Texas by the Tail (Mulholland Classic) by Jim Thompson

Texas by the Tail (Mulholland Classic) Reviews

• 
  Darwin8u

  “The world was a shitpot with a barbed-wire handle and the further he could kick it the better he liked it.”
  ― Jim Thompson, Texas by the Tail
  
  
  
  Not exactly crime fiction (although there is crime). Not exactly noir (maybe Texas Noir?). Texas by the Tail falls into more hustler fiction. Like most of his novels, his writing is penetrating, funny, and sharp. He fits right in with some of my favorite crime/noir/hard-boiled writers (Chandler, Hammett, Highsmith, and Leonard), this just isn't his best. It was entertaining, but I never felt trapped by the novel like I have previous Thompson novels. A solid book, just not top-shelf Thompson.
• 
  Eric_W

  Jim Thompson, was a master of American Noir, stories of drifters, con men, hustlers, your basic asocial types. Mitch Corley is a typical character. Saddled with Teddy, a wife who wants lots of money to divorce him, he leaves for Texas in an attempt to win big at gambling at the expense of the rich. Unfortunately they don't like losing. Thompson also has a sense of humor. His description of the 1965 (presumably) Oklahoma City to Memphis train: "It has no diner. Its cars are of pre-World War I vintage, without air conditioning or other common comforts. Its schedule is presumably the product of a comic books writer. The many and prolonged delays are variously attributed to such causes as holdups by Jesse James, impromptu hunting and fishing parties for the crew, and funerals for passengers who have advanced into and died en route of old age." Mitch and his girlfriend, Red, settle in Texas, the only place where there's lots of money left for gambling (thanks to oil) and where Mitch hopes to make a big score. He has money stashed in a variety of safe deposit boxes -- a hustler needs a substantial stake, but Red likes to live high and his stash is running low. Another of the drain on his finances is his son, whom he has enrolled in an elite and expensive boarding school, there' and the money he sends his wife, partly out of guilt, partly because he doesn't want her to reveal to Red that he's still married. Red wants to get hitched. In a poker game with Walter Lord, he manages to win $30,000 only to learn that the checks Lord had been cashing through Mitch's friend, are not to be honored by Lord's family, who realize they are gambling debts. Mitch approaches Frank Downing for some help. Mitch demurs when Frank suggests he simply have Teddy killed, but Frank sends his goons to rough up Teddy anyway. (Lest you feel too sorry for Teddy, she's not a lovable character, for a variety of reasons.) In the meantime, needing the money, Mitch decides to drive to the Lord's huge ranch in an attempt to collect the $30,000. I would hate to reveal the ending, but will only suggest that it's quite satisfying after leaving the reader hanging (pun intended).
• 
  Daniel

  Thompson is a man who sees the world as a series of near misses. He views every moment in life as a step closer to a happiness and goodness that will, ultimately, be taken from you before it comes to fruition. The human condition, it seems to Thompson, is one in which we are always almost there, always getting close and some lucky few may pass the gates, but the rest of us will be chewed to bits by the great grinder.
  
  All of this probably comes back to his father who made and lost a fortune in the Texas oil boom, while he watched his peers get richer and more sinister. The good, in Thompson's experience, did not thrive. The vile thrived and the rest of us were left with the scraps from their table for which we were expected to be endlessly grateful.
  
  Not that his protagonists are moral milestones, of course. Sure, they have their code and live by it and there's some inherent value in that, but mostly, they just lack the power to do big things and, perhaps more importantly, they lack the moral blackness to ever amass any real wealth or power. Texas by the Tail is perhaps his purest vision of this world. In it, we find Thompson clearly drawing the line between those that are outside the law and those that make the laws and we are never given a moment to doubt which are the most reprehensible.
  
  You would be missing something if you didn't pay close attention to the direction the river runs in all this, though. It does not seem to be part of Thompson's vision that wealth makes a person immoral. Rather, it is that only the most monstrous specimens of humanity have what it truly takes to amass great wealth. And, ultimately, that difference makes all the difference.
  
  Thompson chooses to explore this idea in Texas by the Tail, through the lens of professional gambler, Mitch Corley. Mitch is a man with a code. Sure, he plays dice for a living, but he never uses violence and only gambles with those that can afford it. Unfortunately for him, that's just too much honor (even as little as it is) for him to make it cleanly through dark underbelly of Texas in the peak of the Oil Boom.
  
  At risk for Mitch is the love of his life ("Red") and the money they've squirreled away over the years toward their retirement. The villains of the piece include:
  
  - the wretched wife, who was spent their years together working secretly, as a whore and now proceeds to blackmail Mitch for even the money used to pay their son's school tuition.
  
  - a wealthy land family that has two reputations: (1) they've run much of Texas since the civil war, and (2) they take a malicious delight in destroying people emotionally and physically.
  
  - the ultimate oil tycoon, a man who wants for nothing but seems to pass his days looking for someone to shatter to bits, regardless of whether they deserve it or not.
  
  - a hapless banker, as corrupt as he is pathetic, who is so desirous of the approval of others that he will stoop to almost anything to get it.
  
  - a school headmaster who wants to kick Mitch's son out of the fine boarding school he attends on the grounds that the boy's mother is a prostitute.
  
  I won't go into details about who comes into play where and how it all comes together, but suffice to say that the central journey of the book is the journey by Mitch through the mud of his life and the characters that inhabit it so that he can emerge on the other side with a little nest egg that he and Red can use to live the life of their dreams.
  
  Don't get me wrong, Mitch is far from a saint. In fact, a large chunk of the problems in this book are, while directly brought on by sinister external forces, at least partially his fault. But even those are shaped by Thompson to be somehow understandable. A lie Mitch told long before the story starts is what begins the great downward spiral from which Mitch, in all his sincerity, is trying to escape. A poorly thought out plan based on greed and desperation sets another villain after him. But again, Thompson designs the story such that even the poor decision is based on desperation rather than any real sinister motive.
  
  The question, finally, that Thompson looks to answer here is whether any nominally decent man can carve out a little slice of happiness in a world owned and operated by sadistic people who have everything and want more. Always more.
• 
  Gibson

  Le colpe dei figli
  
  Un Thompson più statico del solito, sia per quanto riguarda la trama, che mi è parsa un collage di altri suoi romanzi e costantemente 'in attesa di...', e sia per i protagonisti, qui stranamente meno carismatici di molti altri a cui mi ha abituato.
  O forse, semplicemente, avrei dovuto prestare maggiore attenzione alle parole dell'introduzione, specialmente a quel romanzo confessione che riconduce il tutto alle esperienze di vita dell'autore più che al raccontare una storia per intrattenere il lettore.
  
  "È un romanzo confessione, pieno com'è di riferimenti alla vita di Thompson. Le pagine in cui si parla dell'arrivo a Big Spring, "la metropoli del nulla", di un uomo alla ricerca del petrolio, e che poi rimane al verde, non sono altro che ricordi dell'autore, di quando suo padre, molti anni prima, aveva lavorato nel campo dell'oro nero dilapidando una fortuna. Pure lo stesso Mitch Corley, il protagonista della storia, che cominciò presto a giocare d'azzardo, scontrandosi così con il padre, appartiene al passato dello scrittore. Infatti, disubbidendo alla famiglia e prima d'arrivare alla macchina per scrivere, Jim Thompson fece il cuoco, il fattorino in un albergo, l'operaio e anche il giocatore d'azzardo. La sua specialità, come si legge anche nel romanzo, erano i dadi. Una debolezza che, assieme a quella dell'alcool, lo scrittore passò, come fosse un testimone, a suo figlio Michael rovinandogli la vita."
• 
  Demetrios Dolios

  After grifters and killer Jim needed to balance the ying with the yang and you know what he totally created an underestimated novel with a wisecracking comedic group I would say many novelists would take and run with it eg elmore,etc. but that scene with the twins genius!
• 
  Bobby

  This one seems to get a mixed reaction from Thompson fans. It's good. It's not S-Tier Thompson, but it's not the hot mess that some folks may try to convince you it is. It's a solid mid-to-high range output.
  
  Unfortunately, Texas by the Tail suffers from following The Grifters (a bedrock of the S-Tier), and unnecessarily draws comparisons to it. On the surface there's a lot of overlap. Stories about con men with troubled relationships with women, including the older women who serve as fill ins for the protagonist's unusual relationship with a floozy mother.
  
  Short of the surface-level thematic overlap, Texas by the Tail stands on its own. Fans of the super dark worlds Thompson creates may be disappointed here, but there are moments of Thompson's trademark viciousness -- in particular a scene where two effete hoods go to shakedown a lady. Rough stuff.
  
  The novel is also Thompson's rumination on Texas as whole. The Texas mythology of it's ascendancy as a player on the world stage, how it came to be, and the people who helped build (perhaps drilled, is a better word) it. I get the feeling Thompson would love Texas if not for the frauds who make up its high-society.
  
  It's a different underbelly of society than we're used to seeing in other pulp works or noir fiction. The low-lifes and villains of this world are oil men, millionaires, billionaires, bankers, and school-masters. But make no mistake, there's danger and thrills to be found in this world, especially for a gambler who knows to expertly throw a pair of dice.
  
  Mitch Corley, our dice chucker, reminds me of an every-man version of Thompson's protagonists. He may consort with the underbelly, but he's a man of honor and won't cheat you.
• 
  Freddie Sykes

  Too many Hot Chicks. Not realistic. In real life most of them are fat, ugly skags.
• 
  Bill

  Of the four or five Thompson novels i have recently re-read, this is by far the weakest. None of the characters are in any way sympathetic, or in the least likable, and the story takes place in what is clearly an unpleasant environment . . . a place called Texas.
  
  Interestingly, there are some excellent quotes scattered throughout the novel, as though the author sought to make up for the shortcomings of his characters and plot by waxing poetic or philosophical. For example:
  
  "Possibly there is an inverse relationship between the low rating of the American male in his own home and the alarming increase in impotence, insanity, alcoholism, homosexuality, suicides, divorces, abortions, murders, censorship, and educated illiterates."
• 
  Adam Bregman

  Not as seedy as some of Jim Thompson's best work, Texas by the Tail has as its protagonist, a professional craps player, who is a decent person, not a hero, but certainly not a villain. I won't say much about the ending, but it's not what you expect from a Jim Thompson story. The writing is brisk and satisfying. Thompson has the usual hotel bellboy and Texas oil rig references throughout (he was experienced with both in his own life). I thoroughly enjoyed this, but there are at least ten Jim Thompson books you should read before it.
  
  
  
• 
  Jason McCracken

  Fairly average Thompson. Everyone’s a shitbag, not a single likeable person amongst them, there’s some completely unnecessary violence and the ending was awful. I doubt I’ll remember this in 12 months time.
• 
  Jake

  If you saw the movie Uncut Gems, this book answers the question “What if Uncut Gems but Texas?” It’s wild.
  
  The year of Jim Thompson continues with one I’ve wanted to get to for some time. The story is familiar: a perpetual loser looking to make the big score, with an attractive woman on his arm and the bad guys always at his back. The bad guys often carry a sheen of legitimacy, whether it’s oil or land money. This is a recurring theme in Thompson novels, his strongest critique of systemic violence. It’s on full display here. With Mitch, the anti-hero, he’s your typical con man: if he stops talking or moving, every one will see through his bs. So he has to keep it up. It makes the book quite thrilling.
  
  The other thing on full display is Texas. This is a Texas tale to its absolute core. But whereas in the past, Thompson has usually stuck to rural Texas, this novel is mostly urbane, taking place in Houston and Dallas, along with a sprinkling of other locales. Thompson goes long several times on the wild histories of the state and its cities.
  
  This is also clearly a late period Thompson work. The writing is more focused and there are fewer random detours or moments of meandering. It still carries many of his signature trademarks but it’s also written at a more mature time for him.
  
  So why only three stars after a review that read mostly as acclaim? Two reasons: 1. The violence against women here is once again terrible. There are times when Thompson can use it to make a point about masculine impotence. However, there’s a completely gratuitous scene here that makes me feel guilty for still reading Thompson’s work, as much as I love it. I couldn’t get over it and while it’s debatable if “docking the book a star” is a real penalty, it’s all I can think to do. And 2. The ending. I know what Thompson was trying to do, it just didn’t work for me.
  
  For about 90% of this, it’s a fun crime read. It’s a great gateway to Thompson’s work. Just know what you’re getting into.
• 
  Adam McPhee

  Funny how 70% of the characters in this Jim Thompson novel found their way into True Detective season two.
• 
  Paul Cornelius

  With a "happy ending" and only two or three scenes of torture and brutal beatings, Texas by the Tail probably qualifies as Thompson's greatest comic effort. And he never loses his touch, always bringing a heretofore unexamined perspective to people with sordid lusts, sinful souls, and every now and then a touch of conscience.
  
  A few things about the particulars of this novel:
  
  * It is written almost as ready to be filmed. Not only is the narrative making use of multiple storylines but the imagery and very opening of the chapters seem like establishing shots.
  
  * For anyone who lived in Texas in the early 1960s, I don't think there has ever been such an insightful portrait of the era or its hustlers and big shots as in this book.
  
  * The novel is also a virtual geography lesson, running from Ft. Worth to Houston to Dallas and out to West Texas and Big Spring. Thompson got a snapshot of the old time cattle barons right before they essentially went extinct. And his descriptions of the withered, bronzed, and hard men and women of West Texas, compared to the soft manipulators and gamblers of Houston and Dallas also harken back to the era of the Hunts, Murchisons, Cullens, Sid Richardson, Judge Roy Hofheinz and "Silver Dollar Jim" West.
• 
  Vel Veeter

  A con man who can make the dice what he wants to do most times out of ten is working his grift (although he would argue that while he is hustling, he's not cheating), trying to make enough money to get out, to pay for his girl "Red's" happiness, and still pay for the mistakes of his younger life.
  
  This is one of the longest Jim Thompson novels I've read so far (although it's still short), and the added time this book spends developing its story is not always entirely well spent. It's still an interesting look into a life I do not live or know much about, but it's also got so many loose threads that it's almost silly at times.
  
  We're situated in Texas the whole time, so there's lots of talk about oil in this book, and oil money to boot. This is also one of those novels that you can tell was written in the 1960s when writers felt a little more liberty to print some of the invectives and curses they otherwise couldn't before. It used to be that only murders were ok to describe, but now you can describe breasts, saying "fuck", and talk about torture.
• 
  C. McGee

  Severely underrated. Other fans of Thompson might call this blasphemy but I think this should sneak into his top five. Sure the ending is thoroughly un-Thompson but that makes it even better, it shows the old dog had some flexibility. And the descriptions of all the cities-wow, tremendous. As funny and incisive as can be. Just a delightful read.
• 
  L.P. Ring

  Tensely written, great characters and some brilliant scenes. Yet the ending appears rushed and in truth some of the characters act as if they are running to reach a denouement that everyone can agree with by the end. Still, it's a fast read and very worth it.
• 
  Wheeler

  The ending is a cop-out and a disappointment.
• 
  Jefferson Fortner

  Great story with a very weak, unsatisfactory ending.
• 
  Helen

  Well written classic American noir. I was engaged in the book up until the last page - it's as if Thompson had no idea how to end the story.
• 
  ?0?0?0

  review coming
• 
  Katy

  Not his best, but still very engaging. The plot is a little loose, and the ending disappoints a bit, but some may like it.
• 
  Richard Schaefer

  I mentioned in my review of Pop. 1280 that some Thompson books seem to be thematic twins, or even have plots that mirror one another— well, Texas By the Tail is The Grifters’ twin; it’s about a cocky young(ish) grifter with parent issues and his partner in crime/lover conning their way around the state of Texas. It’s got plenty of Oedipal drama (like the Grifters) and feels deeply invested in documenting the people and mores of various parts of the Lone Star State (unlike the Grifters, which is set in LA but feels like it could be any noir city in America). While this book is nowhere near as good as the Grifters, its biggest strength lies in how encyclopedic Thompson’s knowledge of Texas is, in how well he can capture the character of a region to better understand the lengths people are willing to go to to maintain their (perceived) wealth, their (perceived) integrity, their (perceived) social order. All in all, a satisfying read, and though it falls short of being top-tier Thompson, its worth it for his keen insight into one mean-spirited corner of the world.
• 
  Jim Davis

  I'm a big fan of Thompson's style of noir fiction but this novel didn't hit me in the gut the way previous novels have. I never felt drawn in to the characters and events and could never quite grasp what the message he keep implying actually was. But it was still a fairly interesting read but I felt like I was bouncing over the surface of the story without finding the handle that pulled me in completely. There were obvious autobiographical events that colored the story and gave it a solid 1965 Texas feel. But I just didn't think that Thompson was able to fully realize the character of Mitch.
• 
  Andrew

  I haven't read anything prior to this by the author but after doing so I would be interested to do so again,largely considered an author of pulp fiction I have to say that description maybe does the author a disservice as this is a to riveting narrative and although you can predict some of the twists there are still enough surprises to maintain and increase momentum throughout the tale.
  the synopsis under the book shown above gives a good summary of the tale so I won't bother going over that,in some ways however the book reminded me of a precursor to Barry Gifford s 'sailor and Lula'tales which inspired David lynch and wild at heart.
  it has that same easy reading style and fugitive from justice (or maybe injustice in this case)type vibe despite being a very different tale.
  it's mentioned elsewhere that this may not be the best starting point when reading this author..I'm unsure of that not having read another of his works..however this has intrigued me enough for me to want to read more.
• 
  Lawrence FitzGerald

  Jim Thompson has an over the top quality that is one of the core values of his writing. Texas by the Tail is not an exemplar of that style. This is more in the vein of The Grifters, my personal favorite.
  
  Thompson is known for his punchy, no nonsense prose and his gritty take on humanity. But he can be perceptive in his pathos.
  

  So she wept, and he wept a little with her. Not for the idealized dreams of the past, but for the immutable realities of the present. Not for what had been lost but for what had never been. Not for what might have been but for what could never be.

  Thompson expended a great fraction of this novel on characterization down to the secondary characters. This is the strength of the novel. The story wobbles across Texas and ends when Thompson thought he had enough pages. Another stroke of Thompson's style.
  
• 
  Jon

  There's some sort of story trying to be told here, but it never quite breaks through. Probably better that way. Just let this collection of odd balls and hard cases carom off each for a couple hundred pages before they call it a day.
  
  Reading Thompson is like playing pinball: you're immersed in a noisy, garish, violent, over-the-top world. Everything is accelerated. Causes and effects link up ... sometimes. Crash bang thwap! Stuff doesn't always add up. Flash, wee-ooh, wee-ooh! Things don't necessarily make sense. Ba-dee, ba-dee, ba-doo, ba-doo, ba-doop! Your hair turns pink ... and ... then ... you're out. Time to go home. Mow the yard.