An interesting book that transports the reader to an unusual and overlooked place and time: James Dillon is a young father and failed writer battling alcoholism while struggling to hold down a job at an airplane factory in San Diego (based on the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation) in the early days of WWII, before the attack Pearl Harbor and the USA’s full engagement in the war effort. The book definitely has a bit of “first book” syndrome, Jim Thompson seems to have included all sorts of autobiographical and near-autobiographical details, and the book is packed to the rafters, with everything from flashbacks to working as a bellhop in Prohibition-era Oklahoma and the working out of lingering childhood psychological issues (including an imagined dialogue with a dead father) to a synopsis of a Robert Heinlein’s 1941 short story “They,” as well as pages dedicated to the quotidian frustrations of working in a factory (with more details about parts management systems than you would ever have expected to (or hoped to) ever see in a novel).
But the devil is in these details, the depiction of life on the edge of ruin and madness is very rich and believable. The novel comes most to life in the neo-realist depiction of the frustrations, squalor, and occasional moments of joy in Dillon’s family life, it is his position as a father, husband, and son which makes this stand out from the pack. The Dillon family is struggling, always on the verge of a crack-up, and living from paycheck-to-paycheck and meal-to-meal. There’s everything from sexual tensions to what we would now definitely consider to be child abuse on display, and this feels very true and terrifying, while retaining a much-needed glimmer of hope.
This book can be occasionally difficult for a contemporary reader to follow, the milieu is a bit distant and, and the writer frequently uses euphemisms, elisions, and suggestion in the place of detailing subjects that were still quite taboo at the moment, like prostitution, abortion, and illegal drugs, meaning you have to read between the lines. Overall a very satisfying read that doesn’t amaze, but does shed life on a vanished world and makes me want to read more of Thompson’s work.
