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Roughneck Audiobook
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(3.02) - 281 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
By the time Jim Thompson was sixteen years old, he had been a newspaper boy, a burlesque show hawker, a plumber's helper, a comedian in two-reel pictures, a night bellboy in a luxury hotel and over a dozen other occupations. By the time he was eighteen, he was driving across America in a broken-down Ford without a penny to his name and his mother and his kid sister Freddie in tow, looking for just one more paycheck to keep them all alive.
A bittersweet comedy of a hard-won American life, ROUGHNECK chronicles the many jobs, near-criminal escapades, and downright unlawful grifts of the man who would become one of crime fiction's most enduring writers, in a larger-than-life literary memoir--or wildly entertaining tall tale--as only Thompson could tell it. Hard times have never sounded so good.
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"this is the semi-true semi-passed on autobio bio book. read this after you are done reading thompson books, because it kind of has the seeds for a lot of his other books in it."
— Arpad (5 out of 5 stars)
Roughneck Listener Reviews
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" The only thing better than his novels, which are universally enjoyable, is reading this autobiography and realizing that his real life was far more interesting. "
— Gerard, 12/1/2013 -
" Sequel to "Bad Boy" following the author's years as an oilfield worker, among other things. "
— Raegan, 8/27/2013 -
" Second autobiography of Jim Thompson. "
— Reger, 4/26/2013 -
" You get what you pay for I guess. "Selected Stories from Jim Thompson's life, told by the author". Some are downright hilarious, some are ordinary and borderline miserable. Still, great insight on how a man like this came to revolutionize noir. I appreciated it, but I'm sure his novels are better. "
— Benoit, 1/5/2013 -
" The 2nd memoir after [ book: bad boy]. Jim Thompson was a hardboiled pulp writer, and these books are the story of him barely surviving during the great depression. "
— Shane, 12/7/2012 -
" The Great Depression sure did suck a lot. "
— Ben, 9/11/2012 -
" Kinda sorta the sequel to "Bad Boy" and reminiscent of Bukowski's "Factotum" where he recalls all the crummy jobs he had to toil at before penning his brilliant noir classics. I worked a lot of similar gigs that he did = misery loves company. "
— Andy, 4/5/2012
About Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson (1906–1977) was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma. He began writing fiction at a very young age, selling his first story to True Detective when he was only fourteen. He eventually wrote twenty-nine novels, all but three of which were published as paperback originals, and two screenplays, for the Stanley Kubrick films The Killing and Paths of Glory. An outstanding crime writer, he created a world of fiction rife with violence and corruption. In examining the underbelly of human experience and American society in particular, he was both philosophical and experimental. Several of his novels have been filmed by American and French directors, resulting in classic noir such as The Killer inside Me, After Dark My Sweet, and The Grifters.
About Bob Walter
Bob Walter is a producer, director, and audiobook narrator. He is best known for his work as a music producer and sound effects designer for the movies Halloween, The Little Brave Toaster, and Apocalypse Now. His audiobook narrations include several nonfiction and fiction titles from Hachette, Random House, and HarperCollins, among others.