I finished Domenic Stansberry's MANIFESTO FOR THE DEAD
several days ago and have a couple of questions for him about
it.
First, though, let me say I liked it very much. It's about
Jim Thompson, making up an incident in his late life where he
gets mixed up in murder, and Thompson's one of my favourite
writers. He wrote thirty novels, with an incredible run of
thirteen from 1952-1955, including AFTER DARK, MY SWEET and
THE KILLER INSIDE ME. Anyone like that should end up in a
comfortable old age, living off royalties (as I hope all the
writers here will), but Thompson had it rough, as he had all
his life, and died poor. Admiring readers can't make up the
endings they want for the writers they like.
So a story about Thompson won't be a cheery one. For all the
boozing and money problems, though, there's a close
relationshop with his wife Alberta, and anyone who knows
Thompson will be rooting for him. I don't know what people
will think of it if they don't know Thompson, but those who
do know that as he said would happen, about ten years after
he died he got famous. His books got back into print and some
good movies were made from them (especially THE GRIFTERS).
MANIFESTO FOR THE DEAD is long before that, when he had
trouble making the rent.
Domenic, how did you come to write about Thompson? What made
you decide to use him as a character, and how did you get
into his personal life so much? It seems like a very real
picture of him and Alberta.
Also, one passage that struck me was said by Lieutenant Mann,
the policeman (who later pulls a Lou Ford imitation):
"I got
a chance to look at some of those books of yours.
And I
been wondering. They got much biography in them?
Auto, I
mean. Tales of the self." Thompson looked at
him
blankly. "I mean, you seem like a nice guy. And
I ask
myself, well, all of us, we got something a little
weird
inside. I say, okay, so it's there inside him too.
Then I
wonder, what's it like? You know, to be thinking
those
kinds of things you think. A man up to his neck
in a
pile of shit. A woman cutting off her husband's
privates
with a piece of glass. A man hitting his
girlfriend
with his fist. In the gut. Hitting her so
hard
her stomach bursts. That blood bursts out her mouth
like
some kind of star exploding between her teeth.
It
makes me wonder.... So don't you ever worry, the
things
you write, just describing things like that,
back
there in the recesses, about what might happen?
You
contemplate a thing long enough, you describe it--
you
make it part of the world. And some things, maybe
they
should be left alone."
Thompson doesn't have an answer. Do you? I wonder if Mr.
Starr and Ms. Hendricks and other writers get the same
question, and how they answer it.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : www.miskatonic.org : www.frbr.org
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