Re: RARA-AVIS: Jim Thompson, Himes McIlvanney

From: Jeff Vorzimmer ( jvorzimmer@austin.rr.com)
Date: 02 Aug 2004


> Along with the four Grubers I mentioned in another post, I found four
> Jim Thompson reprints by Mysterious Press. Can anyone tell me if any of
> these are any good: Kill-Off, Rip-Off, Golden Gizmo and the
> autobiographical Bad Boy (although isn't he supposed to have take great
> liberties with facts here?).

Bad Boy is great. Read it as if it were a novel. I think it's a prequel to Roughneck. Kill-Off and Rip-Off are good--not great--if you're a fan of Thompson. Golden Gizmo (along with King Blood) is probably the worse novel Thompson ever wrote. It's just plain bizarre. If Thompson ever was a junky, this would have been the fruits of that period. It features a talking dog. Need I say more? Maybe if you read it as some kind of twisted Beat literature, it works at some level . . .maybe.

Jeff V.

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