Re: RARA-AVIS: The Devil and Jim Thompson

From: Michael Robison ( miker_zspider@yahoo.com)
Date: 25 Aug 2007


Lawrence Coates wrote:

I recently read Pop. 1280, following the discussions of the group, and I'm wondering if someone can help me with the ending. I was all ready to accept the main character, Nick Corey, as a kind of minor demon (in the same vein as the devil who reveals himself to the middle Karamazov brother). Hence the name Nick. But then he seems to claim he is Jesus. Or Judas. Or both. Any ideas?

**************** Nick Corey sees himself as a Christ-figure, or maybe as Christ himself in the Second Coming. I don't think that Thompson is portraying him as such.

Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov might be noir. I haven't read it. I've read Crime and Punishment and Notes from the Underground and I thought both of them were noirish. Other people have described the noirish characteristics of Dostoevsky's writing, including Paul Duncan in Noir Fiction and Charles Willeford in an essay on the immobilized man.

miker

       
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