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Jim Thompson: Sleep with the Devil by Michael J. McCauley

1994; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 28; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wal.1994.0068

1948-7142

Christopher Metress,

Crime and Detective Fiction Studies

Reviews 359 romance writing; whereas Fremont is instructive (in a negative sense) as one capable of imaginatively erasing the natives as he promoted his sense of mani­ fest destiny. On the whole, I enjoyed Greenfield’s book and learned some literary historyfrom it. Ifeel lesssatisfiedwith the “narrative] ”part. It’sregrettable that we know so little ofthe early explorations ofthis continent, and Greenfield has done quite a bit ofgood on that count. RUSSELL BURROWS WeberState University Jim Thompson: Sleep with the Devil By Michael J. McCauley. (New York: The Mysterious Press, 1991. 340 pages, $19.95.) In 1981, Geoffrey O’Brien called Jim Thompson the “Most Neglected Hardboiled Writer” in America, lamenting the fact that all twenty-nine of Thompson’s novels were currently out of print. By the end of the decade, however, VanityFairproclaimed thatThompson was “due to become the coolest dead writer in rotation,”and by the beginning ofthe 1990s VanityFair’s predic­ tion proved correct—Jim Thompson’s novels were everywhere. The inexpen­ sive paperback reissues put out by Black Lizard Press in the mid-’80s were repackaged in 1990 byRandom House as part ofits lavishVintage Crime Series. Furthermore, 1990 marked the appearance of three films based on Thompson’sworks: The Grifters; AfterDark, My Sweet, and TheKill-Off. As a result, readers and criticsfrom Paris to Hollywoodwere soon proclaimingJim Thomp­ son their favorite suspense writer. Michael J. McCauley’s fim Thompson: Sleep with the Devil is the second biography of America’s most hardboiled novelist (see alsoJim Thompson: The KillerInside Him, byCollins and Gorman). In his introduction, McCauley notes that there is an unfortunate “dearth of information about Thompson’sdomes­ tic life”because, while helpful in offering him some “preliminary facts”about the novelist, Thompson’sfamily “offers [only] a bland version ofJim’s life and character from which they refuse to waver, despite outside evidence to the contrary.”Thus, McCauley argues, we must turn to Thompson’sfiction to flesh out his life and, fortunately, “it’snot surprising to discover thatJim Thompson was constantlywriting about himself, and his own life. . . .The least likelybooks prove to be ‘autobiographical’in the most unusual ways.”In the chapters that follow, then, McCauley sifts through Thompson’sfiction in search ofthe “real” man. McCauleyapproacheswith skepticism the revival ofinterest in Thompson’s work. Noting that “much ofthe Thompson mania [ofthe late ’80s] seemedjust the latest hip trend,”McCauleyspeculates that only “timewilltell ifThompson’s current popularitywill serve hisfictionwell, or, like hisundistinguished publish­ ing history and resultant pigeonholing asapulp writer, onlyfurther obscure the murky intentions and subtle ambition of his writing.”The pigeonholing that McCauley laments is, with the exception of a half-dozen novels, warranted. There isno escaping the fact thatjim Thompson wrote some excruciatinglybad pulp fiction. But there isalso no escaping the factthat he was an interesting and original voice in American literature, and that, as McCauley convincingly ar­ gues, such novels as TheKillerInsideMe, SavageNight, A Hellofa Woman', and Pop. 1280demand critical reconsideration. While this literary biography is a first step towards understanding more fully the achievements, and failures, ofJim Thompson, there are some faults in McCauley’s work. In the early chapters, in which he attempts to get at Thompson’s biography via Thompson’s fiction, McCauley is on very shaky— albeit unavoidable—ground, and sometimes McCauley’s plot summaries be­ come tiresome and his critical observations about the novels a bit repetitive. The biography would have also benefited from a bibliography of secondary sources. Overall, however, McCauley has performed a valuable service. The appendices,which provide a bibliographyofThompson’spublished fiction and include fragments from and summaries of Thompson’s unfinished/unpublished work, should alone serve as a solid and suggestive foundation for further, much needed study. Moreover, McCauley writes clearly and evenhandedly about awriter notable for his “murky”—some would say“obscene”—intentions. At the end of his study, McCauley concludes that ‘Jim Thompson’sunyielding books are notjust great pieces of genre writing, but powerful, subversive, and yes, diagnostic novels of a people with uncertain vital signs—rotting awayfrom the inside out.” In fim Thompson: Sleep With theDevil, McCauley has written an unyielding and, yes, diagnostic biography of a writer whose vital signs we are only beginning to understand. CHRISTOPHER METRESS Samford University...