4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Only Famous After Dying, January 20, 2007
This review is from: Jim Thompson: Sleep with the Devil (Hardcover)
It was a tough choice giving McCauley just four stars instead of five for "Sleep With the Devil"; I would have done so were it not for the greater, lengthier work of his friend and colleague Robert Polito, author of the much longer "Savage Art", which although published after "Devil", has much more detail and insightful critical appraisal of this great artist who struggled through poverty and the Depression, false starts, writing for the WPA in Oklahoma, and, in the 1940s and 1950s, cheap detective magazine journalism (love to have some of those!). He finally began dealing with Hollywood as co-screenwriter for the Great War epic "Paths of Glory". (Director Stanley Kubrick robbed him of his true due credit). We also see him writing an episode of TV's "Dr. Kildare", the pilot for "Ironside" with Raymond Burr, and most significantly, his greatest screen treatment, the Danteesque "The Getaway" with Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw. There since have been several other Thompson films, all posthumous, such as his epic novel "The Killer Inside Me" (Stacey Keach), "After Dark, My Sweet" (Bruce Dern), and rivaling "Getaway", his masterpiece "The Grifters" with Angelica Houston. Thompson published around 25 or so novels, most of which he received one or two thousand dollars for. Look for his opus works "Pop. 1280", the four-novel anthology "Hardcore", and his magnificent short story collection highlighted by its title story "First This World, Then The Fireworks" (also made into a movie), a great story which has two different endings, the second perhaps made more brutal and clarified by an alternate conclusion by modern mystery great Max Alan Collins. Thompson had a fascinating life; his first two novels, "Now and on Earth" and "Heed the Thunder" were quite autobiographical, a voice searching in the wilderness to find itself, before darkness came to visit and captured his soul; see my review of "Now" for details. The first two books don't really withstand the test of time and are best left to Thompson scholars and completists. About his only contemporary I would care to compare to him would be the great Charles Willeford; both of these authors received only posthumous critical acclaim, in part due to the efforts of writer Barry Gifford, founder of Black Lizard Press, a great source of Thompson, Willeford, and many other writers of the stark noir genre of 1940-1960, that "golden age" when a thousand bucks a book would put bread and meat on the table for almost a year. "Sleep With the Devil" is an excellent, very readable biography, and may even serve as a great intoduction to Jim Thompson for the currently uninitiated. By the way, the French loved him as they did all the great American pulp writers, whose works they immortalized and preserved in the famed paperbacks "Serie Noir". Although Amazon lists this title as "currently unavailable," it advertises 47 separate vendors as having this book in both new and unused condition.
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