This book was amazing – it's very much a product of its era, Though, with the attitudes of society towards the mentally ill very prevalent. The main character is a drifter who has been in and out of mental hospitals for many years, and who lives an aimless life. He has difficulty relating to others and can become violent at the least provocation, but he is not inherently evil or malicious. He is also very naïve, and not the most intelligent person out there, though he is much smarter than the other characters tend to give HIm credit for. He gets drawn into a plot to kidnap a child, manipulated by a shady character who is using him as a patsy to set up if things go wrong. In order to survive, and get his own revenge, he needs to be more clever than the people he is working with, and there are lots of little twists and turns along the way. The ending is very powerful and disturbing, and I find it lingering with me for a long time after reading. This is the first book I've read by Jim Thompson, who has been highly recommended to me. I'm going to seek out some more of his books. One of the things I liked especially was not knowing, in the end, whether or not the main character's perceptions were really valiD. Jim Thompson is to psychosis what Philip K. Dick is to paranoia. That is to say: The American Master of…Bill Collins is a good-looking ex-boxer who knows he has a problem with his temper. When he breaks out of a mental institution, he has to hit a man over the head to steal his car. Hates to do it, but you know who that goes. His line of bullshit that he thinks will help him get to the coast is so weak that no one buys it. But Fay Anderson, the lush he meets in a roadhouse, sees that he has other possibilities. Soon he’s involved in a poorly planned kidnapping plot with Kay and the weirdly unbelievable Uncle Bud. But weirdly unbelievable goes with the Thompson territory. In fact, as I recall, it is the Thompson territory.I read most of Thompson’s1950’s novels twenty-five years ago during their first round of rediscovery, or at least the first I was aware of. There is clunky dialogue, sleaze, insanity, gallons of alcohol, and surprising moments of grace. Of course things are going to turn out badly and people will die. The fact that one of those will be the first person narrator isn’t a problem for Thompson
What do You think about È Già Buio, Dolcezza (1955)?
No one writes a sympathetic scumbag character like Jim Thompson.
—anicentx
Jim Thompson, from style to plot, what's not to like?
—sari
