Roughneck

SUMMARY: Incorrigible author Jim Thompson retraces his wild swath across America during the great Depression and World War II. Whether he's getting drunk in a funeral home or drafting a manuscript with the help of a big-hearted prostitute, Thompson is a mesmerizing guide to hard times--his country's and his own. Roughneck is pulp noir master Jim Thompson's quasi-autobiography of the wandering wild days of one of America's wildest wandering authors. Follow Thompson through the Great Depression, his young adulthood, marriage and family but with the apocryphal dark wit that is his trademark. He goes from riding the rails in the 30's to getting drunk while working in a morgue only to move on to odd jobs as a baker, a collector, even as a writer of labor history for the W.P.A. Absurd scenarios swirl around this man like the savage dust storms sweeping over the dried out prairie states he traveled. He tries to write the Great American Novel with the help of a prostitute with a heart of gold, hustles deadbeats, has bull sessions with bunglers and bagmen, con men and corpses. He'll take you through a tour of all the lowlife characters America has to offer. These are the people that make his fiction so real and vibrant. Roughneck is a brilliant tell-all, a sharp character study, and a unique look into the life of a true American original. Thompson may even be the best character in his long career of creating supremely rich characters. Thompson's life in Thompson's own words is as frightening and humorous a memoir as they come. By the time Jim Thompson was sixteen years old, he had been a newspaper boy, a burlesque show hawker, a plumber's helper, a comedian in two-reel pictures, a night bellboy in a luxury hotel and over a dozen other occupations. By the time he was eighteen, he was driving across America in a broken-down Ford without a penny to his name and his mother and his kid sister Freddie in tow, looking for just one more paycheck to keep them all alive. A bittersweet comedy of a hard-won American life, ROUGHNECK chronicles the many jobs, near-criminal escapades, and downright unlawful grifts of the man who would become one of crime fiction's most enduring writers, in a larger-than-life literary memoir?or wildly entertaining tall tale?as only Thompson could tell it. Hard times have never sounded so good

incorrigible Author Jim Thompson Retraces His Wild Swath Across America During The Great Depression And World War Ii. Whether He's Getting Drunk In A Funeral Home Or Drafting A Manuscript With The Help Of A Big-hearted Prostitute, Thompson Is A Mesmerizing Guide To Hard Times--his Country's And His Own.

library Journal

another Of Thompson's Autobiographical Titles And Supposedly True, Fans Know That Half Of This Is Inseparable From His Crime Writings. Whether Fact Or Fiction, This 1954 Title Makes For Fun Reading. Also Look For Thompson's Novel The Golden Gizmo (isbn 0-375-70032-3), Now Also Available From Vintage.

"Dames and damnation. Hunger and hell -- that was his destiny in a raw, violent world of crooks, barbarians, and burlesque queens, of alcohol and flesh. ... In an age of uproar and calamity, he seized life -- and tried to strangle it by sheer brute force. That's Roughneck: bold, blunt, brilliant." -- From back cover This fictionalized account retraces the author's zigzag path across the prairie states in the 1930s and 1940s as he consorts with corpses and con men, outruns railroad bulls, shakes down debtors, and writes labor history for the W.P.A.