Jim Thompson | Guy Portman's Blog

5 Books that Affected Me

Oct 23 2015

All of us have read books that have affected us in some way. This week’s blog post is devoted to 5 books by 5 different authors that have affected me, and perhaps influenced my own writing in some small way (3 novels to date).

Post Office by Charles Bukowski

Post Office is a humorous, semi-autobiographical account of its author’s years of toil at the United States Postal Service. Although its protagonist Chinaski is a crude and cynical man with a misogynistic outlook, it is his intrinsic humanness that has endeared him to many readers, myself included.

My Review: Henry Chinaski is a heavy drinking, womanising, race track frequenting low-life, who works at the post office. The story follows his menial existence of 12 night shifts, sorting post, delivering mail, observing his fellow colleagues and facing countless disciplinary measures, … (more)

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

Orwell’s first published novel is about the author’s time spent living amongst the destitute in Paris and later London. The book’s vivid descriptions and captivating prose give the reader an appreciation of the nature of urban poverty in the early 20th century.

My Review: George Orwell’s first published novel, Down and Out in Paris and London, is an account of the author’s time spent living in abject poverty, first in Paris and later in London. Having spent his savings and with tutoring work having come to … (more)

The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Old Man And The Sea is a novella about endeavour, endurance and man’s place within nature. Written in the author’s trademark simple, concise, economy of prose style, this is a carefully constructed, moving and memorable work that is replete with symbolism.

My Review: Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba, this is a tale about an old man, a boy and a colossal Marlin. The old man, Santiago, is a veteran fisherman, who is on a run of bad luck having been 84 days… (more)

The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson

The Killer Inside Me is a thought provoking, suspenseful and unrelentingly bleak first person narrative about a psychopath, in which the author adeptly employs suspense and realistic, simple prose. It is without doubt the most disturbing work of fiction I have read to date.

My Review: 29-year-old Lou Ford is a Deputy Sheriff from the West Texas town of Central City. Lou, who is in a long-term relationship with childhood sweetheart Amy Stanton, is a hard-working, trustworthy, simple character with a keenness for clichés; at least this is … (more)

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Set during the Great Depression, this Pullitzer Prize winning book follows the Joads, a poor family from Oklahoma, travelling to California in search of a better life. If there is a better novel in this world than The Grapes of Wrath I am yet to read it.

My Review: Unfortunately there is no review. I read The Grapes of Wrath prior to starting this blog. No doubt many of you have read it anyway. I know Americans study it in school, and perhaps for that reason aren’t as fond of it as I. There are reviews of 5 Steinbeck books in the review section of this blog.

8 Posthumously Famous Authors

May 01 2015

Here are 8 posthumously famous authors.

Franz Kafka

(July 3rd 1883 – June 3rd 1924)

Franz Kafka is today regarded as one of the greatest European writers of the 20th Century. Born in Prague in what was then The Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kafka did not find fame during his lifetime, and what little of his writing was published received only scant attention from the public. Kafka, though always committed to his craft, spent his days working in a variety of roles in the insurance sector, and later managing a family-owned asbestos factory.

Click here to read my review of The Metamorphosis and Other Stories.

Emily Dickinson

(December 10th 1830 – May 15th 1886)

Emily Dickinson was a prolific poet with over 1700 poems to her name. During her lifetime Dickinson had fewer than a dozen poems published, and it was only after her death that she became famous. Her very private nature was undoubtedly one reason for her lack of acclaim during her lifetime. Today she is remembered as an iconic poet and one of the most acclaimed American female writers of all time.

Karl Stig-Erland ‘Stieg’ Larsson

(August 15th 1954 – November 9th 2004)

Larsson was a renowned journalist and an independent researcher. However, at the time of his death in 2004 aged 50, his Millennium Series were unpublished manuscripts sitting in his house. The trilogy saw the author achieve posthumous fame. In 2008 Larsson was the second highest selling author in the world. The Millennium Series has been adapted for film and television. To date over 60 million copies of the Millennium Series have been sold worldwide.

Sylvia Plath

(October 27th 1932 – February 11th 1963)

Sylvia Plath was a well-regarded poet during her short-life. Examples of her early success included winning The Glascock Prize for poetry in 1955. Plath, who had a history of depression, committed suicide in 1963. Her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, published a month before her death in the UK and in the US in 1971, went on to achieve critical acclaim. In 1982 Plath won the coveted Pulitzer Prize posthumously for The Collected Poems.

Click here to read my review of The Bell Jar.

Jane Austen

(December 16th 1775 – July 18th 1817)

Jane Austen achieved a degree of recognition during her lifetime, but she received little personal renown, due in part because she published anonymously. After her death her books became steadily more popular. It was the 20th Century that saw Jane Austen’s meteoric rise to iconic status. Today the author’s fame has transcended the literary world, evidence of which is her being ranked number 70 out of ‘100 Greatest Britons of all time’.

Jim Thompson

(September 27th 1906 – April 7th 1977)

Thompson is best remembered for his paperback pulp novels. He became well known for The Killer Inside Me (1952), and later wrote and co-wrote Hollywood screenplays. This success was only fleeting however and when he died in 1977 he was largely forgotten. Today he is widely acclaimed as being one of the greatest crime writers of all time. His novels are back in print and two of them have been adapted for the silver screen.

Click on the links to read my reviews of The Killer Inside Me and Savage Night.

Henry David Thoreau

(July 12th 1817 – May 6th 1862)

Henry David Thoreau’s prodigious writing output consists of nearly 20 volumes of writing. He self-published one of his book’s, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, but only sold 300 of the 1000 copies that he had printed. It was only after his death in 1862 that he began to receive the attention that he deserved. The event that was to herald this transformation was the publishing of his journal in 1906.

Edgar Allan Poe

(January 19th 1809 – October 7th 1849)

Edgar Allan Poe was an author, poet, literary critic and editor who flirted with fame for much of his working life. If it were not for his rather premature death, the cause of which is debated to this day, Poe might have become famous. Today he is remembered not only as being one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, but is also generally considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre.

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Posthumously Famous Authors

Jun 28 2013

The following blog post is dedicated to two authors, who became more famous after they died.

Jane Austen

(December 16th 1775 – July 18th 1817)

Notable works: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Emma (1816), Persuasion (1818)

Though Jane Austen achieved a degree of recognition during her lifetime for her prodigious literary talents, she received little personal renown, due in part because she published anonymously. After the author’s death her books became steadily more popular though none of them achieved best-seller status during the 19th Century.

It was the 20th Century that saw Jane Austen meteoric rise to iconic status. During the early decades of the century there was an increase in the academic study of her books and then in 1940 came the first film adaptation of one of her works, the MGM production of Pride and Prejudice, starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson. From the 1970s The BBC were making dramatisations of her books, the most successful being the 1990s adaptations of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. These only served to fuel Jane Austen fever, which to this day shows no signs of abating. Not only are her books adored by readers around the world and studied in schools, but her fame has transcended the literary world, evidence of which is her being ranked as the 70th out of ‘100 Greatest Britains’ of all time.

All of which would no doubt have made the bashful author blush if she were still around today. However there is normally a down side to fame, in this instance this may come in the form of the latest adaptation of her work, the soon to be filmed, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Jim Thompson

(September 27th 1906 – April 7th 1977)

Notable works: The Killer Inside Me (1952), The Getaway (1959), The Grifters (1963)

The American novelist and screenwriter is best known for his paperback pulp novels. Jim Thompson started writing for magazines as early as the 1920s and later turned to crime fiction in the 40s’. Despite his prolific output (wrote 20 books in the 1950s alone), he also worked as a journalist to support his family and prodigious alcohol intake. Thompson became well known for The Killer Inside Me (1952), which remains to this day probably his most acclaimed work. He later wrote and co-wrote Hollywood screenplays for prestigious directors, including the iconic Stanley Kubrick, as well as having two of his books adapted for the cinema during his lifetime.

Jim Thompson’s success was however only fleeting and when he died in 1977 he was largely forgotten, his work out of print in his home country and his legacy appeared to be little more than a footnote in the history of pulp fiction.

Today Jim Thompson is widely regarded as one of the greatest crime writers of all time. Not only are his novels back in print but two of them have been adapted for the silver screen, The Getaway (1994) starring Alex Baldwin and Kim Basinger and The Killer Inside Me (2010) starring Casey Affleck.

It appears that Jim Thompson may well have been anticipating future success when he asked his wife to look after his manuscripts and copyrights shortly before his death.

Click on the links to read reviews for The Killer Inside Me and The Getaway