Pop. 1280

Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson is a concise, at times uncomfortable but often funny story set in the small Texas town of Pottsville during the early 1900s. Sheriff Nick Corey is the good ol’ boy who shows the world a simple, slightly dim down-home front but we discover very quickly that inside he is a constantly scheming psychopath. He all the more terrifying for his joviality and glad-handing. He is coming up for re-election and will do anything to ensure that he is reinstated as sheriff. This includes turning a blind eye to crime if the perpetrator is an influential voter, instigating a smear campaign against his opponent and systematically removing anyone who could be a problem for him.

By the end of the book the sheriff has left a trail show more of six bodies behind him and the ambiguous ending leaves us uncertain as to what is going to happen next although I wouldn’t bet against the devious sheriff. Corrupt sheriffs appear to be a theme that author Thompson enjoys exploring and in this book he also manages to bring up racism, classism and sexism as well.

Pop. 1280 is full of twisted thinking and bad decisions that gave it that fun feeling of not knowing what was going to happen next. Written in colorful and descriptive language, Pop. 1280 is a unique and unforgettable story. show less

A small town sheriff in Arkansas goes to a lot of trouble to maintain his leisurely lifestyle.

This is an extremely dark book. Much darker than you'd assume from the description on the cover, and it only gets darker the more you think about it. The view of the world represented here is bleak. The book deploys the violence and sex typical of its pulpy roots, but it's not a guilty pleasure here, or even a titillation. It's more like a condemnation of everything: the reader, the author, the genre, the world. Dang.

Nick Corey is the lazy and cowardly high sheriff of a little southern town. He believes that he's kept in office because the town likes that he doesn't get into anyone's business, even the crooks. It isn't until Nick starts seeing that he's expected to do his job or he'll be unemployed that he starts forming plans about the local pimps, the wife-beating husband of his mistress, the morals of his other mistress, the patronizing sheriff of the next county and the mean wife who tricked Nick into marrying her. Turns out that Nick wasn't stupid, he just needed to be motivated into action.
Thompson was on fire when he wrote this one. Sheriff Nick is like Sheriff Lou Ford's lost brother and it's delightful to watch Nick praise the Lord after show more all his evil deeds. show less

(2025) Quick read. I didn’t want to put it down. Nick was hilarious and a ridiculous character. He acted ignorant even though he always had a crazy plan. The ending left a lot to be desired though. It seemed like everything he did was for nothing, by his own admission.

Another masterful work of crime noir from Jim Thompson. He operates on two levels, here. First, there is the matter of the story, the plot. Pop. 1280 fits firmly within its genre. But despite the recurring iconography and conventions of that genre, it still creates one surprise and shock after another. Twist upon twist occurs, until the ultimate twist at book's end completely throws the reader for a loop.

The second level is that of psychology. The protagonist, Sheriff Nick Corey, will immediately remind readers of Thompson's other masterpiece, The Killer Inside Me, and of its hero, Sheriff Lou Ford. In fact, Ford and Corey are forged out of the same satanic pit, the same psychopathology, the same madness, and amoral abyss. I also wonder show more if there is something of an American Rasputin at play in this work. For the only clue to the time in which Pop. 1280 takes place is a line in which Corey wonders whether the Russian Czar will be overthrown by the Bolsheviks. It is something, at least, upon which I could not shake myself as I read on.

A final comparison between The Killer Inside Me and Pop. 1280 can be seen in their their level of descriptiveness. The Killer Inside Me is a much denser work, its psychology much more layered than that revealed in Pop. 1280. Lou Ford's evil acts grab out and clutch the reader, leaving him gasping at Ford's violence and brutality. Nick Corey's violence, on the other hand, almost seems to take place off stage. And the dialogue, the narration, and the style of prose almost seems lyrical. Corey, the malevolent mastermind, the ultimate manipulator, achieves his acts as if an angel, one part of lightness but mostly of darkness. He becomes the modern day Lucifer, and Thompson becomes a contemporary Milton. show less

Another fascinating character study by Big Jim Thompson. And another whirlwind of enjoyment on my part.

It's a damned shame that Thompson didn't get more credit when he was alive. The man's unique vision of aberrant psychology is fascinating and frighteningly astute, especially for a 'dimestore crime novel' writer from the mid-20th century. His use of unconventional literary devices (especially in-genre at the time) was also a hair shy of revolutionary and always serves to amuse, surprise, and stupefy the reader.

Two colors exist in Thompson's stilted world: gray and black. And every character in every book fits into one or the other, usually leaning towards the darker end. Greed, graft, laziness, selfishness, homicidal rage, show more deceit...the entire gamut is run and it becomes increasingly difficult to sympathize with any of the characters that populate his grizzly world.

Nonetheless, he somehow manages to paint Sheriff Nick Corey (a sort of deeply-disturbed Barney Fife run amok protagonist) in vaguely sympathetic shades. Or so he played out in my estimation, anyway. Your mileage may vary dependent on the state of your moral compass. show less

This was a fun book. I did not feel that the "relationships" that the protagonist acquired were very well described (basically he meets a girl, they have sex immediately, then they fall head over heels in love with him). Although now that I think about it, it could be that his perception is so deformed that he thinks that his relationships develop in that way. Anyway if you are into Jim Thompson, dark fiction, and/or novels with sneaky bad protagonists this will be a good book to pick up.