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Pottsville
Nick Corey jest szeryfem miasteczka Pottsville na południu Ameryki. Nie garnie się jednak do pracy – przymyka oko na lokalne niesnaski, stroni od konfrontacji, a czas najbardziej lubi spędzać na spaniu, jedzeniu i romansowaniu. Nie przepada natomiast za własną żoną ani szwagrem, których łączy wyjątkowo bliska więź. Ma też problem z dwójką alfonsów, którzy jeszcze bardziej niszczą jego już i tak nadszarpniętą reputację. W związku ze zbliżającymi się wyborami na nowego szeryfa Nick musi szybko i skutecznie zapobiec utracie posady.
Pottsville to klasyka literatury kryminalnej i brawurowa komedia pomyłek w klimacie Dzikiego Zachodu, doprawiona absurdalnym humorem godnym najlepszych filmów Yorgosa Lanthimosa.
Thompson opowiada barwną historię miasteczka liczącego zaledwie tysiąc dwustu osiemdziesięciu mieszkańców, soczystą historię pełną manipulacji, zaskakujących zwrotów akcji i spisków. Na celownik bierze też demony amerykańskiego życia – biedę, rasizm, uprzywilejowane i hipokryzję społeczną – pokazując, że istota zła tkwi w jego powszedniości.
Pottsville to klasyka literatury kryminalnej i brawurowa komedia pomyłek w klimacie Dzikiego Zachodu, doprawiona absurdalnym humorem godnym najlepszych filmów Yorgosa Lanthimosa.
Thompson opowiada barwną historię miasteczka liczącego zaledwie tysiąc dwustu osiemdziesięciu mieszkańców, soczystą historię pełną manipulacji, zaskakujących zwrotów akcji i spisków. Na celownik bierze też demony amerykańskiego życia – biedę, rasizm, uprzywilejowane i hipokryzję społeczną – pokazując, że istota zła tkwi w jego powszedniości.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1964
411 people are currently reading
12655 people want to read
About the author
Jim Thompson
160 books1,645 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 1,202 reviews
April 21, 2025
Some men are real thinkers…
Some men have really solid opinions…
The story is a pure grotesque… Every word of it.
Nick Corey is an unprincipled, corrupted on all sides sheriff… But he has a purpose… With the help of his low cunning, lying and scheming, meanly using others as cat’s paws he keeps approaching his goal…
He who wants to outwit everybody ends up outsmarting himself.
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. You better come to a decision, Nick Corey, or you’re gonna wish you had.”
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.
Some men have really solid opinions…
“Because I can hardly stand the sight of you, that’s why! Because you’re stupid!”
“Well,” I said. “I ain’t sure I can agree with you, Myra. I mean, I ain’t saying you’re wrong but I ain’t saying you’re right, either. Anyways, even if I am stupid, you can’t hardly fault me for it. They’s lots of stupid people in the world.”
The story is a pure grotesque… Every word of it.
Nick Corey is an unprincipled, corrupted on all sides sheriff… But he has a purpose… With the help of his low cunning, lying and scheming, meanly using others as cat’s paws he keeps approaching his goal…
I thought, well, that was at least one nail out of my cross, and maybe, if I kept on being upright and God-fearin’ and never hurting no one unless it was for their good or mine, which was pretty much the same thing, why then maybe all my other problems would get straightened out as easy as this one had.
He who wants to outwit everybody ends up outsmarting himself.
August 31, 2024
Captivating!
The most captivating book I’ve read this year. Humorous from page to page. Entertaining from word to word.
Not surprisingly, I assumed that l would find this book utterly fascinating, satisfying, scrumptious!
Original and engaging. Need many more adjectives to describe it.
Who is this man? Who is the Sherrif of old Pottsville? He’s not the fool that he appears to be.
Don’t underestimate him. He’s ten steps ahead of everyone. I wish I knew how this story ended.
I have a good idea about it. Maybe my guess is wrong, but I doubt it.
What will anyone do to stay in power? Even if in a little pond like Pottsville?
Just pick up the book and see for yourself. The most heavenly book you will ever read.
I’ve got to go now. Gotta give this book its five stars.
Five stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The most captivating book I’ve read this year. Humorous from page to page. Entertaining from word to word.
Not surprisingly, I assumed that l would find this book utterly fascinating, satisfying, scrumptious!
Original and engaging. Need many more adjectives to describe it.
Who is this man? Who is the Sherrif of old Pottsville? He’s not the fool that he appears to be.
Don’t underestimate him. He’s ten steps ahead of everyone. I wish I knew how this story ended.
I have a good idea about it. Maybe my guess is wrong, but I doubt it.
What will anyone do to stay in power? Even if in a little pond like Pottsville?
Just pick up the book and see for yourself. The most heavenly book you will ever read.
I’ve got to go now. Gotta give this book its five stars.
Five stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
September 23, 2025
COLPO DI SPUGNA
Philippe Noiret e Isabelle Huppert.
È stato il mio primo incontro con Jim Thompson, e forse quello che mi ha colpito di più, grazie anche al magnifico adattamento cinematografico di Bertrand Tavernier, candidato all’Oscar come miglior film straniero, che sposta tutta l’azione dal Texas subito prima della partecipazione americana alla Grande Guerra (1917) agli anni Trenta, e nell’Africa Occidentale coloniale francese: il film francese si chiama Coup de torchon, è del 1981, e in Italia il libro è uscito sia col titolo originale che come Colpo di spugna.
La moglie bisbetica e rompicoglioni Stéphane Audran con l’idiota del fratello-cognato Eddy Mitchell.
Nello stesso anno sull’onda dell’entusiasmo per questo primo assaggio ho letto altri romanzi di Thompson, insieme a questo i suoi più celebri: The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters, The Getaway.
Ma Pop. 1280 resta il primo e credo il mio preferito.
Pop abbrevia Population, la scritta che si legge sui cartelli di benvenuto di molte cittadine, anche italiane: e quindi, si vuole indicare che in quel posto abitano 1280 anime.
A parlare e raccontare è lo stesso protagonista Nick Corey, sceriffo della Contea di Potts in Texas, luogo che conta per l’appunto 1280 anime all’inizio del racconto. Man mano che scorrono le pagine si capisce che l’indicazione del cartello andrebbe corretta, sbaglia per eccesso: le anime che abitano a Potts sono meno di 1280 perché diverse vengono uccise.
Il film è del 1981, diretto e sceneggiato da Bertrand Tavernier.
Come uso americano, anche lo sceriffo è carica elettiva, e quindi prevede elezioni, e quindi prevede campagna elettorale. E anche se non li prevede, sicuramente include tutti i magheggi tipici del caso. Tanto più se a correre per la carica è lo stesso sceriffo in carica, il simpatico e autentico figlio di puttana Nick.
Nick ha una moglie e un paio di amanti. Non ama granché lavorare, lascia correre, chiude un occhio ogni volta che può: e se si tratta di gente che ha soldi e potere, di occhi ne chiude due, e chiude anche le orecchie e si cuce la bocca.
Data l’epoca, dato il luogo, gli afroamericani, all’epoca ovviamente chiamati negri, fanno le spese per tutti.
S’insegna a sparare, s’impara a sparare perché ci sarà molto da sparare e uccidere.
Nick è simpatico e all’inizio gabba il lettore, gli fa credere d’essere un burlone, ci fa ridere. Poi, con il procedere della lettura, viene sempre più fuori che si tratta di uno psicopatico, diversamente morale. E la parte in cui quello che bolliva in pentola viene fuori del tutto, il momento in la follia di Nick Corey fin qui latente si trasforma in lucida efferata violenza sono uno shock, un pugno allo stomaco che toglie il fiato.
Tra loschi individui ci si intende sempre: Philippe Noiret con Jean-Pierre Marielle e Guy Marchand.
Poi, con il procedere dei romanzi, ho capito che si tratta del marchio di fabbrica di Jim Thompson: i suoi protagonisti sono tutti bastardi immorali, spietati assassini a piede libero, che però sanno far ridere.
Per Thompson, schedato nelle liste nere del senatore MacCarthy, di spiccate simpatie socialiste, se non del tutto comuniste, i suoi personaggi erano tipici rappresentanti dell’America capitalista, parti dell’affarismo selvaggio, frutti della corsa al denaro.
I reckon that's the bad part of whiskey, you know? - the bad part about a loto of things. Not the indulging of 'em, but the not being able to indulge. The afterwards, when the ol' familiar taste of piss is back in your mouth, and you want to spit it out at everyone. And you think, god-dang, why for did I want to be nice to that fella? And I bet he thought I was a good-danged fool.
Philippe Noiret e Isabelle Huppert.
È stato il mio primo incontro con Jim Thompson, e forse quello che mi ha colpito di più, grazie anche al magnifico adattamento cinematografico di Bertrand Tavernier, candidato all’Oscar come miglior film straniero, che sposta tutta l’azione dal Texas subito prima della partecipazione americana alla Grande Guerra (1917) agli anni Trenta, e nell’Africa Occidentale coloniale francese: il film francese si chiama Coup de torchon, è del 1981, e in Italia il libro è uscito sia col titolo originale che come Colpo di spugna.
La moglie bisbetica e rompicoglioni Stéphane Audran con l’idiota del fratello-cognato Eddy Mitchell.
Nello stesso anno sull’onda dell’entusiasmo per questo primo assaggio ho letto altri romanzi di Thompson, insieme a questo i suoi più celebri: The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters, The Getaway.
Ma Pop. 1280 resta il primo e credo il mio preferito.
Pop abbrevia Population, la scritta che si legge sui cartelli di benvenuto di molte cittadine, anche italiane: e quindi, si vuole indicare che in quel posto abitano 1280 anime.
A parlare e raccontare è lo stesso protagonista Nick Corey, sceriffo della Contea di Potts in Texas, luogo che conta per l’appunto 1280 anime all’inizio del racconto. Man mano che scorrono le pagine si capisce che l’indicazione del cartello andrebbe corretta, sbaglia per eccesso: le anime che abitano a Potts sono meno di 1280 perché diverse vengono uccise.
Il film è del 1981, diretto e sceneggiato da Bertrand Tavernier.
Come uso americano, anche lo sceriffo è carica elettiva, e quindi prevede elezioni, e quindi prevede campagna elettorale. E anche se non li prevede, sicuramente include tutti i magheggi tipici del caso. Tanto più se a correre per la carica è lo stesso sceriffo in carica, il simpatico e autentico figlio di puttana Nick.
Nick ha una moglie e un paio di amanti. Non ama granché lavorare, lascia correre, chiude un occhio ogni volta che può: e se si tratta di gente che ha soldi e potere, di occhi ne chiude due, e chiude anche le orecchie e si cuce la bocca.
Data l’epoca, dato il luogo, gli afroamericani, all’epoca ovviamente chiamati negri, fanno le spese per tutti.
S’insegna a sparare, s’impara a sparare perché ci sarà molto da sparare e uccidere.
Nick è simpatico e all’inizio gabba il lettore, gli fa credere d’essere un burlone, ci fa ridere. Poi, con il procedere della lettura, viene sempre più fuori che si tratta di uno psicopatico, diversamente morale. E la parte in cui quello che bolliva in pentola viene fuori del tutto, il momento in la follia di Nick Corey fin qui latente si trasforma in lucida efferata violenza sono uno shock, un pugno allo stomaco che toglie il fiato.
Tra loschi individui ci si intende sempre: Philippe Noiret con Jean-Pierre Marielle e Guy Marchand.
Poi, con il procedere dei romanzi, ho capito che si tratta del marchio di fabbrica di Jim Thompson: i suoi protagonisti sono tutti bastardi immorali, spietati assassini a piede libero, che però sanno far ridere.
Per Thompson, schedato nelle liste nere del senatore MacCarthy, di spiccate simpatie socialiste, se non del tutto comuniste, i suoi personaggi erano tipici rappresentanti dell’America capitalista, parti dell’affarismo selvaggio, frutti della corsa al denaro.
I reckon that's the bad part of whiskey, you know? - the bad part about a loto of things. Not the indulging of 'em, but the not being able to indulge. The afterwards, when the ol' familiar taste of piss is back in your mouth, and you want to spit it out at everyone. And you think, god-dang, why for did I want to be nice to that fella? And I bet he thought I was a good-danged fool.
June 6, 2012
hee haw! a rambunctious, heartwarming delight! loveable and sweet-tempered Nick Corey, Sheriff of Potts County, has more problems than you can shake a stick at. poor guy! all he wants to do is kick back and hold on to his dippity-doo-da job not-arresting people. that's not too much to ask, is it? but things are always getting him down. pimps, bitches, and in-laws - the works! what's an amiable, peace-loving soul to do? well, happily, Nick's also a Medici-level manipulator, stone-cold killer, and demented psychopath. whew, close call! Inner Maniac saves the day! or does he?
what i enjoyed most about this grotesque and mordant death-farce was how simultaneously likeable and unlikeable Thompson made Nick. he IS lazy. and petty. and a maniac. but he's so much smarter than anyone else around him and he does such a good job at fooling everyone into thinking he's a useless lackwit that he becomes bizarrely appealing. well, shucks... since Nick is a hideous representation of the cold-blooded reptile mind that exists within us all (including each of the characters in this novel), i suppose i am simply responding to him on a subhuman level, reptile brain to reptile brain. right? or not. who knows, let's just say i was led like a lamb right into uh oh, i'm rooting for the bad guy land.
this is a classic. bleak and misanthropic and evilly hilarious. Jim Thompson hates humans. Humans Off Earth Now!
what i enjoyed most about this grotesque and mordant death-farce was how simultaneously likeable and unlikeable Thompson made Nick. he IS lazy. and petty. and a maniac. but he's so much smarter than anyone else around him and he does such a good job at fooling everyone into thinking he's a useless lackwit that he becomes bizarrely appealing. well, shucks... since Nick is a hideous representation of the cold-blooded reptile mind that exists within us all (including each of the characters in this novel), i suppose i am simply responding to him on a subhuman level, reptile brain to reptile brain. right? or not. who knows, let's just say i was led like a lamb right into uh oh, i'm rooting for the bad guy land.
this is a classic. bleak and misanthropic and evilly hilarious. Jim Thompson hates humans. Humans Off Earth Now!
Read
April 30, 2022
Don't be fooled!
Nick Corey might pass himself off as a good-natured hick sheriff intent on doing right but looking ever so slightly deeper we'll detect author Jim Thompson has given us a searing portrait of a man who is the embodiment of cruelty, ruthlessness and sheer evil.
According to Stephen Marche, Pop. 1280 offers up “a preposterously upsetting, ridiculously hilarious layer cake of nastiness, a romp through a world of nearly infinite deceit.”
And there's cool cat Mark Monday characterizing the novel as “bleak and misanthropic and evilly hilarious.”
Whoa, bubba, with this noir classic, Jim Thompson deserves to be celebrated as America's “dimestore Dostoevsky.”
For a Texas taste or Oklahoma oomph of what Nick Corey and the other folks in this top dog Thompson tale are all about, I'll mosey on over to Potts County, population 1280, and share the following Pop. movie trailer:
DARTH VADER TRICKSTER
As soon as Nick Corey opens his mouth, everyone judges Nick a dope. A stranger on a train wearing classy black-and-white checker suit and white derby tells Nick he can't use the washroom since it's being used by “a naked woman on a spotted pony” and a town pimp calls Nick a “two-bit clown.” Oh, people, if you only knew the high sheriff of Potts County plays dumb to lure you into his deadly trap. After all, Nick Corey has plans, big plans.
LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS
Nick tells us he's so worried he can barely eat, all the while chomping down a breakfast of “half a dozen pork chops and a few fried eggs.” Later on, after he gets off the train, Nick's worries continue, so worried he still can't eat but manages to chow down on a plate of corn bread and fried catfish. Goodness, Nick has eaten enough food for six men. Jim Thompson lets us know Nick isn't an out-and-out liar so much as a man who has colossal appetites and needs, so needy, he has to hide himself from himself.
BRUTAL BACKSTORY
Jim Thompson clues us in on his character's backstory but his usual practice is to hold off until the end of the novel (The Killer Inside Me, The Kill-Off, Savage Night). With Pop. 1280, things are different; Jim has Nick reflect on his childhood a few chapters in, telling us he's haunted by being a kid “getting beat half to death every time he (his father) could grab me.” Nick's father also blamed Nick for killing mom who died while giving birth to Nick. Now, there's an explosive combination: Nick's a victim of extreme physical and emotional abuse along with living with a heavy burden of guilt.
DESPICABLE RACISM
Warning: Jim Thompson doesn't hold back regarding how these white countryfolk view their Black brethren: subhuman, barely more than farm animals. And the language they use, even out in public, even speaking to Blacks directly. A novel not for the easily offended.
PSYCHOPATH
Up in their apartment, Nick's wife Myra launches into another one of her tirades against good-for-nothing Nick but she stops short suddenly when she sees something in Nick's eyes. Myra is stunned and immediately turns all sweet and nice. What does Myra see? Does she detect, perhaps for the first time, she's in the presence of a psychopath? Keep a lookout for this scene - so much goes unstated. Also, one of the more comical bits in Pop.: Nick relaying the way Myra, bless her egotistical heart, trapped Nick into marrying her.
RETELLING REVELATION
"The reason I went to see Ken Lacey, for example, wasn't the one I let on that it was. I'd done it because I had a plan for him - and you've seen what that plan was." Here Nick recycles back to let us know he purposely misled us about the reason for his visit to see Ken Lacey. Thus we're wise as readers not to be too quick in assuming Nick will always tell us the truth, to keep a constant lookout on how Nick will not only double-cross the women and men he encounters (and entraps) in Potts County but Nick could also be double-crossing us as readers.
WHAT NOT TO SAY TO A PSYCHOPATH
At one point beautiful sweetheart Amy tells Nick she knows very well he committed murder and he arranged things to look like Ken Lacey did the killing. Nick responds, "What if I just can't help myself, Amy? What if it's him or me?" To which Amy replies, "Then, I'd be very sorry, Nick. It would have to be you." Oh, lady, to tell a psychopath that if you were given the choice between sentencing him or his victim to the electric chair, you would choose to fry him - not a sensible choice if you yourself want to stay alive. Such a telling scene, revealing our tendency to underestimate people, their capacity for both good and evil.
THE POTTS COUNTY SAGE SPEAKS
Toward the end of Pop., Nick shares his philosophy of life prompted by an overwhelming sense of emptiness. "And then suddenly it wasn't here, it was everywhere, every place like this one. And suddenly the emptiness was filled with sound and sight, with all the sad terrible things that the emptiness has brought the people to." What Nick cities as specific instances of what the emptiness has brought people to is heart-wrenching. But then the shock: Nick's answer to cosmic emptiness. And even more shocking: Nick's statement in the novel's concluding sentence.
What am I alluding to here? For each reader to discover.
American novelist Jim Thompson, 1906-1977
February 7, 2025
Me gustó, me divirtió, me hizo reir y sonreir y hasta pensar, esta novela protagonizada por ese cabronazo y valeroso soldado Schwejk de la américa profunda que solo vela por su "cómodo" puesto de sheriff aunque el resto de cabronazos y cabronazas que le rodean, amén de algún que otro daño colateral, tengan que pagar por ello.
La novela es el personaje de Nick Corey y es un gran personaje. Una frase le define, un comentario que se hace a sí mismo:"a lo mejor no soy muy listo -¿quién quiere un sheriff listo?"
La novela es el personaje de Nick Corey y es un gran personaje. Una frase le define, un comentario que se hace a sí mismo:"a lo mejor no soy muy listo -¿quién quiere un sheriff listo?"
July 29, 2019
Αποπνέει πραγματικότητα αυτό το άρρωστα συναρπαστικό βιβλίο παθολογικής κοινωνιολογίας και διαταραγμένων, σκοτεινών ζωϊκών χαρακτήρων.
Ένα όξινο ψυχογράφημα πανανθρώπινης εμβέλειας με σπάνια απεικόνιση αξιοποίησης της βίας και της παραφροσύνης αναφορικά με την ανθρώπινη φύση.
«Pop. 1280» ακούγεται γνώριμο και μοιάζει σαν εκκωφαντικός συνειδησιακός κρότος σιωπηλής ατομικής και κοινωνικής συνοχής, απάθειας, απαξίωσης, ιδιοτέλειας και απανθρωπιάς.
Αυτό το μικρό παραπλανητικό βιβλιαράκι εγκληματικής φυσιολογίας μοιάζει με απαγορευμένο καρπό.
Μια λαχταριστή παραδείσια λιχουδιά απλότητας, αγνότητας, και έντονα αθώας ανοησίας που μεταλλάσσεται σε παρασκεύασμα απο λειτουργικά υβρίδια, υψηλής, διαταραγμένης νοημοσύνης.
Το καραμελωμένο μήλο της ώριμης πτώσης.. γλυκό,
κατακόκκινο, τραγανό και πλημμυρισμένο εσωτερικά με το βιτριόλι που παράγεται απο χημικές ενώσεις σε απίστευτες ποσότητες, μέσα στα ζοφερά μυαλά των αναμάρτητων δολοφόνων.
Οι κύριοι χαρακτήρες του βιβλίου κατοικούν στον ειδυλλιακό τους σκουπιδότοπο με αρχηγό τον τρυφερό, ευγενικό και ψυχανώμαλο σερίφη τους.
Πρόκειται για μια κοινότητα πνιγμένη απο ηθικά και συναισθηματικά περιττώματα με φασιστικές τάσεις θρησκευτικής επικάλυψης, με βάσεις και θεμέλια που εγκαινιάστηκαν πάνω σε χωματερές και βόθρους. Ουσιαστικά και μεταφορικά.
Κι όμως, σε αυτούς τους σωρούς υλικών σκουπιδιών ή τους κοπρόλακκους του κέρδους και της εξουσίας, όλοι προσπαθούν να διατηρήσουν τη θέση τους, να ανελιχθούν στις κορυφές των σωρών ανεξαρτήτως αξίας, μικρότητας και άχρηστης ματαιοδοξίας. Χρίζεται αξίωμα και υποστηρίζεται απο αντανακλάσεις των υποδείξεων όλου του κόσμου.
Αποτελεί αυτοσκοπό.
Εκπληκτικό το γεγονός της χαρισματικής αυτής πένας που αποτυπώνει με απλότητα και ζωηρή κατανόηση την παγκόσμια νόρμα της μαύρης καρδιάς του κόσμου.
Τη σαπίλα της ριζωμένης συμπεριφοράς όπου κάνει τα πάντα να λειτουργούν σε μια απίστευτα συμπαγή μορφή ιδιότροπης, υποβλητικης και συμπαγούς βρόμας.
Ο συγγραφέας μπορεί επάξια να χαρακτηριστεί ευφυέστατος και να ανακηρυχθεί ως μορφή της εγκληματικής μυθιστοριογραφίας.
😈
Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς ασπασμούς
Ένα όξινο ψυχογράφημα πανανθρώπινης εμβέλειας με σπάνια απεικόνιση αξιοποίησης της βίας και της παραφροσύνης αναφορικά με την ανθρώπινη φύση.
«Pop. 1280» ακούγεται γνώριμο και μοιάζει σαν εκκωφαντικός συνειδησιακός κρότος σιωπηλής ατομικής και κοινωνικής συνοχής, απάθειας, απαξίωσης, ιδιοτέλειας και απανθρωπιάς.
Αυτό το μικρό παραπλανητικό βιβλιαράκι εγκληματικής φυσιολογίας μοιάζει με απαγορευμένο καρπό.
Μια λαχταριστή παραδείσια λιχουδιά απλότητας, αγνότητας, και έντονα αθώας ανοησίας που μεταλλάσσεται σε παρασκεύασμα απο λειτουργικά υβρίδια, υψηλής, διαταραγμένης νοημοσύνης.
Το καραμελωμένο μήλο της ώριμης πτώσης.. γλυκό,
κατακόκκινο, τραγανό και πλημμυρισμένο εσωτερικά με το βιτριόλι που παράγεται απο χημικές ενώσεις σε απίστευτες ποσότητες, μέσα στα ζοφερά μυαλά των αναμάρτητων δολοφόνων.
Οι κύριοι χαρακτήρες του βιβλίου κατοικούν στον ειδυλλιακό τους σκουπιδότοπο με αρχηγό τον τρυφερό, ευγενικό και ψυχανώμαλο σερίφη τους.
Πρόκειται για μια κοινότητα πνιγμένη απο ηθικά και συναισθηματικά περιττώματα με φασιστικές τάσεις θρησκευτικής επικάλυψης, με βάσεις και θεμέλια που εγκαινιάστηκαν πάνω σε χωματερές και βόθρους. Ουσιαστικά και μεταφορικά.
Κι όμως, σε αυτούς τους σωρούς υλικών σκουπιδιών ή τους κοπρόλακκους του κέρδους και της εξουσίας, όλοι προσπαθούν να διατηρήσουν τη θέση τους, να ανελιχθούν στις κορυφές των σωρών ανεξαρτήτως αξίας, μικρότητας και άχρηστης ματαιοδοξίας. Χρίζεται αξίωμα και υποστηρίζεται απο αντανακλάσεις των υποδείξεων όλου του κόσμου.
Αποτελεί αυτοσκοπό.
Εκπληκτικό το γεγονός της χαρισματικής αυτής πένας που αποτυπώνει με απλότητα και ζωηρή κατανόηση την παγκόσμια νόρμα της μαύρης καρδιάς του κόσμου.
Τη σαπίλα της ριζωμένης συμπεριφοράς όπου κάνει τα πάντα να λειτουργούν σε μια απίστευτα συμπαγή μορφή ιδιότροπης, υποβλητικης και συμπαγούς βρόμας.
Ο συγγραφέας μπορεί επάξια να χαρακτηριστεί ευφυέστατος και να ανακηρυχθεί ως μορφή της εγκληματικής μυθιστοριογραφίας.
😈
Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς ασπασμούς
September 12, 2020
Todas las novelas que he leído de Jim Thompson me han gustado y sé que las que me quedan por leer también me gustarán.
En esta, Nick Corey hace de las suyas para seguir en su puesto de Sheriff y que su vida siga como siempre.
Creo que me cuesta ponerle las cinco estrellas porqué siempre espero más de él. Espero encontrar esa obra maestra que me deje impactado. Y después, analizándolo con calma, resulta que todas sus novelas me han dejado impactado.
Soy muy injusto porqué, con mucha seguridad, todas sus novelas se merecerían esas cinco estrellas.
La humanidad y sus imperfecciones.
All the novels I have read by Jim Thompson have pleased me and I know that the ones I have yet to read will also please me.
In it, Nick Corey does his best to keep his job as sheriff and keep his life as usual.
I find it hard to give him five stars because I always expect more from him. I hope to find that masterpiece that will shock me. And then, looking at it calmly, it turns out that all of his novels have left me shocked. I am very unfair because, for sure, all his novels would deserve those five stars.
Humanity and its imperfections.
En esta, Nick Corey hace de las suyas para seguir en su puesto de Sheriff y que su vida siga como siempre.
Creo que me cuesta ponerle las cinco estrellas porqué siempre espero más de él. Espero encontrar esa obra maestra que me deje impactado. Y después, analizándolo con calma, resulta que todas sus novelas me han dejado impactado.
Soy muy injusto porqué, con mucha seguridad, todas sus novelas se merecerían esas cinco estrellas.
La humanidad y sus imperfecciones.
All the novels I have read by Jim Thompson have pleased me and I know that the ones I have yet to read will also please me.
In it, Nick Corey does his best to keep his job as sheriff and keep his life as usual.
I find it hard to give him five stars because I always expect more from him. I hope to find that masterpiece that will shock me. And then, looking at it calmly, it turns out that all of his novels have left me shocked. I am very unfair because, for sure, all his novels would deserve those five stars.
Humanity and its imperfections.
January 27, 2015
Poor Nick Corey. He’s got so many problems with his wife and people who actually expect him to do his job as sheriff of a small town that he can hardly eat more than a few pork chops at dinner or sleep more than 8 or 9 hours a night. But Nick has figured out a way to deal with some of his issues, and if that means shotgunning a few folks, then you can hardly blame the poor man.
The obvious comparison here is to Thompson’s other novel about a small town law man with a serious dark side, The Killer Inside Me. Both Lou Ford and Nick Corey hide their real intelligence and contempt for most people behind a mask of pure good old boy redneck, and they take great delight in using their seeming stupidity to tie people into knots. However, Lou’s insanity was more of a personal revenge kind of thing mixed up with his sadism while Nick’s was actually more disturbing to me with it’s nihilistic nature hiding under his lazy persona.
What makes this book extra creepy is that it’s just so damn funny along the way. Nick comes across as stupid on a Homer Simpson level at first, but as the story progresses, you realize just how smart he is at playing people as well as how batshit insane he really is.
This is a great example of Thompson’s noir genius.
The obvious comparison here is to Thompson’s other novel about a small town law man with a serious dark side, The Killer Inside Me. Both Lou Ford and Nick Corey hide their real intelligence and contempt for most people behind a mask of pure good old boy redneck, and they take great delight in using their seeming stupidity to tie people into knots. However, Lou’s insanity was more of a personal revenge kind of thing mixed up with his sadism while Nick’s was actually more disturbing to me with it’s nihilistic nature hiding under his lazy persona.
What makes this book extra creepy is that it’s just so damn funny along the way. Nick comes across as stupid on a Homer Simpson level at first, but as the story progresses, you realize just how smart he is at playing people as well as how batshit insane he really is.
This is a great example of Thompson’s noir genius.
August 27, 2015
Potts County has a small population, so small that one law enforcement officer is enough to keep the peace around. Keeping the peace is something High Sheriff Nick Corey tries to avoid as much as he can, preferring instead to complain about how little time he has for sleeping and for eating. The town leaders don't seem unduly disturbed by his laisez-faire philosophy, and he usually gets re-elected on his libertarian platform.
"I'll ask you just one question," Robert Lee cut in. "Are you or aren't you going to start enforcing the law?"
"Sure I am," I said. "I sure ain't going to do nothing else but."
"Good, I'm relieved to hear it."
"Yes, sir," I said. "I'm really going to start cracking down. Anyone that breaks a law from now on is goin' to have to deal with me. Providing, o' course, that he's either colored or some poor white trash that can't pay his poll tax."
In the introduction to this dark masterpiece plumbing the abyss of a twisted mind, Daniel Woodrell hits the nail of meaning squarely on the head : In this novel Thompson attacks just about all of the big ogres of American existence - poverty, racism, labor, social hypocrisy in general, and the relaxed enforcement of laws for those who have amassed gold, the brutal enforcement for those who haven't.
1280 'souls' are more than enough for Thompson to represent a whole society, one built on inequality and dissimulation, on envy and greed. Nick Corey might have cared about this society at one time or another, but by the time we make his acquaintance, he is as disllusioned and cynical as the rest of them. ( Me, almost anyone can make a better speech than I can, and anyone can come out stronger against or for something. Because, me, I've got no very strong convictions about anything. Not anymore I haven't. ) He is only interested in taking care of his well being, a ruthlessness of purpose that he has learned how to hide from the others behind a harmless bufoon persona, a down-to-earth humorous banter and a sly meekness that leaves him henpecked by a predatory wife, bullied by the town's two pimps and kicked in the behind by his best friend as a lesson in self-assertiveness. It is very easy to laugh at the self-deprecating manner of speaking and at the crazy situations Nick finds himself entangled in (like waiting outside an empty toilet cubicle), but there is a chilling undercurrent that will soon tranform the comedy routine into a devil's playground. I sort of wish for a movie adaptation with Heath Ledger in the role of the 'joker' Nick Corey. If he were still with us, Heath looks to me like the spitting image I have of Nick corey. Here's an early example of what I'm talking about, with Nick trying to wheedle some 'attention' from his wife:
"And just what", she said, "do you think you're doing?"
I told her I was getting ready to take a trip over to the county where Ken Lacey was sheriff. I'd probably be gone until late that night, I said, and we'd probably get real lonesome for each other, so maybe we ought to get together first.
"Huh!" she said, almost spitting the word at me. "Do you think I'd want you, even if I was of a mind to have relations with a man?"
"Well." I said. "I kind of thought maybe you might. I mean, I kind of hoped so. I mean, after all, why not?"
"Because I can hardly stand the sight of you, that's why! Because you're stupid!"
"Well," I said. "I ain't sure I can agree with you, Myra. I mean, I ain't saying you're wrong but I ain't saying you're right, either. Anyways, even if I am stupid, you can't hardly fault me for it. They've lots of stupid people in the world."
One of my friends in the Pulp Fiction group remarked that Nick Corey is a poster boy for the psychopatic criminal, showing all the symptoms associated with this deviant behaviour : always putting the blame for his troubles on the others, showing no remorse or empathy for the plight of these others, paranoia, selfishness, cunning at covering his thoughts behind an amiable public persona. Chillingly, his rants made me think of that Swedish guy who went on a rampage on an island, believing he will remedy in this way the ills of society. Any sympathy I might have had for a tortured mind was quenched when Nick started to hear voices from on high, telling him he is on a God given crusade to cleanse to world of sinners. He is guilty of picking and chosing from the holy texts only the parts that suit him, forgetting the parrable of the stone throwing and forgiveness.
It's what I'm supposed to do you know, to punish the heck out of people for bein' people. To coax 'em into revealin' theirselves, an' then kick the crap out of'em. And it's a god-danged hard job, Rose, honey, and I figure that if I can get a little pleasure in the process of trappin' folks I'm mighty well entitled to it.
Another chilling factor for me was the familiarity of the author with his chosen subject. So powerful was the presence of Nick Corey that it got me to wonder what kind of experience did Thompson had in his childhood with a vile tempered father, coincidentally a sheriff of a small southern town. And what kind of disillusionment crushed the young leftist author's dreams for a better society to turn him into the bitter writer who felt so comfortable writing about deranged killers in hellholes like Potts County. For me as a reader, the worst part of the novel were not the actual murders, but the casual, rampant racism ( ... no doctor is going to do a post mortem on a Negro. Why, you can't get a doctor to touch a live Negro, let alone a dead one. ); the cynicism of double standards in law for the wealthy and for the poor; the degrading atitude towards women, the readiness of those 1280 'souls' to believe and spread outrageous rumours about a political candidate competing with Nick for the sheriff post:
... and before long, there were plenty of answers; the kind of stinking dirty dirt that people can always create for themselves when there ain't none for real.
With or without Nick Corey, Potts County is not high on the list of places I want to visit and of people I would like to meet. I would like to be able to claim Thompson exaggerates, uses hyperbole and satire to lay bare what Woodrell calls 'the big ogres of American society', but I only have turn on the TV and scroll through the news channels to find racism and domestic violence, vile rumours presented as truth and corrupted justice alive and kicking strong into the third millenium. Nick Corey doesn't have the answers to the problems he sees around him, and I still believe in my heart that the decent people outnumber the ogres, but it saddens me that it is these ogres that make all the noise and get all the notice.
I figure sometimes that maybe that's why we don't make as much progress as other parts of the nation. People lose so much time from their jobs in lynching other people, and they spend so much money on rope and kerosene and getting likkered-up in advance and other essentials, that there ain't an awful lot of money or man-hours left for practical purposes.
Nick Corey made laugh, I admit, with his folksy, Bugs Bunny repartees, his pretend dumbness like the evil twin of Forest Gump, but the aftertaste of the novel is a bitter pill to swallow, a feeling of helplessness that make you reach for the hard liquor to drown your conscience and het ready to sink into a troubled sleep , ready to get up in the morning as if nothing was wrong with the world.
Because my labors were mighty ones - ol' Hercules didn't know what hard work was - and what is there to do but eat and sleep? And when you're eatin' and sleepin' you don't have to fret about things that you can't do nothing about. And what else is there to do but laugh an' joke ... how else can you bear up under the unbearable?
Most readers will probably remember the book for its scaringly realistic lead character. I believe what will stay longer with me is the portrait of a small towns beset by poverty and anger, by soul crushing pettiness and despair.
And suddenly the emptiness was filled with sound and sight, with all the sad terrible things that the emptiness had brought the people to.
There were the helpless little girls, cryin' when their own daddies crawled into bed with 'em. There were the men beating their wives, the women screamin' for mercy. There were the kids wettin' in the beds from fear and nervousness, and their mothers dosin' 'em with red pepper for punishment. There were the haggard faces, drained white from hookworm and blotched with scurvy. There was the near-starvation, the never-bein'-full, the debts that always outrun the credits. There was the how-we-gonna-eat, how-we-gonna-sleep, how-we-gonna-cover-our-poor-bare-asses thinkin'. The kind of thinkin' that when you ain't doing nothing else but, why you're better off dead. Because that's the emptiness thinkin' and you're already dead inside, and all you'll do is spread the stink and the terror, the weepin' and wailin', the torture, the starvation, the shame of your deadness. Your emptiness.
[edit for spelling]
March 19, 2023
Nick is the sheriff of a small town, population 1280. He does just enough to keep being re-elected and fortunately his constituents don’t expect much from him. But he has a few problems now. Some pimps are publicly disrespecting him. His wife is openly full of contempt for him, and her peeping tom brother lives in his house. He is facing a serious challenge for reelection. His two girlfriends are becoming troublesome. Nick is not quite the lazy, feckless and harmless buffoon that he appears to be.
I did not expect this book to be amusing, but it was. I have not really experienced that before in this author’s books. It is a clever combination of character and plot as Nick comes up with creative solutions for his various problems. The narrator of the audiobook did a very good job.
I did not expect this book to be amusing, but it was. I have not really experienced that before in this author’s books. It is a clever combination of character and plot as Nick comes up with creative solutions for his various problems. The narrator of the audiobook did a very good job.
December 14, 2022
This book was completely nuts.
October 3, 2017
Η ζωή έχει εκπλήξεις – δεν είναι γεμάτη από δαύτες, ειδάλλως τι σόι εκπλήξεις θα ήταν; Ωστόσο υπάρχουν, εμφανίζονται τόσο σπάνια για να δικαιολογήσουν την ταυτότητά τους. Εμφανίζονται και στους αναγνώστες για να διαλύσουν τις αυταπάτες μας: πως είμαστε μεγάλοι, τα έχουμε δει όλα, πως το μερίδιο της σπάνιας χαράς από την γνωριμία με εκείνα τα 2-3 βιβλία, την ζήσαμε. Τόπος στα νιάτα. Σαν τους στιγματισμένους από τον έρωτα. Όσο, όμως, κυκλοφορείς στα αναγνωστικά μονοπάτια, δίχως προσδοκίες αλλα με τσαγανό και τόλμη θα ανταμειφθείς.
Ο Τόμσον μου συστήθηκε ποικιλοτρόπως (από κάποιον αναγνώστη, κάποια πρόταση, κάτι που διάβασα εγώ), ως ένα ανάγνωσμα για όσους αρέσκονται στην λογοτεχνία του Αμερικάνικου Νότου: αίμα, ιδρώτας, αργκό, άνθρωποι δίχως πολλές ελπίδες και με μια ζωώδη θέληση για επιβίωση και συντριβή. Το ξεκίνησα όντας σίγουρος πως θα περάσω καλά, κάποια κεραία μου συντονίστηκε προ ανάγνωσης και έπιασα μια γειτνίαση συγγραφική με τον εξαιρετικό Ντόναλτ Ρέι Πόλοκ. Δεν έπεσα έξω, αλλά ούτε ήμουν προετοιμασμένος για αυτό που θα ακολουθούσε.
Το μεγαλύτερο ατού του βιβλίο είναι ο πρωταγωνιστής. Ένας ήρωας που όμοιό του δεν έχω βρει στην λογοτεχνία: ο Νικ Κόρει, ένας σερίφης σε μια πολίχνη, που δεν κάνει και πολλά πράματα. Έχει, φαινομενικά, μια εντελώς παθητική στάση στην ζωή. Και δείχνει και ελαφρώς βλάκας, έτσι όπως έρχεται σε πρώτη επαφή μαζί του ο αναγνώστης, μέσα από τους πρώτους διαλόγους του ήρωα με τον περίγυρό του: την μονίμως εξαγριωμένη μαζί του γυναίκα του, τους εξέχοντες πολίτες που προσπαθούν να τον πείσουν να κάνει την δουλειά του και να μην κοιτάει το ταβάνι, τις ερωμένες του. Όμως όλοι έχουν συμφέροντα, κάτι που φαίνεται να έχει καταλάβει πολύ καλά ο Νικ. Γιατί η φαινομενική βλακεία του αποδεικνύεται πως είναι ένα κουκούλι μέσα στο οποίο έχει καταφύγει. Βλέπει την πραγματικότητα, και αυτό που βλέπει δεν του αρέσει καθόλου. Είναι ένας κυνικός που δεν προσβάλλει κανένα. Μάλλον προσαρμόζεται στην ανοησία των γύρω του και παίζει το παιχνίδι τους. Είναι πραγματικά μια αποκάλυψη για μένα πως ο Τόμσον συνέλαβε αυτή την περσόνα και πως έχτισε την συνακόλουθη κλιμάκωση. Τι μπορεί να κάνει ο άνθρωπος για την επιβίωσή του; Τα πάντα. Αυτό κάνει και ο Νικ, όταν απειλούνται οι ανέσεις του: ένας μισθός, ένα καθαρό σπίτι και ένα άνετο αφοδευτήριο – πράγματα που συνοδεύουν την θέση του σερίφη και που δεν είναι λίγα για εκείνη την εποχή.
Οι άνθρωποι είναι παραδομένοι σε αδυναμίες. Είναι έρμαια της βλακείας τους και των κοντόφθαλμων επιδιώξεών τους, και το να βλέπεις έναν χαρακτήρα όπως ο Νικ, να την φέρνει σε όλους, να κάνει πραγματικά ένα τσίρκο τις ζωές των ανθρώπων που ήθελαν να τον πατήσουν, είναι μια απόλαυση. Όπως απόλαυση είναι η γραφή του Τόμσον που με έκανε να γελάσω ντρανταχτά –δεν υπερβάλλω!- και άλλες στιγμές να ξύνω το κεφάλι μου με την ευφυία και τις ιδέες του.
Το βιβλίο είναι καταπληκτικό, διαβάζεται άνετα, είναι μικρό. Είναι μια απόλαυση. Είναι σίγουρα το καλύτερο βιβλίο που διάβασα από τις αρχές του προηγούμενου χρόνου και ένα από τα καλύτερα βιβλία που έχω διαβάσει τα τελευταία χρόνια. Ακόμα περισσότερο θα είναι ένα από εκείνα από τα βιβλία που θα μου έρχονται πρώτα στο νου ως «καλά», ως προτεινόμενα, ως αγαπημένα.
Τώρα, στα γεράματα, ερωτεύτηκα.
Ο Τόμσον μου συστήθηκε ποικιλοτρόπως (από κάποιον αναγνώστη, κάποια πρόταση, κάτι που διάβασα εγώ), ως ένα ανάγνωσμα για όσους αρέσκονται στην λογοτεχνία του Αμερικάνικου Νότου: αίμα, ιδρώτας, αργκό, άνθρωποι δίχως πολλές ελπίδες και με μια ζωώδη θέληση για επιβίωση και συντριβή. Το ξεκίνησα όντας σίγουρος πως θα περάσω καλά, κάποια κεραία μου συντονίστηκε προ ανάγνωσης και έπιασα μια γειτνίαση συγγραφική με τον εξαιρετικό Ντόναλτ Ρέι Πόλοκ. Δεν έπεσα έξω, αλλά ούτε ήμουν προετοιμασμένος για αυτό που θα ακολουθούσε.
Το μεγαλύτερο ατού του βιβλίο είναι ο πρωταγωνιστής. Ένας ήρωας που όμοιό του δεν έχω βρει στην λογοτεχνία: ο Νικ Κόρει, ένας σερίφης σε μια πολίχνη, που δεν κάνει και πολλά πράματα. Έχει, φαινομενικά, μια εντελώς παθητική στάση στην ζωή. Και δείχνει και ελαφρώς βλάκας, έτσι όπως έρχεται σε πρώτη επαφή μαζί του ο αναγνώστης, μέσα από τους πρώτους διαλόγους του ήρωα με τον περίγυρό του: την μονίμως εξαγριωμένη μαζί του γυναίκα του, τους εξέχοντες πολίτες που προσπαθούν να τον πείσουν να κάνει την δουλειά του και να μην κοιτάει το ταβάνι, τις ερωμένες του. Όμως όλοι έχουν συμφέροντα, κάτι που φαίνεται να έχει καταλάβει πολύ καλά ο Νικ. Γιατί η φαινομενική βλακεία του αποδεικνύεται πως είναι ένα κουκούλι μέσα στο οποίο έχει καταφύγει. Βλέπει την πραγματικότητα, και αυτό που βλέπει δεν του αρέσει καθόλου. Είναι ένας κυνικός που δεν προσβάλλει κανένα. Μάλλον προσαρμόζεται στην ανοησία των γύρω του και παίζει το παιχνίδι τους. Είναι πραγματικά μια αποκάλυψη για μένα πως ο Τόμσον συνέλαβε αυτή την περσόνα και πως έχτισε την συνακόλουθη κλιμάκωση. Τι μπορεί να κάνει ο άνθρωπος για την επιβίωσή του; Τα πάντα. Αυτό κάνει και ο Νικ, όταν απειλούνται οι ανέσεις του: ένας μισθός, ένα καθαρό σπίτι και ένα άνετο αφοδευτήριο – πράγματα που συνοδεύουν την θέση του σερίφη και που δεν είναι λίγα για εκείνη την εποχή.
Οι άνθρωποι είναι παραδομένοι σε αδυναμίες. Είναι έρμαια της βλακείας τους και των κοντόφθαλμων επιδιώξεών τους, και το να βλέπεις έναν χαρακτήρα όπως ο Νικ, να την φέρνει σε όλους, να κάνει πραγματικά ένα τσίρκο τις ζωές των ανθρώπων που ήθελαν να τον πατήσουν, είναι μια απόλαυση. Όπως απόλαυση είναι η γραφή του Τόμσον που με έκανε να γελάσω ντρανταχτά –δεν υπερβάλλω!- και άλλες στιγμές να ξύνω το κεφάλι μου με την ευφυία και τις ιδέες του.
Το βιβλίο είναι καταπληκτικό, διαβάζεται άνετα, είναι μικρό. Είναι μια απόλαυση. Είναι σίγουρα το καλύτερο βιβλίο που διάβασα από τις αρχές του προηγούμενου χρόνου και ένα από τα καλύτερα βιβλία που έχω διαβάσει τα τελευταία χρόνια. Ακόμα περισσότερο θα είναι ένα από εκείνα από τα βιβλία που θα μου έρχονται πρώτα στο νου ως «καλά», ως προτεινόμενα, ως αγαπημένα.
Τώρα, στα γεράματα, ερωτεύτηκα.
January 9, 2026
Ник Кори е лош шериф!
Ник Кори е лош съпруг!
Ник Кори е дори глуповат, по негови собствени думи!
Обаче, тежко ти, ако си объркате шапките...
Това книжле е супер забавно и го препоръчвам на всеки читател с афинитет към "черния" криминален роман, интригите и остроумията.
Четена и препрочитана през годините, "1280 жители" е наистина страхотно четиво. :)
Ник Кори е лош съпруг!
Ник Кори е дори глуповат, по негови собствени думи!
Обаче, тежко ти, ако си объркате шапките...
Това книжле е супер забавно и го препоръчвам на всеки читател с афинитет към "черния" криминален роман, интригите и остроумията.
Четена и препрочитана през годините, "1280 жители" е наистина страхотно четиво. :)
February 28, 2011
Nick Corey is the High Sheriff of Potts County and kind of a simpleton. He doesn't arrest anyone and mostly stays out of trouble, other than affair he's having with another man's wife. Or is his genial nature a cover for something more sinister... ?
Yes. Yes it is. It's a front for the fact that he's a manipulative, cold-blooded killer. He kills two pimps and tricks another sheriff into taking the blame. He launches a smear campaign against another man running for sheriff. He does a handful of other despicable deeds and is so slick you almost forget what a scumbag he is.
Jim Thompson is an undiscovered gem, light years ahead of the other pulp writers of his day. Pop. 1280 is told in the first person and to say Nick is an unreliable narrator is putting it lightly. Even though he's clearly a psychopath, the book has quite a few blackly comic moments. Even though he's a scumbag, watching the master manipulator in action is something to behold. It's definitely a page turner after the first couple of pages.
Jim Thompson is the real deal. I can't recommend this enough to fans of crime fiction.
Yes. Yes it is. It's a front for the fact that he's a manipulative, cold-blooded killer. He kills two pimps and tricks another sheriff into taking the blame. He launches a smear campaign against another man running for sheriff. He does a handful of other despicable deeds and is so slick you almost forget what a scumbag he is.
Jim Thompson is an undiscovered gem, light years ahead of the other pulp writers of his day. Pop. 1280 is told in the first person and to say Nick is an unreliable narrator is putting it lightly. Even though he's clearly a psychopath, the book has quite a few blackly comic moments. Even though he's a scumbag, watching the master manipulator in action is something to behold. It's definitely a page turner after the first couple of pages.
Jim Thompson is the real deal. I can't recommend this enough to fans of crime fiction.
September 27, 2022
Pop. 1280 is the title of the book and it refers to the population of Potts County, where Nick Corey is "High Sheriff." It is the 57th largest county out of 57 counties in Texas.
This book is a literary masterpiece that serves as a sardonic attack on small Southern towns in the early twentieth century. Nick Corey is on the surface a good ole boy, a not-so-bright, uneducated Southern hick. He is much more than that when you poke under the surface. His lazy, shiftless ways and his appearance as a good-for-nothing buffoon are just an act, an act that lets him get away with all kinds of graft and other behavior.
Indeed, one of the genuinely genius things about this book is that, by using Corey as the narrator, Thompson is able to poke fun at what were the Southern conventions at the time, including race relations. He explains at one point that he couldn't lean on the well-to-do citizens of the town no matter what they did, but he could lean on the Blacks and the White trash and no one would think anything of it. Thompson, using Corey as the narrator, pokes fun at the holier-than- thou front that Southerners put on, masking all their nasty deeds under the used-car-salesman-patter of the Southern preacher who just goes on and on, shoveling his horse manure till the listener just about drowned in it.
This book has it all, including incest, murder, adultery, graft, more murder, more adultery, and more graft. All of that hiding behind the sweetness and politeness of Southern manners and all of it accepted because no one in that small town wanted to rock the boat or wanted a sheriff who would rock the boat.
Corey begins his narration by explaining that he "should have been sitting pretty, just as pretty as a man could sit," being sheriff of the county, drawing two thousand dollars plus what he "could pick up on the side." He says he could go on being the sheriff "as long as I minded my own business and didn't arrest no one unless I just couldn't get out of it and they didn't amount to nothin."
He's married to Myra, who, according to Corey, tricked him into her room at the rooming house, and then started screaming rape, leaving him no choice but to marry her and take in her imbecile brother Lenny (think of Lenny from Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men), who goes around at night peeping into people's windows. He explains that Myra was quite a bit older than he was and "she looked every bit as mean as she was. And believe me, she was one danged mean woman." He had really wanted to marry Amy Mason, but that didn't happen because of Myra's trickery. Of course, he had also "gotten real friendly with a married woman, name of Rose Hauck," who pretended to be Myra's best friend. Rose didn't mean a thing to Corey, but she "was awful pretty and generous."
Corey acts like he is the town goof and lets people get the better of him, but all through the tale it is Corey who is underhandedly manipulating people with his aw, shucks, attitude and silliness and few catch on to how dirty and underhanded he really is. Corey goes on to make a buddy of his who makes fun of him to be take the blame for a couple of murders and goes on to politic for the election by talking up how he didn't believe the rumors about Sam Gaddis. Yup, soon enough there are rumors spreading about Gaddis baby-raping and feeding his dead wife to his hogs and so forth.
Nick Corey is a brilliant character and some would say he is a bit like Lou Ford in The Killer Inside Me. But, this book is a different one than the Lou Ford book and Corey is quite interesting in his own right.
All in all, an amazing book and you certainly have never read anything like it.
This book is a literary masterpiece that serves as a sardonic attack on small Southern towns in the early twentieth century. Nick Corey is on the surface a good ole boy, a not-so-bright, uneducated Southern hick. He is much more than that when you poke under the surface. His lazy, shiftless ways and his appearance as a good-for-nothing buffoon are just an act, an act that lets him get away with all kinds of graft and other behavior.
Indeed, one of the genuinely genius things about this book is that, by using Corey as the narrator, Thompson is able to poke fun at what were the Southern conventions at the time, including race relations. He explains at one point that he couldn't lean on the well-to-do citizens of the town no matter what they did, but he could lean on the Blacks and the White trash and no one would think anything of it. Thompson, using Corey as the narrator, pokes fun at the holier-than- thou front that Southerners put on, masking all their nasty deeds under the used-car-salesman-patter of the Southern preacher who just goes on and on, shoveling his horse manure till the listener just about drowned in it.
This book has it all, including incest, murder, adultery, graft, more murder, more adultery, and more graft. All of that hiding behind the sweetness and politeness of Southern manners and all of it accepted because no one in that small town wanted to rock the boat or wanted a sheriff who would rock the boat.
Corey begins his narration by explaining that he "should have been sitting pretty, just as pretty as a man could sit," being sheriff of the county, drawing two thousand dollars plus what he "could pick up on the side." He says he could go on being the sheriff "as long as I minded my own business and didn't arrest no one unless I just couldn't get out of it and they didn't amount to nothin."
He's married to Myra, who, according to Corey, tricked him into her room at the rooming house, and then started screaming rape, leaving him no choice but to marry her and take in her imbecile brother Lenny (think of Lenny from Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men), who goes around at night peeping into people's windows. He explains that Myra was quite a bit older than he was and "she looked every bit as mean as she was. And believe me, she was one danged mean woman." He had really wanted to marry Amy Mason, but that didn't happen because of Myra's trickery. Of course, he had also "gotten real friendly with a married woman, name of Rose Hauck," who pretended to be Myra's best friend. Rose didn't mean a thing to Corey, but she "was awful pretty and generous."
Corey acts like he is the town goof and lets people get the better of him, but all through the tale it is Corey who is underhandedly manipulating people with his aw, shucks, attitude and silliness and few catch on to how dirty and underhanded he really is. Corey goes on to make a buddy of his who makes fun of him to be take the blame for a couple of murders and goes on to politic for the election by talking up how he didn't believe the rumors about Sam Gaddis. Yup, soon enough there are rumors spreading about Gaddis baby-raping and feeding his dead wife to his hogs and so forth.
Nick Corey is a brilliant character and some would say he is a bit like Lou Ford in The Killer Inside Me. But, this book is a different one than the Lou Ford book and Corey is quite interesting in his own right.
All in all, an amazing book and you certainly have never read anything like it.
February 23, 2020
El año pasado empecé a leer a Jim Thompson y fue todo un descubrimiento.
Me encanta el estilo de este autor tan crudo y directo, sus novelas son historias muy turbias contadas sin largas descripciones ni pensamientos eternos y cuyo principal atractivo son sus personajes.
En este caso es el protagonista, el sheriff Nick Corey, quien nos va contando lo que es capaz de hacer para seguir en su cargo a toda costa. Este individuo es de lo malo lo peor (aunque el resto de personajes que lo rodean no se quedan muy atrás), pero la forma tan peculiar que tiene de hablar de sí mismo y de lo que hace y de porque lo hace han terminado haciéndome soltar más de una carcajada.
Me encanta el estilo de este autor tan crudo y directo, sus novelas son historias muy turbias contadas sin largas descripciones ni pensamientos eternos y cuyo principal atractivo son sus personajes.
En este caso es el protagonista, el sheriff Nick Corey, quien nos va contando lo que es capaz de hacer para seguir en su cargo a toda costa. Este individuo es de lo malo lo peor (aunque el resto de personajes que lo rodean no se quedan muy atrás), pero la forma tan peculiar que tiene de hablar de sí mismo y de lo que hace y de porque lo hace han terminado haciéndome soltar más de una carcajada.
May 21, 2023
Un antihéroe indolente, sumiso y conformista. Ese es Nick. Un pusilánime que nos arranca sonrisas de conmiseración y al que comenzamos a seguir, divertidos. El tipo se ha ganado (?) nuestra simpatía por ser un lerdo y un vago de pura cepa. Cuando advertimos que es un inescrupuloso, es demasiado tarde. (Cualquier semejanza con esa gente que ponemos en las Casas de Gobierno de nuestros países es pura...coincidencia)
Nick, que siempre ha estado del lado oscuro, se aprovecha del status quo. De una convicción profundamente arraigada: mientras sea conocido, lo malo es aceptable. La fantasía del daño controlado. Humor negro del bueno. Lo acompaña un grupo interesante de personajes, aunque siempre los percibimos a través de los ojos de Nick. Y es perfectamente factible que también nos esté engañando. Porque Nick es un personaje verdaderamente fascinante, cuya perversidad se oculta tras un velo de pretendida estupidez y apatía. Uno de los más fascinantes. Tal vez digan que estoy exagerando. Pero como el propio Nick asegura: "No sé...no me atrevo a decir que no tengan razón, pero eso tampoco quiere decir que esté de acuerdo."
Nick, que siempre ha estado del lado oscuro, se aprovecha del status quo. De una convicción profundamente arraigada: mientras sea conocido, lo malo es aceptable. La fantasía del daño controlado. Humor negro del bueno. Lo acompaña un grupo interesante de personajes, aunque siempre los percibimos a través de los ojos de Nick. Y es perfectamente factible que también nos esté engañando. Porque Nick es un personaje verdaderamente fascinante, cuya perversidad se oculta tras un velo de pretendida estupidez y apatía. Uno de los más fascinantes. Tal vez digan que estoy exagerando. Pero como el propio Nick asegura: "No sé...no me atrevo a decir que no tengan razón, pero eso tampoco quiere decir que esté de acuerdo."
August 31, 2023
2.5/5 Estrellas
Creo que con esta novela me ha pasado igual que con "El guardián entre el Centeno", no he podido soportar al protagonista.
No he soportado su cinismo.
No he soportado su machismo
No he soportado su racismo
No he soportado su vaguería
No he soportado su egoísmo
Y no he soportado el final.
Me importa un huevo que la novela este ambientada en los años 20 y en la América profunda. No la he soportado.
Creo que ha quedado claro.
Creo que con esta novela me ha pasado igual que con "El guardián entre el Centeno", no he podido soportar al protagonista.
No he soportado su cinismo.
No he soportado su machismo
No he soportado su racismo
No he soportado su vaguería
No he soportado su egoísmo
Y no he soportado el final.
Me importa un huevo que la novela este ambientada en los años 20 y en la América profunda. No la he soportado.
Creo que ha quedado claro.
April 25, 2023
undoubtedly, pop 1280, is jim thompson’s towering masterpiece among his formidable crime fiction oeuvre.
let me put it this way — there is no taxi-driver, no american psycho, nor any fight club without thompson’s classic, first-on-the-scene, violent, subversive and bleakly hilarious noir novel about a hella friendly, and just as hella shady, sociopathic sherrif who tells us one thing while usually doing a wholly different and much MUCH worse immoral other thing. this use of cognitive dissonance creates a narrative experience full of stiffled laughs where one usually wouldn’t be laughing, while simultaneously wincing at the predatory carnage our amiable sherrif dishes out, all the while using folksy platitudes as a form of psychological camouflage.
what just seems like smart pulp writing, is actually a much more complicated high-wire act of character-based writing. a legit character study of a very clever bad man.
that is the real showstopper here; the tonal tightrope being walked by thompson — one mistep and the whole illusion falls apart! not only does JT walk the walk, but he does so with a swagger, marching all the way to a phenomenal ending that burns the entire novel down on the way out.
which is my favorite type of denouement.
this novel’s been in my top 10 books for years now.
so there.
let me put it this way — there is no taxi-driver, no american psycho, nor any fight club without thompson’s classic, first-on-the-scene, violent, subversive and bleakly hilarious noir novel about a hella friendly, and just as hella shady, sociopathic sherrif who tells us one thing while usually doing a wholly different and much MUCH worse immoral other thing. this use of cognitive dissonance creates a narrative experience full of stiffled laughs where one usually wouldn’t be laughing, while simultaneously wincing at the predatory carnage our amiable sherrif dishes out, all the while using folksy platitudes as a form of psychological camouflage.
what just seems like smart pulp writing, is actually a much more complicated high-wire act of character-based writing. a legit character study of a very clever bad man.
that is the real showstopper here; the tonal tightrope being walked by thompson — one mistep and the whole illusion falls apart! not only does JT walk the walk, but he does so with a swagger, marching all the way to a phenomenal ending that burns the entire novel down on the way out.
which is my favorite type of denouement.
this novel’s been in my top 10 books for years now.
so there.
February 6, 2019
Don't be mislead by my rating: this was a really strong book that I enjoyed a lot, it just kind of collapsed disappointingly at the end. Definitely worth reading for the prose. I'll be checking out more Thompson.
January 2, 2016
“a heck of a lot of things are bound to go wrong in a world as big as this one.
And if there's an answer to why it's that way - and there ain't always - why, it's probably not just one answer by itself, but thousands of answers.”
― Jim Thompson, Pop. 1280
Small towns can be a drag. Especially when you are the High Sheriff. Especially when you are also a psychopath who is just a tad smarter than you let on. You've got these liberal and soft feelings toward minorities and social ills. You want to find a nice woman and settle down, but with all these women you are sleeping with and all these clowns in town things just can't get right (with either you or the Lord) until a couple of these buggers are dead. I mean don't feel bad about it. Dead isn't that much better than life in a town in Texas (or was it Oklahoma?) with a population hovering around 1280 and some of those 1280 aren't rich or white. People in town might want you to do stuff. No, not really. They keep electing you because that is exactly what they don't want you to do -- stuff. And if they knew the stuff you did, the certainly wouldn't want you to keep on doing it.
Thompson seems to grab the humanity by the nuts and just squeezes the truth out of it. Like Jim had a whole town on the rack and after a bit of pulling the town's ugliness just seems to spill out. Don't think your big towns are any better and don't think your suburban sprawl doesn't contain the rats, the hypocrites, the dark motives and strange bedfellows that seem to exist in the front room of Jim Thompson's brain. Your town is the same, just more so. And if so, think of how many 'high sheriff's' your town has protecting you.
And, if you have any lingering questions, just go check out The Making of a Murderer on Netflix.
And if there's an answer to why it's that way - and there ain't always - why, it's probably not just one answer by itself, but thousands of answers.”
― Jim Thompson, Pop. 1280
Small towns can be a drag. Especially when you are the High Sheriff. Especially when you are also a psychopath who is just a tad smarter than you let on. You've got these liberal and soft feelings toward minorities and social ills. You want to find a nice woman and settle down, but with all these women you are sleeping with and all these clowns in town things just can't get right (with either you or the Lord) until a couple of these buggers are dead. I mean don't feel bad about it. Dead isn't that much better than life in a town in Texas (or was it Oklahoma?) with a population hovering around 1280 and some of those 1280 aren't rich or white. People in town might want you to do stuff. No, not really. They keep electing you because that is exactly what they don't want you to do -- stuff. And if they knew the stuff you did, the certainly wouldn't want you to keep on doing it.
Thompson seems to grab the humanity by the nuts and just squeezes the truth out of it. Like Jim had a whole town on the rack and after a bit of pulling the town's ugliness just seems to spill out. Don't think your big towns are any better and don't think your suburban sprawl doesn't contain the rats, the hypocrites, the dark motives and strange bedfellows that seem to exist in the front room of Jim Thompson's brain. Your town is the same, just more so. And if so, think of how many 'high sheriff's' your town has protecting you.
And, if you have any lingering questions, just go check out The Making of a Murderer on Netflix.
June 1, 2015
Some might say that Sheriff Nick Corey does not play well with others.
They would be wrong.
Sheriff Nick Corey plays VERY WELL with others!
No one can deny that his shit-kickin', good ole boy, down-home-hick act endears him to the townsfolk he is sworn to protect. More's the pity there is no one to protect them from him.
Corey schemes and manipulates himself out of any crisis, and he'll do whatever is required to keep his cushy job. But now, he's facing his toughest challenge yet - the upcoming election.
At first, this book seems light years away from Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. Here, the author seems to be going for laughs. Corey's lazy lawman routine is good for plenty of chuckles . . . which makes it all the more disturbing when bullets start flying and the bodies start piling up.
Turns out, Corey has quite a bit in common with "Killer's" protagonist, Lou Ford. They are both charismatic psychopaths who use their badges and positions of power to prey on those unfortunate enough to encounter them.
Another good tale from a master storyteller.
They would be wrong.
Sheriff Nick Corey plays VERY WELL with others!
No one can deny that his shit-kickin', good ole boy, down-home-hick act endears him to the townsfolk he is sworn to protect. More's the pity there is no one to protect them from him.
Corey schemes and manipulates himself out of any crisis, and he'll do whatever is required to keep his cushy job. But now, he's facing his toughest challenge yet - the upcoming election.
At first, this book seems light years away from Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. Here, the author seems to be going for laughs. Corey's lazy lawman routine is good for plenty of chuckles . . . which makes it all the more disturbing when bullets start flying and the bodies start piling up.
Turns out, Corey has quite a bit in common with "Killer's" protagonist, Lou Ford. They are both charismatic psychopaths who use their badges and positions of power to prey on those unfortunate enough to encounter them.
Another good tale from a master storyteller.
October 19, 2022
A mean psychotic redneck Sheriff anyone? You’ll find him right here in the pages of this book.
August 11, 2025
Nick Corey, sheriff of Potts County, strolls through Pop. 1280 with the affect of a yokel serenading a scarecrow, chin lifted, boots polished, and brain disguised as buttermilk. He greets trouble with a toothy grin and folksy murmur, though his ledger fills steadily with corpses.
A pair of pimps spit in his direction; soon their bodies bob along the riverbank like discarded bait. At home, his wife Myra weaponizes guilt, her brother Lennie sulks and slobbers, and Nick plots his meals alongside his murders.
The sheriff's affections wander toward Amy Mason, a former flame he abandoned in favor of forced marriage. His consolation prize arrives in the form of Rose Hauck, a married neighbor with lipstick, secrets, and poor aim. Another woman claims to be pregnant. Someone fires a rifle from a shadow. Nick keeps smiling.
The plot operates like a snake-handling sermon spoken through barbecue sauce. Nick campaigns for reelection while organizing alibis, forging statements, planting evidence, and dispensing condolences in drawl-wrapped homilies. “I got to thinkin’ how nice it would be if you could just shoot people, like in the good old days,” he muses. He pays visits, collects bribes, charms confessions, and lays groundwork for his rivals’ demise by way of half-truths and full coffins.
Every crime arrives with a chuckle, every moral dilemma slides into anecdote. “A man can’t hardly do his duty if he don’t lie a little now and then,” he declares between bites of grits. Each bullet sharpens his reputation. Each compliment buries another accomplice.
Thompson rigs the whole contraption like a gospel tent over a sinkhole. The book reads like Twain drunk on turpentine, or Faulkner rewritten by a ventriloquist. “I was a good boy... till I got so I couldn’t stand bein’ good no more,” Nick confesses with the air of someone baptizing himself in gasoline.
The sheriff spoon-feeds Lennie biscuits, then sends him to jail. He attends picnics with voters who praise his honesty, even as he dispatches adversaries with his pistol and a straight face. “If I hadn’t of killed you, someone else would’ve,” he tells a man bleeding out.
Pop. 1280 operates without brakes. Every institution bows. Every sentiment curls. The book smells of blood, grins, and government paper. The bourbon-scented ulcer it gave me arrived dressed in a deputy’s badge.
A pair of pimps spit in his direction; soon their bodies bob along the riverbank like discarded bait. At home, his wife Myra weaponizes guilt, her brother Lennie sulks and slobbers, and Nick plots his meals alongside his murders.
The sheriff's affections wander toward Amy Mason, a former flame he abandoned in favor of forced marriage. His consolation prize arrives in the form of Rose Hauck, a married neighbor with lipstick, secrets, and poor aim. Another woman claims to be pregnant. Someone fires a rifle from a shadow. Nick keeps smiling.
The plot operates like a snake-handling sermon spoken through barbecue sauce. Nick campaigns for reelection while organizing alibis, forging statements, planting evidence, and dispensing condolences in drawl-wrapped homilies. “I got to thinkin’ how nice it would be if you could just shoot people, like in the good old days,” he muses. He pays visits, collects bribes, charms confessions, and lays groundwork for his rivals’ demise by way of half-truths and full coffins.
Every crime arrives with a chuckle, every moral dilemma slides into anecdote. “A man can’t hardly do his duty if he don’t lie a little now and then,” he declares between bites of grits. Each bullet sharpens his reputation. Each compliment buries another accomplice.
Thompson rigs the whole contraption like a gospel tent over a sinkhole. The book reads like Twain drunk on turpentine, or Faulkner rewritten by a ventriloquist. “I was a good boy... till I got so I couldn’t stand bein’ good no more,” Nick confesses with the air of someone baptizing himself in gasoline.
The sheriff spoon-feeds Lennie biscuits, then sends him to jail. He attends picnics with voters who praise his honesty, even as he dispatches adversaries with his pistol and a straight face. “If I hadn’t of killed you, someone else would’ve,” he tells a man bleeding out.
Pop. 1280 operates without brakes. Every institution bows. Every sentiment curls. The book smells of blood, grins, and government paper. The bourbon-scented ulcer it gave me arrived dressed in a deputy’s badge.
May 30, 2012
Someone recommended this book to me years ago. More than five years ago, in fact. They gushed about it about it to such an extent that I went out and bought several of Thompson's books.
Then they sat on my shelf for the next five years.
I just read this one, and it was every bit as good as my friend implied. It's not my usual genre, almost a bit of a western (but not really). But it's told in first person with such an amazing voice that I really wish I hadn't waited so long.
I'll be getting to this guy's other books much sooner than later.
Then they sat on my shelf for the next five years.
I just read this one, and it was every bit as good as my friend implied. It's not my usual genre, almost a bit of a western (but not really). But it's told in first person with such an amazing voice that I really wish I hadn't waited so long.
I'll be getting to this guy's other books much sooner than later.
October 19, 2025
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ (4.5 Stars) — Thompson’s canon is formidable, more so when you consider he wrote only when desperate for funds, often getting a novel knocked-out in weeks. He was an author ahead of his time, taking risks with his dark narratives and characters. This is a brilliant book.. one that feels infinitely quotable, re-readable & all round delicious in its deep dark simplicity, here we have a sheriff that truly does feel of the time!
There’s something deliciously perverse about a novel that makes you root for a man you’d normally cross the street to avoid. Jim Thompson’s Pop. 1280 is a masterclass in moral inversion — a blackly comic, sun-scorched descent into small-town rot where the sheriff is the most corrupt soul of them all, yet somehow the only one we want to keep following. It’s as though Thompson held a mirror up to America’s decaying moral core and laughed — and in that laughter, found a strange kind of black-humour-poetry.
Nick Corey, the sheriff of Potts County, is a man of contradictions: lazy yet calculating, dim-seeming yet preternaturally aware, self-absorbed yet hauntingly human. Thompson plays a dangerous game — allowing Corey to perform idiocy while concealing an erudite and sardonic intelligence beneath the slack grin and drawling vernacular. He’s like a backwoods Mephistopheles in overalls, feigning simplicity to mask a venomous, knowing humour. It’s a trope we rarely see executed with such precision: the bad man rendered not just readable but relatable, his darkness shaded by comedy, his cruelty buoyed by charm.
Thompson’s genius lies in the tonal control. The prose swings between grotesque absurdity and literary sharpness, each sentence infused with a kind of backhanded elegance — the rhythm of pulp wearing the mask of philosophy. The dialogue is hypnotic, its colloquial wit bordering on scripture. You can hear the cicadas in every pause, feel the sweat between the words. And while Nick’s moral decay is total, Thompson gifts him just enough humanity to make us complicit. We understand his malice even as we recoil from it — and that’s the true trick of the book: empathy through unease.
The narrative’s momentum is deceptively slow. Like Corey himself, it meanders, digresses, stumbles drunkenly toward purpose — but when the violence arrives, it does so with biblical force. Beneath the humour and hollow laughs, there’s a dreadful inevitability. This is noir stripped to its bones: no honour among thieves, no redemption, no justice — only hypocrisy and heat.
Thompson’s America here feels like a stage play of the damned, each citizen a caricature in a farce of virtue. And yet, the author’s sly meta-intelligence makes it hard not to grin along. Corey’s “fake idiocy” becomes the perfect metaphor for the novel itself: it pretends to be simple, when in truth it’s cuttingly aware of its own artifice. By the final page, we’re left not judging him, but recognising a distorted fragment of ourselves in his drawl and grin.
Pop. 1280 is that rare noir which transcends genre — brutal yet strangely buoyant, nihilistic yet alive with wicked humour. It’s a small-town tragedy masquerading as a joke, a sermon whispered by a fool who’s smarter than everyone in church.
A masterpiece of moral masquerade and tonal equilibrium.
There’s something deliciously perverse about a novel that makes you root for a man you’d normally cross the street to avoid. Jim Thompson’s Pop. 1280 is a masterclass in moral inversion — a blackly comic, sun-scorched descent into small-town rot where the sheriff is the most corrupt soul of them all, yet somehow the only one we want to keep following. It’s as though Thompson held a mirror up to America’s decaying moral core and laughed — and in that laughter, found a strange kind of black-humour-poetry.
Nick Corey, the sheriff of Potts County, is a man of contradictions: lazy yet calculating, dim-seeming yet preternaturally aware, self-absorbed yet hauntingly human. Thompson plays a dangerous game — allowing Corey to perform idiocy while concealing an erudite and sardonic intelligence beneath the slack grin and drawling vernacular. He’s like a backwoods Mephistopheles in overalls, feigning simplicity to mask a venomous, knowing humour. It’s a trope we rarely see executed with such precision: the bad man rendered not just readable but relatable, his darkness shaded by comedy, his cruelty buoyed by charm.
Thompson’s genius lies in the tonal control. The prose swings between grotesque absurdity and literary sharpness, each sentence infused with a kind of backhanded elegance — the rhythm of pulp wearing the mask of philosophy. The dialogue is hypnotic, its colloquial wit bordering on scripture. You can hear the cicadas in every pause, feel the sweat between the words. And while Nick’s moral decay is total, Thompson gifts him just enough humanity to make us complicit. We understand his malice even as we recoil from it — and that’s the true trick of the book: empathy through unease.
The narrative’s momentum is deceptively slow. Like Corey himself, it meanders, digresses, stumbles drunkenly toward purpose — but when the violence arrives, it does so with biblical force. Beneath the humour and hollow laughs, there’s a dreadful inevitability. This is noir stripped to its bones: no honour among thieves, no redemption, no justice — only hypocrisy and heat.
Thompson’s America here feels like a stage play of the damned, each citizen a caricature in a farce of virtue. And yet, the author’s sly meta-intelligence makes it hard not to grin along. Corey’s “fake idiocy” becomes the perfect metaphor for the novel itself: it pretends to be simple, when in truth it’s cuttingly aware of its own artifice. By the final page, we’re left not judging him, but recognising a distorted fragment of ourselves in his drawl and grin.
Pop. 1280 is that rare noir which transcends genre — brutal yet strangely buoyant, nihilistic yet alive with wicked humour. It’s a small-town tragedy masquerading as a joke, a sermon whispered by a fool who’s smarter than everyone in church.
A masterpiece of moral masquerade and tonal equilibrium.
February 1, 2024
11/2014
Similar to his The Killer Inside Me...but in Pottsville (pop. 1280) the sheriff's dark side is centered around laziness and convenience more than pure evil, and we also get to follow his wacky romantic exploits with wife and two girlfriends. As such, this book seems lighter and more fun than that previous novel (which I remember as one of his darkest), but, if you think about it, it's just as chilling or worse. This really good book careens toward melodrama, strange depth, and an uncertain ending.
Similar to his The Killer Inside Me...but in Pottsville (pop. 1280) the sheriff's dark side is centered around laziness and convenience more than pure evil, and we also get to follow his wacky romantic exploits with wife and two girlfriends. As such, this book seems lighter and more fun than that previous novel (which I remember as one of his darkest), but, if you think about it, it's just as chilling or worse. This really good book careens toward melodrama, strange depth, and an uncertain ending.
September 30, 2022
3.5 Stars
December 17, 2020
Ο Νικ Κόρει είναι ένας νωχελικός σερίφης σε μια μικρή πόλη, όπου περνάει την ώρα του τρώγοντας και πίνοντας σε ένα σπίτι που δεν του αρέσει, με μια σύζυγο που την παντρεύτηκε κατά λάθος και τον κάπως αργόστροφο αδελφό της. Όσο τα πράματα είναι ήρεμα ο Νικ συμβιώνει ήρεμα με τους 1280 κατοίκους της πόλης, αλλά μόλις όμως αρχίσουν οι πιέσεις μετατρέπεται σε έναν άγγελο θανάτου, έναν αιματοβαμμένο μεσσία που σκοτώνει αλλά και πείθει τους γύρω του να κάνουν το ίδιο, με το μοναδικό χάρισμα χειραγώγησης που διαθέτει.
Ο Τζιμ Τόμσον για άλλη μια φορά δημιουργεί έναν σκοτεινό χαρακτήρα και εστιάζει σε αυτόν. Δεν ωραιοποιεί σχεδόν τίποτα αλλά συνεχώς μας φέρνει πρόσωπο με πρόσωπο με την ωμή πραγματικότητα, θυμίζοντας η πραγματικότητα είναι σκληρή και κυρίως ότι δεν γνωρίζουμε ποτέ τι πραγματικά κρύβει μέσα του κάποιος. Ο συγγραφέας σπάει το κατεστημένο του καλού σερίφη/ντετέκτιβ/αστυνομικού της νουάρ πεζογραφίας και μας παρουσιάζει με τον δικό του συγγραφικό τρόπο έναν αντιήρωα που κινείται με μια δική του λογική και τον δικό του ηθικό κώδικα.
Τελειώνοντας το βιβλίο, η πιο σοκαριστική διαπίστωση που μπορεί να κάνει ο αναγνώστης είναι ότι άτομα σαν τον Νικ Κόρει κυκλοφορούν αναμεσά μας και ίσως είναι πιο κοντά μας από ότι φανταζόμαστε.
4/5
Ο Τζιμ Τόμσον για άλλη μια φορά δημιουργεί έναν σκοτεινό χαρακτήρα και εστιάζει σε αυτόν. Δεν ωραιοποιεί σχεδόν τίποτα αλλά συνεχώς μας φέρνει πρόσωπο με πρόσωπο με την ωμή πραγματικότητα, θυμίζοντας η πραγματικότητα είναι σκληρή και κυρίως ότι δεν γνωρίζουμε ποτέ τι πραγματικά κρύβει μέσα του κάποιος. Ο συγγραφέας σπάει το κατεστημένο του καλού σερίφη/ντετέκτιβ/αστυνομικού της νουάρ πεζογραφίας και μας παρουσιάζει με τον δικό του συγγραφικό τρόπο έναν αντιήρωα που κινείται με μια δική του λογική και τον δικό του ηθικό κώδικα.
Τελειώνοντας το βιβλίο, η πιο σοκαριστική διαπίστωση που μπορεί να κάνει ο αναγνώστης είναι ότι άτομα σαν τον Νικ Κόρει κυκλοφορούν αναμεσά μας και ίσως είναι πιο κοντά μας από ότι φανταζόμαστε.
4/5
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