Pop. 1280 (1964) is a novel by Jim Thompson (1906–1977). Although not in print at the time of his death (none of his work was), Pop. 1280 is part of Orion's Crime Masterworks series, a testament to the gradual rehabilitation and recognition of Jim Thompson's literary legacy: a clear exposition of an especially bleak species of American hard-boiled crime fiction. His writing exhibits the experimental stylistic flourishes that aligns it with literary (versus genre) fiction, and occasional surrealist episodes. As a novelist, Thompson was especially fond of unreliable narrators, and Pop. 1280 is an outstanding example of this.
Plot introduction
Pop. 1280 is the first-person narrative of Nick Corey, high sheriff of Pottsville County. With a population of "1280 souls" (a number much reduced by the story’s end), Potts is a listless backwater, "47th largest county in the state," probably Texas; and the narrative suggests that Sheriff Nick's tale dates to the Russian Revolution in 1917.
Sheriff Nick Corey presents himself as a genial fool: simplistic, over-accommodating, and harmless to a fault (given he is Pottville's sole lawman). Early chapters are related in a fine comic style representative of farce rather than hard-boiled crime fiction. From the outset Nick's problems appear to be those of a harmless fool: managing his shrew wife and idiot brother-in-law while simultaneously having affairs in town; a difficult election campaign against a more worthy candidate; negotiations with criminals and undesirables in Pottsville; and the evasion of work and physical exertion. Throughout a finely-structured narrative that plumbs psychological depths particular to the novels of Jim Thompson, the farcical tone of Pop. 1280 is undermined by the emergence of a man far more cunning, ruthless, and psychotic than he presents himself.
Adaptations
Pop. 1280 was adapted as the French film, Coup de Torchon (1981), directed Bertrand Tavernier.
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