Jim Thompson, �The Getaway�
Allow me to validate opinions of the right wing know-nothing pundits of morality to state the obvious.
Criminals are cool.
Super cool.
But what these dopes don�t realize is that people think lots of things are cool, whether it be hobbits who live in a hole (in the ground), people who can tame and fly with dragons, or men who become unstuck in time. The reason that most of us think something like this is cool is because we can�t do it ourselves.
Things that glamorize the criminal aspect are the most prolific, saturating television (e.g. The Sopranos), film (Goodfellas, The Godfather, Scarface), and most of all, music. Gangsta rap is still the most imitated form of artistic expression and probably the most ridiculous. (I heard a gangsta rap band from south San Jose, if you can believe that � Ooh, South Side SJ! They so tough! Rollin� down Blossom Hill Road looking to put a few caps in the asses of people shopping at Oakridge Mall!)
Still, with all the glamorous images of the criminal, I think very few imitate what they see. Furthermore, those who do don�t live very long. Like the idiots that lay in the middle of the road, imitating some Disney football movie they saw recently. They went squish. That�s what you get for watching Disney movies.
For me, that�s more like natural selection at work. And if that�s the case, perhaps we should continue the release of these kinds of role models. After all, these people are breathing perfectly good air that could be mine.
If the idiot masses really are influenced to do things based upon what they see and read, then they better stay away from this book, and probably away from Jim Thompson in general. Despite how dark and violent most of his works are, those who follow a life of crime usually meet with a bad end.
In �The Getaway,� the entire life of crime is presented as a horrible, horrible existence. The couple involved in a massive sprint to get to Mexico is subjected to the worst life imaginable, unable to trust anybody, even each other. Their sprint becomes more and more hellish in this short book.
I�m sure you�ve all heard the story about the kid caught smoking who has to smoke an entire pack. If you caught your kid listening to gangsta rap, you could force them to hide out in a hole underneath a pig farm where they couldn�t move and then leave them there for three days, as the characters in this book were subjected to. That�ll scare the little fuckers straight.
Anyway, as for the book, this is one of the better ones, and Thompson is almost always uncannily good, so that�s high praise.
