RARA-AVIS: The Killer Inside Me

E J M Duggan (ejmd@mcmail.com)
Fri, 13 Feb 1998 09:55:28 -0800 On Thu, 12 Feb 1998, "Frank D" <bearlodge@email.msn.com> wrote:
>
> I thought I had better jump in here with a few of my impressions after
> reading The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson before we leave this book
> behind us.

Nice one Frank, I can get in your slipstream, 'cos I just got through
with this one too.

> Thompson doesn't waste any time letting you know what sort of person Lou is.
> He does lull you a bit with the folksy aphorisms, but breaks away from the
> initial scene in the restaurant to relate his first visit to Joyce Lakeland
> during which he beats her badly. Of course it appears that Joyce is a
> little warped too, because she pleads for his love, at least sexual love as
> he ministers to her.

I found this rather nasty actually. It is quite misogynstic and,
without suggesting there is any direct link between a fictional
character and authorial biography, Jim Thompson appears to be pretty
fucked up, pretty nasty, or both. That said, however, I stayed the
distance.

> Lou has read Jung,
> Freud, Krafft-Ebing and others. He apparently is able to read German,
> Spanish, Italian, French.

I thought this was stretching credibility a little far, but I suppose I
need to remember the hokum and red neck stuff [is it ok to say that?] is
all part of Lou's elaborate bluff.

> I have several questions about things that I didn't completely understand
> and will appreciate any of your thoughts on something I must have missed.
> When Lou first visits Joyce Lakeland with the intent to tell her to leave
> town she shows him a permit from Fort Worth. Is this a permit for
> prostitution, which is my surmise?

No, it was for the gun that Lou saw in a drawer.

> I never fully understood the character of the sheriff
> Bob Maples. He's obviously very much under the influence of Conway, the
> owner of the construction company. He turns quiet when they take Joyce
> Lakeland to Fort Worth for treatment and is never quite the same after they
> return. He goes downhill for the rest of the story until his death.
> Obviously he is physically ill but I suspect that there is more to it than
> that.

I think Maples functions as a sap---he's really taken in by Ford's lies
and bullshit characteristics---and in a sense 'stands in for' the
honest, witless, small town man that Lou despises. Pappas Snr. is the
same.
There are other characters (is it Rothman?) who tell Ford to cut the
crap.
We don't learn what Conway says to Maples on the trip to FW, but from
Lou's p.o.v. there is a change in Maples. Perhaps Maples is told/later
learns the truth about Ford, which is a contributory factor in his
subsequent suicide?

ED

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