Bruce Townley (btownley@sirius.com)
Mon, 6 Dec 1999 07:40:11 -0800 (PST)
On Sun, 05 Dec 1999 at 22:14 Bob Toomey sent: Re: RARA-AVIS:
Dumb Question by a Non-Hard-Boiled Reader
[commenting on James Rogers' earlier post]
>Jim Thompson is mostly an absurdist. The ending of
THE GETAWAY -- excised in
>the
>movie versions -- is a masterpiece of absurdist
horror, a descent into a
>paranoid
>comic inferno, like something out of Ambrose Bierce.
Actually, that ending
>would
>make a very interesting movie in itself. POP. 1280 is
an absurd nightmare,
>another descent, this time into madness.
THE KILLER INSIDE ME is, of course, a tale with an eerily
lucid first-person narration by a madman, taking this plot
device even further. Much as I love Thompson's stuff, the
ending to THE GETAWAY always has struck me as an act of
desperation slappped together in the face of a looming
deadline set by whatever cheap paperback house he was writing
for at the time. Desperate but, as you say, a brilliant
improvisation.
Bruce T. = btownley@sirius.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Toad-skin: A one-dollar bill.
-DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN UNDERWORLD LINGO, 1950 edition
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