{"id":722,"date":"2013-08-13T20:50:43","date_gmt":"2013-08-14T04:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=722"},"modified":"2013-08-13T20:50:43","modified_gmt":"2013-08-14T04:50:43","slug":"review-the-killer-inside-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/13\/review-the-killer-inside-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Killer Inside Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>
\n The Killer Inside Me<\/a> by Jim Thompson<\/a>
\n My rating: 4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

The whole time I was reading The Killer Inside Me<\/i>, I kept thinking, \u201cI hope he gets away with it.\u201d What\u2019s that say about me? I\u2019m a product of 21st century entertainment, where serial murderers and sociopaths are portrayed as sympathetic killers. If the post-modern era set everything topsy-turvy, and the so-called post-post-modern era mired itself in self-reflective absurdity, where are we now? This is the post-ironic age (can\u2019t wait for the era that doesn\u2019t need a \u201cpost-\u201c in its name) and we take our bloodlust very very seriously. Well, so did Thompson, back in the day, to stroke the clich\u00e9\u2019.<\/p>\n

Because if Thompson\u2019s Lou Ford is a sociopath, he\u2019s a real one, and not the Hollywood version of the last twenty years. He does not delight in horror, enjoy cruelty, or in any way feel enriched by murder. Nor does he find identification in the self-hatred that murder brings upon him. Murder is a means to an end, even while he understands and accepts that society says its wrong. But here\u2019s the important part: Lou Ford doesn\u2019t think too hard on why he has no trouble murdering even while society condemns it. This is not a novel about a man conflicted.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s it about then? That depends on you (as it should). Thompson doesn\u2019t moralize, proselytize, or preach. He gives you a character who does what we fantasize about doing all the time, and doesn\u2019t solve your inner conflicts by punishing\u2014or rewarding\u2014his hero.<\/p>\n

When I read Pop. 1280<\/i>, I had no idea of Thompson\u2019s reputation, which I was glad of\u2014I went in uncynical. Less so with The Killer Inside Me<\/i>, which is more or less the first draft of Pop. 1280<\/i>. I would encourage you, if you\u2019ve got the edition with the preface by Stephen King, to skip that preface and first read chapter one. Read the preface when you\u2019re done\u2014it\u2019s more like an academic review than a preface, more like an introduction for those who\u2019ve already read the novel once or twice already.<\/p>\n

Not that the plot\u2019s the point. Not that Thompson\u2019s message needs you to be surprised and shocked. That\u2019s because Thompson doesn\u2019t have a message. Someone asked me, while I was reading this, what I had in my hands. I said \u201cThe Killer Inside Me\u201d and she said \u201cThe killer inside you, huh?\u201d We laughed about that, but honestly, I don\u2019t think that was much of a slip.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson My rating: 4 of 5 stars The whole time I was reading The Killer Inside Me, I kept thinking, \u201cI hope he gets away with it.\u201d What\u2019s that say about me? I\u2019m a product of 21st century entertainment, where serial murderers and sociopaths are portrayed as sympathetic killers. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: The Killer Inside Me”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-bE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":723,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions\/723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}