> 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.
>
A number of years back, I had the idea of writing a series of
four or five crime novels emulating classic noir styles from
different periods. I ended up writing three of these. The
Last Days of Il Duce, which took a lot from James Cain: The
Confession--which was in admiration of Hughes, Highsmith, et
al; and Manifesto for the Dead.
In the latter, I took Thompson as the main character, and had
the idea that there would be a novel-within-the-novel. I was
drawn to the formal experiment and wanted to capture
something of the experimental crime novels of the period,
where writers were kind of grab-bagging from the larger
literary tradition while pushing out these pulp novels to try
and make a living.
As to Thompson and his wife Alberta, I drew my portrait of
them from Thompson's novels, particularly his early ones, and
also from Polito's wonderful biography, as well as other
biographical material. I also spent a lot of time walking the
streets of that Hollywood neighborhood where Thompson spent
his final years.
Manifesto for the Dead has gotten the the best, and worst
reviews, of anything I have written. Some people liked it,
and other people excoriated me for the portrait of Thompson,
and for the novel-within-the-novel that purports to be
Thompson's final book, but of course is not.
It is also got written up somewhere as an example of noir as
Catholic allegory.
> 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.
>
If Thompson didn't answer the question, I don't know that I
should be foolish enough to try.. Though it is the question
the book poses.... Sometimes I think writers are better off
letting the fiction speak for itself when it comes to
discussing thematic issues... Otherwise you run the risk of
either simplifying or inflating...
That said, my own somewhat idiosyncratic view is that fiction
is a way of communicating with the figures that populate the
underworld of the human imagination... The realm of the dead,
and the archetypal figures that dwell there... Or at least
this is the muse that speaks to a lot of us... And of course
there's a certain danger in that, in that kind of conjuring,
in that that kind of journey... In the classic journey to the
underworld, there is the return.... But there are also those
who don't return... Thompson was the kind of writer who wrote
about the people who didn't return.... Who was willing to
risk blasphemy and walk to the edge of the abyss... To
partake in the conversation with evil... And so I guess the
question, does this encounter produce wisdom, or in the end
are we simply getting seduced...
.... I don't know if the book, Manifesto for the Dead,
ultimately answers that question so much that it insists upon
the inevitable nature of the journey...
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 15 Nov 2005 EST