I said, "There's just one way you can help, Stuke. I—"
"Huh-uh," he said, firmly. "That's out, keed. I couldn't do it. I ain't goin' to. So forget it. You're goin' to snap out of it, Brownie. You're goin' to get your mind off of that—off of yourself, and start thinkin' about something else. That—it ain't everything. It—"
"Isn't it?" I said. "Isn't it rather easy for you to talk, Stuke?"
"It'd be easier not to, keed. A hell of a lot easier."
"But you don't know! You don't know what it's like to—"
"Keed"—he tapped me on the chest—"don't tell me what I don't know. You'd be talking for the next forty years and we ain't got much time. You've got to get cleaned up, get yourself something to eat and a little sleep. You've got to be in here on the job in the morning, and you've got to work harder than you ever worked before. You're going to go on swinging your weight against the rats and the cheaters in this town, but this time you're going to swing it the right way. It ain't going to be a needle job. It's going to mean something. .. . Remember what I told you the other night? Well, I meant it. If the graft wasn't here to take, I wouldn't be taking it."
"But you don't know—I can't! God, how can I?"
"You ain't got no choice," he said.
His eyes were soft, sympathetic, friendly. They were firm and unwavering.
A lower tier Jim Thompson novel about a bitter and cynical journalist worried that people––especially women––will learn his secret: that his dick was shot off during the war. It's a secret he's willing to kill for...
I wasn't entirely onboard with how the three murders were solved, or rather explained away. He ends up absolved of guilt because he didn't actually kill any of the women, just assaulted them, blacked out conveniently while something else tragic happened to them, then disposed of the bodies.
What I really liked is how the protagonist narrator starts off so cynical and hateful but by the end is able to redirect his anger in a more productive manner and thus find a reason to live. Wish there had been more of an exploration of what I came to think of as the Red Harvest element though: the protagonist uses the police investigations into the murders he (thinks he) committed to clean up crime in Pacific City. There's also a genuine example of friendship, rare in a Jim Thompson novel, with the idiot cop who sticks by the protagonist straight to the end, and who the protagonist comes to appreciate for the smidgen of idealism he's held onto despite his corruption. It brought me back to what I was trying to get at with
The Name of the Game is Death, how all the great noir writers have a sort of civic sensibility. Here again it's moving from a disinterested universe to something more hospitable, precisely by entering and engaging with a social or civic part of life.
There are some great Jim Thompson bits here. A housewife's absolutely disgusting 1950s meal of chopped wieners in mayonnaise which both fits with the impotent phallic theme and shows that Thompson knew exactly how the era's cultural depravities would be remembered. There's also a great part where the narrative pauses for a page to allow Thompson to use his narrator to attack America's self-defeating love of landlords. More than anything though it's Thompson's unique voice that makes this worth reading, despite its faults.
I know better than to say the hardships of our era will produce great art, but man it would be great if something pushed us back to that attitude of the best noir writers (Chandler, Hammett & Jim Thompson) of morality without being moralizing.
Details
Title: The Nothing Man
Author: Jim Thompson
Format: ebook
Length: 224 pages
Date: November 1, 2011 (first published 1954)
Publisher: Mullholland Books
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