Clinton Brown is the best reporter at the Pacific City Courier, a small Californian newspaper - but he has a secret. Horribly maimed in the war after accidentally wandering onto an anti-personnel mine, Brown has left his wife believing their marriage is over now that he no longer has a penis - and worries that, now that she’s returned to try to change his mind, she will tell others about his loss. The only way to keep his secret: murder…
There’s a lot I liked about Jim Thompson’s The Nothing Man - it’s an entertaining story, there are some creative decisions in the storytelling, a few vivid scenes - but also disliked other aspects to it - the convenience of so many plot points, the almost comedic way Brown’s killing spree unfolds, and the overall treatment of his mental state. It’s a novel I appreciate more than I can say I enjoyed.
The choice of having a main character who lost his manhood in the war is, forgive the pun, a ballsy choice. Because there must have been a number of poor bastards who came back from World War 2 with that and other horrendous injuries and whose lives were so irreparably ruined that they envied the dead, and yet I don’t think I’ve read any novels that had a character with this specific injury (I think A Farewell to Arms has a similar scenario but I’ve not read that). It’s indicative of Thompson’s willingness to engage with the grim realities of his society in his work.
And while on the surface it might seem to some observers like Thompson is writing the same story over and over - ANOTHER main character who’s nuts and murders people - that character and the story treatment is different each time. Nick Corey from Pop. 1280 is as distinct from Frank Dillon in A Hell of a Woman who in turn is as distinct as Clinton Brown in this novel. The personalities aren’t just different but the way their murderous motivations and, in Corey and Brown’s cases, insanity is handled differently. He tries to get in their heads and extrapolate their worldview for the reader to make their reprehensible actions seem “reasonable”, at least from the character’s perspective - it’s really clever and creative writing from Thompson.
That said, the storytelling here is hampered in two ways that you could interpret however you want, but both unfortunately bring the quality of the narrative down. The first one: once Brown begins his murders, things go too much his own way - Lem Stukey, the local chief of police, is such an incompetent boob that he never gets close to arresting Brown. Worse, other idiots, like his hack colleague Tom Judge, blunder into guilt’s way by chance, taking any potential heat away from Brown, which makes for a far too contrived, and unsatisfying, story. There’s no tension in Brown ever getting captured or stopped because everyone in the story is a moron which allows Brown to do whatever he likes without consequence.
Or, the second one: Brown is so fucking crazy that everything that’s happening is all happening in his broken mind. Which is as bad as saying “...and it was all a dream” because then the story has no weight and feels as pointless as reading the ramblings of a drooling dunce. But he is also an undeniably unreliable narrator who misses out important elements in the story - there’s weird time jumps and empty patches of detail here and there - which makes this interpretation seem possible.
My feeling is that it’s the first - contrivance galore - with a smattering of the second - Brown’s a nutjob - but that doesn’t make for a great story. It even gets comical at a certain point. After killing one woman who threatens his wellbeing, he meets another, then another, and his reaction is the same in each instance: time for another murder! Which he pulls off without a hitch and gets away with it easily, so why wouldn’t a crazy person who views death as a game think differently?
All of which isn’t to say that the story isn’t enjoyable to read because it certainly is - Thompson is such a capable writer and gifted storyteller that the pages glide by effortlessly. Certain scenes are very memorable for their weirdness - his bizarre relationship with his editor (who also happened to be his commanding officer during the war and was directly involved in his injury - more convenience) and his wife, who invites him over to their house for dinner so she can poison him with spoiled food (frankfurters and mayonnaise - geddit)?! And the whole time this lunatic Brown is brooding about getting even with the guy so I was expecting him to add his editor to the body count too, making this scene that much more tense.
Brown’s sad way of life, the odd twists and turns of the murder investigations by that twit Stukey, the general dialogue which is often startling and darkly humorous - there’s plenty to like about this novel, and for a lesser writer this would be the most notable book in their career instead of merely “mainly one for the fans” in Jim Thompson’s case.
As bonkers as this sounds, the story put me in mind of A Christmas Carol with each of Brown’s victims representing a different ghost: Ellen, his wife, representing his past; Deborah, representing the present; Constance, the would-be publisher of his terrible poetry, representing the future. And Stukey as his very own Jacob Marley, particularly in that final chapter. I don’t know why Thompson would do his own dark retelling of Dickens’ classic so this is almost certainly in my own head only, but I still saw it as a very unexpected possibility, especially as Thompson has done subtle retellings of classics like Crime and Punishment in A Hell of a Woman, or the ancient world’s vision of the afterlife in The Getaway - he’s such a smart writer, I’ve come to expect more than what he presents the reader on the surface.
One final thing I’ll say is to re-read the first chapter after you finish the book because it hits differently given what happens and really clears up any misdirection presented in that cloudy final chapter. I only realised this because, when I review a book, I first flick through the pages and put my thoughts down in note form, and I found myself simply re-reading that first chapter again and understanding that Thompson was clearly signposting who and what Brown was right from the beginning - again, this is a deeper writer than he appears and deserves greater consideration.
The book may not end in the most satisfying way but it does seem fitting given Brown’s ruined state of mind and the general impression Thompson’s been hinting at of the character throughout the novel.
The Nothing Man isn’t as brilliant as Pop. 1280 or as fun and exciting as A Hell of a Woman but it certainly has its merits - artistically speaking - even if there was too much mundanity in the story proper. I can see why it’s not among his better known books but it’s still worth checking out if you’re interested in this author and it’s more imaginative than the average crime thriller that’s out there - The Nothing Man is a far from nothing novel.
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