But I couldn’t make him see that. He was as blind as the rest of ‘em.
“Well, Nick? I ain’t waiting much longer.”
“And you don’t have to, Buck,” I said. “You don’t have to because I finally come to a decision. I’ve been a long time comin’ to it; it’s been the product of thinkin’ and thinkin’ and thinkin’, and then some more thinkin’. And dependin’ on how you hook at it, it’s the god-dangest whingdingest decision ever made, or it’s the skitty-assed worst. Because it explains everything that goes on in the world—it answers everything and it answers nothing.
“So here it is, Buck, here’s my decision. I thought and I thought and then I thought some more, and finally I came to a decision. I decided I don’t no more know what to do than if I was just another lousy human being!”
JAMES MYERS THOMPSON (September 27, 1906 – April 7, 1977) was an American author and screenwriter, known for his hardboiled crime fiction.
He wrote more than thirty novels, the majority of which were original paperback publications by houses, from the late-1940s through mid-1950s. Thompson's writing culminated in a few of his best-regarded works: The Killer Inside Me, Savage Night, A Hell of a Woman and Pop. 1280. In these works, Thompson turned the derided crime genre into literature and art, featuring unreliable narrators, odd structure, and quasi-surrealistic inner narratives of the last thoughts of his dying or dead characters. A number of Thompson's books became popular films, including The Getaway and The Grifters.
Major works:
• Now and on Earth (1942)
• Heed the Thunder (aka Sins of the Fathers) (1946)
• Nothing More Than Murder (1949)
• The Killer Inside Me (1952)
• Cropper's Cabin (1952)
• Recoil (1953)
• The Alcoholics (1953)
• Savage Night (1953)
• Bad Boy (1953)
• The Criminal (1953)
• The Golden Gizmo (aka The Golden Sinner) (1954)
• Roughneck (1954)
• A Swell-Looking Babe (1954)
• A Hell of a Woman (1954)
• The Nothing Man (1954)
• After Dark, My Sweet (1955)
• The Kill-Off (1957)
• Wild Town (1957)
• The Getaway (1958)
• The Transgressors (1961)
• The Grifters (1963)
• Pop. 1280 (1964)
• Texas By the Tail (1965)
• South of Heaven (1967)
• Nothing But a Man (1970)
• Child of Rage (1972)
• King Blood (1973)
• Fireworks: The Lost Writings of Jim Thompson (1988)
• The Rip-Off (1989)