Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This started off like parody of a western. Not that I’ve read any westerns. Except for Robert Coover’s [b:Ghost Town|156195|Ghost Town|Robert Coover|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348568393s/156195.jpg|150728], selections by [a:Percival Everett|31723|Percival Everett|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1267321326p2/31723.jpg], and Trevanian’s [b:Incident at Twenty-Mile|30895|Incident at Twenty-Mile|Trevanian|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1328033210s/30895.jpg|31227]. Oh, and [b:Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West|394535|Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West|Cormac McCarthy|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1335231647s/394535.jpg|1065465] by Cormac McCarthy. Maybe it’s this last one I should speak to the most when tryin’ to wrap my noggin’ around Pop. 1280. Because as it got its rhythm, this novel stopped being just a silly parody, and something a little more subtle, a little more insidious.
What is evil? I say, simply, it is seduction. And nothing more. Evil is not merely cruel, bloodthirsty, hateful, spiteful, or any of the thousand disgusting things we have shoved down our throats in movies and TV shows and books overfull of slick characters with shiny hairdos. Evil is having temptation thrown in front of you, and you doing with it what you know you should not do.
Evil, then is automatically an intrinsic force. It’s something already inside ourselves. When you read a book like Pop. 1280, with its goofy language and crazy characters and zany situations, you can’t help but giggle, and guffaw, and laugh out loud. And then you’re nodding your head. Your cheering on the main character, everything he’s doing. You want him… well, not to necessarily succeed, but to get on with it.
Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a moralizing tail, proselytizing obfuscated, a parable to hang your hat on so’s you can go out and do good works. It’s just a novel about the Sheriff of Potts county, the women he’s loved and the men he’s hated. It’s a novel about self-discovery. And it’s evil. You’re going to end up discovering a thing or two about yourself before you get through it all.