Roughneck (Mulholland Classic)

This is an autobiographical account of Jim Thompson's life (obviously embellished)from sometime in his 20s up to his later 30s when he arrived in New York City and managed to get a novel accepted by a publisher. He survived a lot, including the Great Depression. He took whatever jobs he could find (some of the accounts are funny) and sometimes was paid for writing. He had to deal with family responsibilities, con artists, deadbeats, bosses hard to work for, and various ventures that did not pan out. He also went through various injuries, illnesses, and alcoholism. Somehow he made it.It has always been hard to earn a living as a writer. Some are successful, but most are not (the same could be said for musicians and artists - keep your day job). The book is worth reading. It provides a look at an era in the history of the United States. Prices were cheap, but who had any money. You could buy a lot for 25 cents, if you happened to have 25 cents.

Like its companion piece, Bad Boy, Roughneck is a collection of autobiographical vignettes by the legendary Jim Thompson. While each vignette may contain a kernel of truth, most of them are highly embellished and exaggerated so as to maximize the comedic or, on occasion, the dramatic effect.Like Bad Boy, Roughneck was largely written to provide the reader with light entertainment. The one place Thompson does get quite serious is where he describes his tenure as director of the Oklahoma state writer's project, a federally funded Depression era program. Here, Thompson's pride in his work comes through and is undeniably real.But the truth of the matter is that Jim Thompson was ill suited to write autobiography. The things he needed to say about himself can be found within the dark, disturbing pages of his many novels, some of which are now recognized as classics. For the real story of Jim Thompson's life, read Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson by Robert Polito.

Funny and exhausting. I think I slept a week after I read this. Thompson takes us across America in search of love, success and a few extra bucks.The underlying tale is how Jim tried to come to grips with his relationship with his father and himself. Luck always intervenes -- sometimes Good and sometimes Bad. As one of the kings of the character novels, Thompson does a great job on himself and his family and friends.This is a classic, sometimes funny, sometimes uplifting, sometimes sad but always real.It is also a great history of the America of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.-Mike

Jim Thompson was a one of a kind writer who could write the absolute worst chapters one could dream of followed by tremendous passages of work. He was that uneven as a writer.In Roughneck, we get an autobiographical look at a period in his lfe where he is looking for money and improvement as a writer while travelling across the USA of the 1930's to 1950's.There are a lot of tall tales in this book and one needs to take that into account but all in all, I think this book is worth a read, just don't expect too much truth.

This older book is relevant now. The depression of the 1930's followed a rise in income inequality, and decreased incomes of the working class to levels that failed to maintain families.In Roughneck, Thompson travels through the Midwest working the equivalent of today's gig economy and temp jobs, with low pay and no security or benefits. Thompson benefits from a willingness to work and intelligence, and suffers from alcoholism and criminal tendencies.This autobiography reads as a series of pulp fiction adventures, each attempt to get some money ending badly. It's tragic, it's funny, it's enjoyable.

Published in 1954, Roughneck is Part 2 of Jim Thompson's informal autobiography (Part 1 is Bad Boy, published a year earlier). It takes the author's story from the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929 to late 1941, on the eve of America's entry into World War II following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.The unifying theme of Roughneck is Thompson's struggle to establish himself as a writer while warding off poverty working a series of odd jobs. In this, Roughneck reminds me of another series of autobiographical books from the same era, Henry Miller's Rosy Cruxifiction trilogy, of which the second part (Plexus) came out a year earlier in France (Miller was banned in the U.S. under obscenity laws).Both Plexus and Roughneck deal with a writer's struggles to get published. The difference is that Thompson is a lot less verbose and self-obsessed than Milller, who apparently had the time to spin out his story at length (I estimate Plexus is about three times the length of Roughneck).Thompson, on the other hand, was pumping out books at a furious pace at this point in his career, so he had to be terse. He would produce nine books in 1953 and 1954 alone. Given that pace, clearly autobiographical works like Bad Boy and Roughneck were like taking a breather since Thompson was telling his own story instead of making something up (though there are episodes in both books that make you wonder whether the creative imagination wasn't at least somewhat work).That's good, since his previous book (published only a few months earlier), The Golden Gizmo, was pretty sloppy, showing that he was running low on gas. Roughneck gave Thompson a chance to catch his breath, if only briefly, so that before 1954 was over, he would crank out The Nothing Man, A Swell Looking Babe and A Hell of a Woman before taking an extended break (his next book, the acclaimed After Dark My Sweet, came out in late 1955).Everything I've read so far by Thompson (I'm reading him in chronological order) is worth reading and that includes his own life story, embellished or not. So if you find you like The Killer Inside Me or The Grifters or After Dark My Sweet, this could be a good addition to your reading list.

Excellent

The table of contents is at the end of the book rather than the beginning, which is odd and not especially convenient.The novel reads like a series of short stories rather than a novel. Each chapter is a new city, a new job or introduces a new character. But it actually works because this is some very good writing. The scenarios change, but there’s always some connecting element that keeps the chapters from seeming like disjointed short stories.It captures the semi-nomadic depression era existence of a man struggling to keep his life together, along with the lives of his family members. A very intelligent man who realizes that what a lot of people want is not just intelligence or even hard work. It’s their demand for agreeableness that disagrees with him. And his having a moral voice that he can’t help listening to. A sense of independence and pride that makes him unable to be like other men. This theme underlies what happens in each successive chapter, the character who can’t escape his own fate or his own character.Some of the time you might wonder about the connection between the chapters, but the end of the book, the last two or three chapters bring it together, and it all makes sense (?). Or has a perspective which gives it the appearance of sense.