder — lying on its top in the bottom of the ditch, and three hundred pounds of squaw were lying on top of me. She remained inert, snoring peacefully, and I remained pinned down. — “Send out a tow car! And hurry! I can’t take much of this!” — around dawn when I heard the creak of harness and wagon wheels… a farmer, on his way to town with a wagonload of corn. He stared in at me and the squaw, eyes widening incredulously. — helpless with merriment… He unhitched his mules and hitched them onto my car. —easily upright, and back onto the road. The farmer refused payment for his help. Gasping, tears of amusement streaming down his face… “Ain’t—haw, haw, haw!—ain’t laughed like that since I don’t know when. How in the heck did you get in such a dagnabbed fix?” “Never mind.” …
“In the fall of 1938, I received a visit from two old-timers in the Oklahoma labor movement. They were pioneers in the state, and men of some substance. They wanted the writers’ project to do a history of labor in the state. I was personally sympathetic to their plan. But it was inadvisable on a great many counts. Labor was sensitive about its mistakes. It would consider unfriendly a book that was merely accurate and complete. —inter-union quarrels—long-standing jurisdictional disputes, for example. I could never get the different labor leaders together without the danger of a knock-down, drag-out brawl. Any unfavorable mention of a union was invariably “a goddamned lie” —I was charged with everything from stupidity to personal prejudice to taking pay from the National Association of Manufacturers.” Big Union head. “You’re good at dishing it out, and when it comes to taking a little you start crying. Everyone’s picking on you.” “Maybe I had you all wrong and maybe you’ve got me a little wrong. Let’s start all over again.” —no means pleased with some of the references to his union, but he felt impelled to prove his fairness—to show me and the other labor organizations ... By late summer of 1939, we had the funds to publish a modest volume and the manuscript was finished. Washington approved it. We published as comprehensive a book as we could for the money we had. —the type already set, I was called into state headquarters of the various work projects. They flatly ordered me to kill the book. … a long-distance call from Washington awaiting me. They had just talked with the state officials. They agreed with the latter that the book should be killed.—what lay behind the ultimatum handed me—a very shabby kind of politics. A national election was impending. … to do nothing that might even remotely offend the conservatives. Labor could be kicked in the teeth, and it would still tag along with the administration. It had no place else to go. The conservatives, onthe other hand, must be appeased. —I refused to quit. My project funds were cut off. I remained at work unpaid, as did my executive staff, until the labor history was through the printers.”
“The War Boom, or, rather, the boom incident to the impending war, was just getting under way in San Diego. There was still a great deal of unemployment. Prices, following the oldest of economic laws, were racing far ahead of wages. —I started looking for a job. I could find nothing—no position that paid even reasonably well… felt dispirited, licked, and looked it. Appetiteless and unable to sleep, I had begun to drink great quantities of cheap wine. I found one just in time to keep us from starving. One of the San Diego aircraft factories had begun an extensive expansion program. — they needed a man to go around on his hands and knees, chipping up the spatterings of plaster and paint. I leaped at this “opportunity,” to use the personnel manager’s term. If I made good (his phrasing again) I would be promoted to a full-fledged janitor. —twenty five dollars a week. —I got a broad and original conception of the workings of a great factory. The snatches of conversation I overhead, the things I saw, began to intrigue me. I tried to resist, but the constant challenge to the imagination was too strong to be ignored. …I accosted the general manager. “I understand you’re having a lot of trouble with your parts records…I’d like to have the job of straightening them out.” “You wouldn’t be an expert accountant would you? Or a CPA?” “Well, no, but—” “You’re an engineer, then.” “No, I’m—” “But, of course, you read blueprints?” That night … “I hastened down to the public library. I drew out every book I could find on accounting and blue-print reading.” Next day. “Whoever installed your record system didn’t know what they were doing.” “It was installed by a very good firm of industrial engineers.” “It overlooks the human element; it would take a corps of high-paid experts to keep it going. Now what you need is something simple, foolproof, and I can…” —put in the parts-control department —a week at my regular salary. During that week, I was to study the system and recommend changes …I did better than that. —I invented and installed a new system. —the former involved and expensive system was permanently discarded. —In the seven-odd months —I received five pay increases. I quit at the end of that time.”
“—my wife and children returned to Nebraska for a visit, and I caught a bus for New York. I was confident that I could turn up some kind of writing or publishing job there. — a job would not get me the money I had to have as quickly as I had to have it. I thought and thought, turning a thousand wild schemes over in my mind. And the one I finally settled on was probably the wildest of them all. I would write and sell a novel. —I walked out of that office with a battered typewriter in one hand and a check in the other. I checked out of my hotel, rented a three-dollar-a-week room on Seventh Avenue and started to work. Working an average of twenty hours a day, I finished the book in ten days. — the manuscript was farmed out to another writer for reading and opinion. This young man was the scion of a wealthy Hollywood family, and the author of one novel. — showed promise “for a beginning writer” but that I obviously did not know enough about life to attempt a novel. I needed to “meet the stark realities of existence at first hand”— … I burst into laughter when I read that report. The publisher gave me a friendly wink. He was no more impressed with the young man’s opinion than I was. “I’ll pass the manuscript on to a couple of other writers. “Louis Bromfield and Richard Wright. I’m sure they’ll like it. —waiting— “It’s all right, fellow. We’re from Alcoholics Anonymous. We’re going to take care of you.” — to Bellevue Hospital where I was committed. —The food was good, the beds comfortable and immaculate. Surrounded by some pretty trying customers, the attendants remained accommodating, the doctors and nurses courteous and capable. —the fifth day I was able to be discharged. —Surely the publisher would be able to make his decision. — “Then it’ll still be quite a while before—” “What? Oh, no, we’ll pay for it right now. We’re definitely accepting it. Incidentally, when you get this one out of the way, we’ll be glad to—Yes?” — yellow Western Union envelope. “This came in yesterday, Mr. Thompson. I tried to reach you by phone, but—” “Bad news?” The publisher’s hushed voice. “My father,” I said. “He died two days ago.”
Pop now gone. Jim’s career officially on its way… Whatever it takes… probably should read Bad Boy too? His earlier years…
“ a sweltering August day in 1929. —Now Pop was in Texas and his money was there, too, sunk into one oilless well after another. As for me—me and Mom and my kid sister, Freddie.…. —It seemed I was stubborn, wilful, a consistent and deliberate flouter of convention. I seemed never to have used my very good mind for anything but involving myself in trouble. As a youth in my first long pants, I was an associate of chorus girls, grifters, gamblers, and other ne’er-do-wells. With equal ease, I could quote the Roman lyric poet Catullus, or the odds against making four the hard way. I was not yet sixteen when I became a night bellboy in a luxury hotel—earned big money there—and acquired still more by gambling… — At eighteen, I broke down with tuberculosis, acute alcoholism and complete nervous exhaustion. I bummed through west and far west Texas for three years, slowly getting my health back —returned to Fort Worth.” Next. “I had the alternative of paying up or getting my head beaten off… or, of course, leaving town. —a little less than a hundred dollars— I loaded Mom and Freddie into the car and headed north. Our destination was Nebraska… —The crankcase was filled with sawdust and tractor oil. It had been doctored thusly to conceal a flat crankshaft—the one incurable ailment of the Model-T Ford. It took us two days to get to Oklahoma City, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles. It also took almost seventy of our one hundred dollars. Here we sat, nominal beggars in a broken-down Ford…” Tuition money. —“The last man in the world to deceive is the man you hope to get money from. If he has it and you don’t, the odds are that he is at least as shrewd as you and probably a hell of a lot shrewder. Dr. Crawford refused my offer to give him a note for the money. When a man’s sole collateral is his word, why bother with his signature?”
Help where you find it. “The poor girl was undoubtedly a moron; I have seen very few prostitutes who were not. But as she began dropping in on me daily and we got to know each other better, I acquired a high regard for her intelligence in at least one respect. Moron or no, Trixie was a damned good literary critic.” But her pimp, “wondering if it might not be an excellent idea to leave town for a while. —Shorty —“It’s there… More than five thousand feet of high grade casing. And it’s free— —Shorty was a driller, and jigs a tool dresser—a full cable-rig crew. They needed a third man—to help with the rigging up, and serve as boilerman and roust-about. —Early the next morning we a caught a freight south.” At the site… “Well, I can’t explain it, how we got the necessary help. All I can do is tell you about it. — men would come plodding through the tangles of underbrush and blackjack. Negro and white, sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Poor ragged devils, even poorer than ourselves if that were possible, bonily emaciated with the ravages of hookworm and malaria. Exactly the right number came to get the job done—no more, no less. They expected no pay and they seemed surprised and embarrassed by our thanks. — It was an eerie phenomenon, one that I have observed nowhere else but in the “lost country” of the Deep South. — They knew what we were going to do before we did! — Unlike Shortly and Jiggs, I could not shrug off this weird state of affairs as “just one of them things.” There is a peculiar twist of my mind which impels me to fly into every puzzle as though dear life depended on it. I never got a straight explanation of the riddle, I did achieve some understanding of it. The “how” I never learned. But the “why-for,” to use the dialect of the section became clear. — “Just said I was goin’ to he’p him.” “How do you people know things like that?” I asked. And he shook his head awkwardly: he didn’t know; he couldn’t say; he didn’t like to talk about it. “If you knew this cave-in was coming, why didn’t you warn Lije? Maybe he could have stopped it.” “Caint,” — “Suthin’s what’s goin’ to be, it is.” “I caint—I don’t rightly know how to—to—” “Put it in your own words. How do you folks know when somebody needs help?” — “Got to,” he said, bluntly. That was the end of his explanation. It was enough.”
The Task. “If it blew up, I would be the one to be blasted into the next county. —it was agonizing to think of going back to Oklahoma City empty-handed. But I naturally preferred returning empty-handed to not going back at all. “All right,” I said. “I think I’m making a hell of a mistake but—all right.” —I turned the blower on full blast, opened the water-injector valve to its widest. And ran. We had lost our head of steam. And the pipe had not moved an inch. Maybe, by all the laws of physics, the pipe should move, but apparently it was not law-abiding pipe. — The boiler began to quiver and shimmy, but I kept on. And at last I had what Shorty wanted. The grates were clean, the firebox full, the stoker loaded. All at the same time. There was as much steam as could be got, and the steam would hold. Every tiny cell and molecule of the equipment had been stretched and squeezed to its limits. There was no longer any give in them, no room for friction nor clashing, and hence it was silent. The only noise was the hissing of steam. Around me the earth began to tremble, I had heard about this all my life and now I was seeing it; the legendary meeting of the irresistible force and the immovable object. “Sure, it’s moving! It’s stretching!” “Stretch? Why, goddammit, it couldn’t—Yeeow!” yelled Shorty. And he led the race for the bushes. For, fantastic as it seemed, the pipe was stretching. And suddenly it snapped. It soared up out of the hole, some forty feet of “indestructible” twenty-four inch casing. It came down on the rig, splintering braces and crossbraces, leaving the derrick a wobbling ruin. It landed thunderously amidst the machinery… and, for all practical purposes, that machinery ceased to be. There was nothing to salvage. The rig was utterly and completely beyond repair. — Case-hardened wretches that we were, we were that near to weeping. Our farmer friend took the disappointment much more philosophically. “Didn’t lose nothin’,” he pointed out, as he fed us a farewell banquet of jackrabbit stew. “Didn’t have nothin’ to begin with.”
“I received several small manuscript checks in a row that summer, and Mom fell heir to a modest sum. She and Freddie came down to Oklahoma City, bringing my wife and baby with them, and we continued on together to Fort Worth, Texas. Pop had got a job of sorts there. I got one, hotel doorman. It was easily the lousiest job I have ever had. I worked a seven-day, eighty-four-hour week. My salary was fourteen dollars per, less certain arbitrary deductions by my employer… it was a starvation wage… I could go to eat or to the toilet if I chose to. But if the motoring guest checked out during my absence, his garage charges were on me. After paying one gentlemen’s nine-dollar bill out of my twelve-dollar wage, I chose to stick to my post. —This is one period of my life I don’t like to talk about. A few pennies at a time, I saved enough money to rent a typewriter and buy some fancy letterheads. I circulated the quality business magazines, and got a number of assignments. From business writing, I gradually moved into the relatively high-paying field of fact-detective stories. — I had for a long time inclined to a youthful bemusement with the genus Texan, and as a result I failed to achieve the high Texas standards of character and intelligence. —Fact-detective stories cannot be sold without pictures, and I had found it convenient to become acquainted with many newspaper photographers. They were invariably firstclass workmen. They could get stuff from their morgues that was ordinarily unobtainable, and they didn’t charge me anything. — In the spring of 1936, I heard of a chief of police who was making a big name for himself in a small Oklahoma city. —his exploits were so many and so well handled as to comprise the stuff for a long serial. I moved my family to Oklahoma City (there would be much research to do in the capital’s appeals court files). I did my writing there, traveling back and forth to the police chief’s town for the numerous interviews we had to hold. —was almost three months getting it done and my slender financial resources were exhausted. I was anything but worried, however. I had forty thousand words of the best damned detective story I had ever written. —And it couldn’t come at a better time. My wife and I could have a real home for the second baby we were expecting. —For throughout its forty thousand words, it held the chief as a model of public officialdom—a man unflinchingly honest, unswerving in his devotion to duty. — He had lived a lie for years, and the lie had at last caught up with him. I came to a trash receptacle, tossed the thick, carefully prepared manuscript inside. I boarded a bus for Oklahoma City. A police chief—and he had been head of an interstate auto theft ring! A police chief—and now he was locked up in his own jail!” Reluctantly, and without any real hope of landing a job, I applied at the writers’ project office. I was hired immediately. —Eighteen months later I was appointed director—“boss of the shebang.” And having some kind of steady income, however small, meant a great deal to my wife. I stayed on the job, writing detective stories in my off-weeks. Little by little, we acquired a degree of solvency.”
Field Research. “I can’t recall the name of the stuff now. But it was made, I learned later, from a base of corn and saliva. The squaws chewed corn to a pulp and spit it into the pot. When they had a sufficient quantity of this mash, they filled the pot with water, added sugar and allowed it to ferment. That was all there was to it, except for an occasional skimming. In a few weeks the stuff had a kick like an army mule. —somehow or another we were divested of our clothes ... breechclouts, and someone—or several someones—decorated us from head to foot with bright clay paint. — There was a wild war whoop; the squaws began a rhythmic stamping and clapping and the dance was on. Indian at the head of our line danced down the aisle and made a whirling leap over the flames…everyone had performed but Tom and me. We decided to do a duet. Every time we revolved in the dance one of us socked or kicked the other, our leap arrived we were off-balance and groggy. We leaped, anyway, whirling and whooping. Tom’s flailing feet booted me in the back. we soared up and above the fire. We hung poised over it for a moment; then, our forward momentum lost, we dropped smack down into the fire. —The Return Trip. —car had slid onto the rain-caved shoulder — lying on its top in the bottom of the ditch, and three hundred pounds of squaw were lying on top of me. She remained inert, snoring peacefully, and I remained pinned down. — “Send out a tow car! And hurry! I can’t take much of this!” — around dawn when I heard the creak of harness and wagon wheels… a farmer, on his way to town with a wagonload of corn. He stared in at me and the squaw, eyes widening incredulously. — helpless with merriment… He unhitched his mules and hitched them onto my car. —easily upright, and back onto the road. The farmer refused payment for his help. Gasping, tears of amusement streaming down his face… “Ain’t—haw, haw, haw!—ain’t laughed like that since I don’t know when. How in the heck did you get in such a dagnabbed fix?” “Never mind.” …
“In the fall of 1938, I received a visit from two old-timers in the Oklahoma labor movement. They were pioneers in the state, and men of some substance. They wanted the writers’ project to do a history of labor in the state. I was personally sympathetic to their plan. But it was inadvisable on a great many counts. Labor was sensitive about its mistakes. It would consider unfriendly a book that was merely accurate and complete. —inter-union quarrels—long-standing jurisdictional disputes, for example. I could never get the different labor leaders together without the danger of a knock-down, drag-out brawl. Any unfavorable mention of a union was invariably “a goddamned lie” —I was charged with everything from stupidity to personal prejudice to taking pay from the National Association of Manufacturers.” Big Union head. “You’re good at dishing it out, and when it comes to taking a little you start crying. Everyone’s picking on you.” “Maybe I had you all wrong and maybe you’ve got me a little wrong. Let’s start all over again.” —no means pleased with some of the references to his union, but he felt impelled to prove his fairness—to show me and the other labor organizations ... By late summer of 1939, we had the funds to publish a modest volume and the manuscript was finished. Washington approved it. We published as comprehensive a book as we could for the money we had. —the type already set, I was called into state headquarters of the various work projects. They flatly ordered me to kill the book. … a long-distance call from Washington awaiting me. They had just talked with the state officials. They agreed with the latter that the book should be killed.—what lay behind the ultimatum handed me—a very shabby kind of politics. A national election was impending. … to do nothing that might even remotely offend the conservatives. Labor could be kicked in the teeth, and it would still tag along with the administration. It had no place else to go. The conservatives, onthe other hand, must be appeased. —I refused to quit. My project funds were cut off. I remained at work unpaid, as did my executive staff, until the labor history was through the printers.”
“The War Boom, or, rather, the boom incident to the impending war, was just getting under way in San Diego. There was still a great deal of unemployment. Prices, following the oldest of economic laws, were racing far ahead of wages. —I started looking for a job. I could find nothing—no position that paid even reasonably well… felt dispirited, licked, and looked it. Appetiteless and unable to sleep, I had begun to drink great quantities of cheap wine. I found one just in time to keep us from starving. One of the San Diego aircraft factories had begun an extensive expansion program. — they needed a man to go around on his hands and knees, chipping up the spatterings of plaster and paint. I leaped at this “opportunity,” to use the personnel manager’s term. If I made good (his phrasing again) I would be promoted to a full-fledged janitor. —twenty five dollars a week. —I got a broad and original conception of the workings of a great factory. The snatches of conversation I overhead, the things I saw, began to intrigue me. I tried to resist, but the constant challenge to the imagination was too strong to be ignored. …I accosted the general manager. “I understand you’re having a lot of trouble with your parts records…I’d like to have the job of straightening them out.” “You wouldn’t be an expert accountant would you? Or a CPA?” “Well, no, but—” “You’re an engineer, then.” “No, I’m—” “But, of course, you read blueprints?” That night … “I hastened down to the public library. I drew out every book I could find on accounting and blue-print reading.” Next day. “Whoever installed your record system didn’t know what they were doing.” “It was installed by a very good firm of industrial engineers.” “It overlooks the human element; it would take a corps of high-paid experts to keep it going. Now what you need is something simple, foolproof, and I can…” —put in the parts-control department —a week at my regular salary. During that week, I was to study the system and recommend changes …I did better than that. —I invented and installed a new system. —the former involved and expensive system was permanently discarded. —In the seven-odd months —I received five pay increases. I quit at the end of that time.”
“—my wife and children returned to Nebraska for a visit, and I caught a bus for New York. I was confident that I could turn up some kind of writing or publishing job there. — a job would not get me the money I had to have as quickly as I had to have it. I thought and thought, turning a thousand wild schemes over in my mind. And the one I finally settled on was probably the wildest of them all. I would write and sell a novel. —I walked out of that office with a battered typewriter in one hand and a check in the other. I checked out of my hotel, rented a three-dollar-a-week room on Seventh Avenue and started to work. Working an average of twenty hours a day, I finished the book in ten days. — the manuscript was farmed out to another writer for reading and opinion. This young man was the scion of a wealthy Hollywood family, and the author of one novel. — showed promise “for a beginning writer” but that I obviously did not know enough about life to attempt a novel. I needed to “meet the stark realities of existence at first hand”— … I burst into laughter when I read that report. The publisher gave me a friendly wink. He was no more impressed with the young man’s opinion than I was. “I’ll pass the manuscript on to a couple of other writers. “Louis Bromfield and Richard Wright. I’m sure they’ll like it. —waiting— “It’s all right, fellow. We’re from Alcoholics Anonymous. We’re going to take care of you.” — to Bellevue Hospital where I was committed. —The food was good, the beds comfortable and immaculate. Surrounded by some pretty trying customers, the attendants remained accommodating, the doctors and nurses courteous and capable. —the fifth day I was able to be discharged. —Surely the publisher would be able to make his decision. — “Then it’ll still be quite a while before—” “What? Oh, no, we’ll pay for it right now. We’re definitely accepting it. Incidentally, when you get this one out of the way, we’ll be glad to—Yes?” — yellow Western Union envelope. “This came in yesterday, Mr. Thompson. I tried to reach you by phone, but—” “Bad news?” The publisher’s hushed voice. “My father,” I said. “He died two days ago.”
Pop now gone. Jim’s career officially on its way… Whatever it takes… probably should read Bad Boy too? His earlier years…
October 14, 2017
This memoir by Jim Thompson, written in the 1950s, is about his struggles to survive during the Great Depression. Thompson wrote many crime thrillers in his later career, but his life's experiences are just as interesting as anything he wrote in fiction. He wrote about nearly starving during the Great Depression and riding the rails to try to find a job. It helped me to realize what life was like at that time. One thing I found a little weird was how little time devoted to his wife and family. After detailing all his jobs, he casually mentions that he got married and his wife was pregnant – in about three sentences. It made me wonder about how he felt for his wife and why she took up such a small part in the book.
November 27, 2018
A decent memoir of young Mr. Thompson's experiences during the great depression. Kind of read like Bukowski, at times, but less poetic and more blunt. A decent read, and a very interesting look into the background of one of the very best Noir writers. Kind of a perfect bathroom book, you can pick it up, read a few pages and put it down for awhile and not feel like you missed anything.
December 28, 2023
This reminded me of a gritty southern version of Bukowski's semi-autobiographical works like Post Office.
February 19, 2016
A series of jobs fall through in a comic manner but things take a bleak turn when Jim Thompson has to work as door-to-door salesman/debt collector just as the depression takes hold of America. He ends up leaving his pregnant wife to ride the rails and live as a hobo, looking for a steady job that might not exist. A short stint of digging ditches as a relief worker might be bleakest moment I've encountered in Thompson's writing. He shows that he's familiar with the desperation his characters frequently experience.
A chance encounter with his old con man friend has them parting ways, but eventually Thompson gets back on his feet and ends up heading the Oklahoma Federal Writers Project, part of the New Deal. His anecdotes in this part of the book aren't great, except for the one where he's almost murdered for his car on a California highway.
The book ends just as he's establishing himself as a novelist, which is a shame as I'd've liked to read more about that part of his life.
Jim Thompson trying to tender his resignation from the debt collection business after a mark drops a hog on him:
Jim Thompson on life among the hoboes:
There's also a great bit where he gets into a fight with a pimp at a blind pig.
A chance encounter with his old con man friend has them parting ways, but eventually Thompson gets back on his feet and ends up heading the Oklahoma Federal Writers Project, part of the New Deal. His anecdotes in this part of the book aren't great, except for the one where he's almost murdered for his car on a California highway.
The book ends just as he's establishing himself as a novelist, which is a shame as I'd've liked to read more about that part of his life.
Jim Thompson trying to tender his resignation from the debt collection business after a mark drops a hog on him:
Jim Thompson on life among the hoboes:
There's also a great bit where he gets into a fight with a pimp at a blind pig.
December 12, 2019
Although not as substantial as I was expecting (at 177 pages it was rather short), this was nonetheless an enjoyable read about surviving the Great Depression in Oklahoma. However, this is not a Grapes of Wrath story of "Okies," fleeing to California. Thompson led a life of privilege (his dad being a wealthy self-made oil man who went bust). The stories showcase the author behaving rather badly (he was usually led astray by his more unscrupulous cohorts in get rich quick swindles).
Eventually, Thompson does reach his goal of becoming a professional writer in a desperate "Hail Mary" trip to New York using the last of his savings, by offering to write a novel in two weeks for any publisher willing to give him an advance big enough to allow him to stay in a hotel for that long. Amazingly, someone gave him the money and he finished the novel.
Although I had never really heard of the author (he wrote a lot of detective fiction in the 1950s), I learned that he is perhaps best known for The Grifters and co-writing the screenplay for Paths of Glory.
Eventually, Thompson does reach his goal of becoming a professional writer in a desperate "Hail Mary" trip to New York using the last of his savings, by offering to write a novel in two weeks for any publisher willing to give him an advance big enough to allow him to stay in a hotel for that long. Amazingly, someone gave him the money and he finished the novel.
Although I had never really heard of the author (he wrote a lot of detective fiction in the 1950s), I learned that he is perhaps best known for The Grifters and co-writing the screenplay for Paths of Glory.
December 14, 2025
The second book of Thompson's biographical anecdotes is much like the first, an erratic tour of life across a variety of backgrounds in the 1930s. Like BAD BOY, it contains the "real" accounts of events that appear as fiction in the author's novels. Thoroughly entertaining and grimly funny, they lack the crazed plots that give the novels their touch of genius.
July 4, 2016
Second only to The Killer Inside Me in Thompson's works. Its not a mystery, but a true life (a true hard life thriller). The details of this book keep popping up in my mind, and occasionally popping up in other author's books. This is good stuff. Gritty stuff, told smoothly.
July 10, 2024
7.8/10
I picked up this book from a used bookstore last year not knowing it was Thompson's autobiography. So there it sat on my bookshelf for over a year due to it not being a work of fiction. After cracking it open finally and reading the first chapter I regretted not reading it sooner.
Thompson was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma in 1906. This biography opens in Oklahoma City in 1929. Thompson is down on his luck, and when I say down on his luck I really mean it.
From one job to the other all the while writing and often fighting with the bottle, Thompson traversed Oklahoma, Texas, and Nebraska in his younger days. Changing jobs from salesman to debt collector, to hunting for scrap metal, he always worked an honest day's work, and when the opportunity came to swindle other folks he turned it down.
A common them in this biography is the disappointment that Thompson had to face and endure. His writings would be rejected, his months of hard work to secure a small fortune would bust, and his financial hardship would be so bad at times he would have to leave his wife and kids in order to try and find work. It makes you really think about it when you feel like complaining over the small things.
Sometimes you hear a story or listen to a song that makes riding the rails in a boxcar sound not that bad. Well, Thompson corrects that. Getting chased off by the rail depot bulls, or almost freezing to death with do that to you.
Being a 35-year-old man who is having to scrape paint off the floor of an airplane factory is what Jim Thompson had to do to survive and put food on the table. It wasn't below him. But, when he got the chance to prove that he could do more he jumped on the opportunity and excelled.
Thompson ends his story in 1941 after he finally gets a deal for his novel. Something that will not only satisfy him as a writer but will also provide him with money for him and his family.
I picked up this book from a used bookstore last year not knowing it was Thompson's autobiography. So there it sat on my bookshelf for over a year due to it not being a work of fiction. After cracking it open finally and reading the first chapter I regretted not reading it sooner.
Thompson was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma in 1906. This biography opens in Oklahoma City in 1929. Thompson is down on his luck, and when I say down on his luck I really mean it.
From one job to the other all the while writing and often fighting with the bottle, Thompson traversed Oklahoma, Texas, and Nebraska in his younger days. Changing jobs from salesman to debt collector, to hunting for scrap metal, he always worked an honest day's work, and when the opportunity came to swindle other folks he turned it down.
A common them in this biography is the disappointment that Thompson had to face and endure. His writings would be rejected, his months of hard work to secure a small fortune would bust, and his financial hardship would be so bad at times he would have to leave his wife and kids in order to try and find work. It makes you really think about it when you feel like complaining over the small things.
Sometimes you hear a story or listen to a song that makes riding the rails in a boxcar sound not that bad. Well, Thompson corrects that. Getting chased off by the rail depot bulls, or almost freezing to death with do that to you.
Being a 35-year-old man who is having to scrape paint off the floor of an airplane factory is what Jim Thompson had to do to survive and put food on the table. It wasn't below him. But, when he got the chance to prove that he could do more he jumped on the opportunity and excelled.
Thompson ends his story in 1941 after he finally gets a deal for his novel. Something that will not only satisfy him as a writer but will also provide him with money for him and his family.
September 14, 2025
ROUGHNECK is the adult follow-up to Jim Thompson’s autobiographical return to his youth BAD BOY. BAD BOY was a breezy run through a truly wild childhood. Every page seemed an outline for a future story. The interesting parts of ROUGHNECK, however, are fewer and further apart. The ability to break down human motives and characteristics are on full display--teasing the malicious joy of his novels. Unfortunately, he stops his narrative just at the point where he breaks through as a writer. Maybe that was saved for a later book—but that was the main reason I read this one. Even the writing before that point was given short shrift. Was hoping to read about some of the ebbs and flows of his early attempts at writing—but it probably does say a lot that he didn’t focus on it. Writing was just another side hustle until it wasn’t. If this is what he wanted to show, I think he was fooling himself a bit. But we can’t know based on the text.
May 2, 2019
I purchased about 12 Thompson paperbacks years ago, including this one. I never got around to reading it because it was the only one that was not fiction. After recently seeing bonus material about Thompson on the DVD for his film "The Killers", I decided to give it a shot. All in all, I'd recommend spending your time reading one of his crime novels instead of this. It's not a bad book, it's just uneven and ends very abruptly. The focal point is Thompson's destitute and often dangerous adventures and journeys across America during and after the Depression. Some of the chapters are very entertaining and humorous, but I found the longest chapter, about working on an oil derrick, to be boring.
September 26, 2018
This older book is relevant now. The depression of the 1930's followed a rise in income inequality, and decreased incomes of the working class to levels that failed to maintain families. (see chart)
In Roughneck, Thompson travels through the Midwest working the equivalent of today's gig economy and temp jobs, with low pay and no security or benefits. Thompson benefits from a willingness to work and intelligence, and suffers from alcoholism and criminal tendencies.
This autobiography reads as a series of pulp fiction adventures, each attempt to get some money ending badly. It's tragic, it's funny, it's enjoyable.
In Roughneck, Thompson travels through the Midwest working the equivalent of today's gig economy and temp jobs, with low pay and no security or benefits. Thompson benefits from a willingness to work and intelligence, and suffers from alcoholism and criminal tendencies.
This autobiography reads as a series of pulp fiction adventures, each attempt to get some money ending badly. It's tragic, it's funny, it's enjoyable.
May 23, 2020
This is the autobiographical book of part of Jim Thompson's life. I do enjoy reading his works, despite the horrible sexism. I've read quite a few. He had a really hard time making a go of it as a writer, and his books never did so well as after he died. He drank like a fish--seriously, I'm surprised he lasted till 71. He roamed from all over the country trying to make enough to keep his family together: mom, sister, and Pop. There are some seriously hilarious parts to this. The characters he lived around and worked with are something else. You have to read it to believe it.
October 21, 2025
I find it hard to rate this book. It blends something between an autobiography and a depression era novel, and at times it seems to narrate events that are hard to comprehend. I suppose the depression was significantly bad for most people, but not having lived through it one has no measure of its severity. I would have liked a little more detail on this, but I suppose an author has to judge how much of his narration would be interesting to his audience.
May 6, 2020
Su mejor libro, de los que he leido, junto al sinpar 1280 Almas
May 27, 2022
Autobiography, probably interesting only to fans of the author.
December 27, 2022
An engaging glimpse into the days of a writer looking to both make ends meet and launch a writing career during the Great Depression.
October 16, 2023
I really enjoy Jim Thompson books but having read this book I love the man. A wonderfully written account of a terrible time in history for a working man, but told with wonderful optimism.
May 28, 2024
Fun yarns about Thompson’s odd jobs before he could make a living as a writer. Though not much light is shed on his craft, it seems living a colorful life informed his writing quite a bit.
December 10, 2024
A direct continuation of 'Bad Boy', chronicling the next twenty years of Thompson's singular experiences in the world.
January 16, 2025
Autobiography, some good adventures.
April 2, 2025
Sequel to "Bad Boy." Not quite as good, though.
May 11, 2025
Echoes of John Fante?
January 17, 2021
Thompson is such a shit-show/badass.
October 4, 2020
I don't really like Jim Thompson's autobiographies, but I prefer Bad Boy by a half-pint.
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