Jim Thompson Quotes

James Myers Thompson was an American author and screenwriter, known for his hardboiled crime fiction.

Thompson wrote more than thirty novels, the majority of which were original paperback publications, published from the late-1940s through mid-1950s. Despite some positive critical notice—notably by Anthony Boucher in The New York Times—he was little-recognized in his lifetime. Only after death did Thompson's literary stature grow. In the late 1980s, several of his novels were re-published in the Black Lizard series of re-discovered crime fiction.

His best-regarded works include The Killer Inside Me, Savage Night, A Hell of a Woman and Pop. 1280. In these works, Thompson turned the derided crime genre into literature and art, featuring unreliable narrators, odd structure, and the quasi-surrealistic inner narratives of the last thoughts of his dying or dead characters. A number of Thompson's books were adapted as popular films, including The Getaway and The Grifters.

The writer R.V. Cassill has suggested that of all crime fiction, Thompson's was the rawest and most harrowing; that neither Dashiell Hammett nor Raymond Chandler nor Horace McCoy, author of the bleak They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, ever "wrote a book within miles of Thompson". Similarly, in the introduction to Now and on Earth, Stephen King says he most admires Thompson's work because "The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn't know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave lets inherent in the foregoing: he let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it."Thompson was called a "Dimestore Dostoevsky" by writer Geoffrey O'Brien. Film director Stephen Frears, who directed an adaptation of Thompson's The Grifters as 1990's The Grifters, also identified elements of Greek tragedy in his themes. Wikipedia  

✵ 27. September 1906 – 7. April 1977

Works

The Killer Inside Me
The Killer Inside Me
Jim Thompson
A Hell of a Woman
A Hell of a Woman
Jim Thompson
Pop. 1280
Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson: 5   quotes 2   likes

Famous Jim Thompson Quotes

“A weed is a plant out of place.”

Source: The Killer Inside Me

Similar authors

Frank Herbert photo
Frank Herbert 158
American writer
William Saroyan photo
William Saroyan 190
American writer
Ray Bradbury photo
Ray Bradbury 401
American writer
William Faulkner photo
William Faulkner 214
American writer
Julio Cortázar photo
Julio Cortázar 29
Argentinian writer
David Foster Wallace photo
David Foster Wallace 185
American fiction writer and essayist
Pearl S.  Buck photo
Pearl S. Buck 95
American writer
Charles Bukowski photo
Charles Bukowski 555
American writer
Joseph Campbell photo
Joseph Campbell 140
American mythologist, writer and lecturer
Dale Carnegie photo
Dale Carnegie 98
American writer and lecturer