Pop. 1280

"Pop. 1280" is a novel by Jim Thompson (1906 - 1977) first published in 1964. Although not in print at the time of Thompson's death (none of his works were), "Pop. 1280" is now available as part of Orion's Crim] Masterworks series, a fact testament to the gradual rehabilitation and recognition of Thompson's literary legacy. While a clear exponent of a particularly bleak species of American hard-boiled crime fiction, Thompson's work exhibits experimental flourishes that align it with literary (as opposed to genre) fiction, occasional surrealist episodes. Thompson was particularly fond of the unreliable narrator as a story-telling device, and "Pop. 1280" offers an outstanding instance of this.

Plot

"Pop. 1280" is narrated in the first person by Nick Corey, high sheriff of Pottsville County. With a population of "1280 souls", Potts is a listless backwater, "47th largest county in the state," - precisely which state is never given, but the story is evidently set in the American South or Southwest. Interestingly, the timing of the book is not contemporary, and suggestions are that Nick's tale dates from around the Russian Revolution in 1917.

Corey is self-presented as a something of a genial fool: simplistic, over-accommodating and harmless to a fault (given that he is the town's sole law enforcement official). Indeed, many of the novel's early chapters are related in a fine comic style more conducive to farce or comedy of errors than anything to do with the dark psychoses of crime. From the outset Nick's problems seem relatively harmless ones: chiefly the managing of his shrewish wife and idiot brother-in-law while conducting several affairs in the town; the difficulties of an election campaign against a more worthy opponent; the negotiation of undesirable elements within Pottsville town; and the evasion of any kind of work or exertion that is central to Nick's moral condition as we first encounter it. However, throughout the course of a finely-structured work, the comedic tone is increasingly attenuated as it becomes clear to the reader that Nick is more cunning, ruthless and unhinged than any of the other parties in the story, which eventually plumbs the sort of moral depths that will be familiar to readers of other Thompson novels.

Adaptations

Was made into the French film, "Coup de Torchon" by Bertrand Tavernier in 1981.