POP. 1208 - Small Town Texas Around 1917 As Described In 1964

 

I'd have never read this book if it hadn't been one of the book club choices.  Chosen by a member who is also an author.  As I read the book, I did think about why an author would pick this book. And at the book club meeting, he said he read it because it was on a list of books given to him by another author.  The 25 books that most influenced him as a writer.  And he also acknowledged some hesitation about recommending it to our group.  It was a test, of sorts, of us.  

It begins like this:

"Well, sir, I should have been sitting pretty, just about as pretty as a man could sit.  Here I was, the high sheriff of Potts County, and I was drawing almost two thousand dollars a year - not to mention what I could pick up on the side.  On top of that, I had free living quarters on the second floor of the courthouse, just as nice a place as a man could ask for, and it even had a bathroom so that I didn't have to bathe in a washtub or tramp outside to a privy, like most folks in town did. I guess you could say that Kingdom Come was really here as far as I was concerned.  I had it made, and it looked like I could go on having it made --being high sheriff of Potts County --as long as I minded my own business and didn't arrest no one unless I just couldn't get out of it and they didn't amount to nothin'.

And yet I was worried. I had so many troubles that I was worried plumb sick."

That really is a good way to start this book.  It foretells lots of the troubles without giving nothin' away.  Whoops.  It's catching.   

So what's wrong with this book?  Well, it's narrated by the main character, a very small town Sheriff, who is more than flawed.  It's all from his point of view and it's all in his colorful language.  The most difficult parts for me were the vivid descriptions of the town's black population.  

Why did that bother me?  Yes, of course, the N-word liberally spit out in some parts of the book.  And the disgustingly racist attitudes and situations portrayed.  But it was published in 1964 (and so written before the Civil Rights Act passed) and those were different times.  White folks still were the only editors of public speech back then.  And it describes a time almost 50 years earlier.  We shouldn't censor history because we don't like the words and situations that existed then.  We should learn from them and not in cleaned up versions.  And, if I recall correctly, Leonard Pitts' The Last Thing You Surrender - a 2019 novel by a black author - uses the N-word - and includes a very troubling lynching.  

But I'm not using that word in this post.  Mostly because I'm thinking of one particular friend who would probably be disturbed -rather than offended - seeing me spell it out.  

And I think that's what disturbed me about reading this book for the book club.  I didn't ask the man who recommended the book this question:  "If we had an African-American in our group, would you have recommended the book?"  The fact that the book club is all white men over 50 means that we can read a book like this without any of us personally feeling demeaned by the language and situations.  None of our families were the subject of this particular kind of inhumanity.  And the fact that the things done in the book to blacks was done by whites, adds to the awkwardness.  Women weren't treated well either.  Actually, no one was treated well in this story

Yet, I find that I can pretty much tell you the whole story, though not in quite the same colorful language as the high sheriff of Potts County.  

And the subject matter of this book seems to come from personal experience.  From Wikipedia:

"Thompson's father was sheriff of Caddo County, Oklahoma. He ran for the state legislature in 1906, but was defeated. Soon after he left the sheriff's office under a cloud due to rumors of embezzlement. The Thompson family moved to Texas."

Also from Wikipedia:

 Stephen King says he most admires Thompson's work because "The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn't know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave lets inherent in the foregoing: He let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it."^[2]

There's no doubt that Thompson was using the sheriff to shine light on everything that was wrong about small town life in Oklahoma and Texas.  

Talking about his (the sheriff's) father:

"But that's the way my daddy was -- like those people.  They buy some book by a fella that don't know a god-dang thing more than they do (or he wouldn't be having to write books).  And that's supposed to set 'em straight about everything.  Or they buy themselves a bottle of pills.  Or they say the whole trouble is with other folks, and the only thing to do is get rid of 'em.  Or they claim we got to war with another country.  Or . . .  or God knows what all."

Seems those folks are still with us today.  Lots of them.  These are the folks who went to lynchings.  These are the folks who stormed the Capitol on January 6.  And the folks who rather take advice from Tucker Carlson that Dr. Fauci.  

I guess there was a lot in this book.  I think I knew it when I was reading it.  I just didn't like any of the people in the book.  Yes, there was probably something decent in them all, but the Sheriff was focused on the other parts.  If you asked me if would recommend the book, I'd answer using the sheriff's favorite phrase: "I wouldn't say that I would, but then I wouldn't say that I wouldn't."