The Alcoholics

By Jim Thompson

Book Overview

Dr. Peter S. Murphy needs fifteen thousand dollars by the end of the day, or the city of Los Angeles can say goodbye to the El Healtho clinic. A recovery center for the most severe cases of alcoholism in the state -- even if no one ever does quite seem to get dry there -- El Healtho has been the bane of Dr. Murphy's existence ever since he started running it. But now that its doors are about to close forever, Dr. Murphy finds he'll do anything to keep it open.

Up to and including admitting Humphrey Van Twyne III, a patient with an extremely violent past whose wealthy family has the means to keep El Healtho open for business. Sure, the man isn't exactly an alcoholic. And yes, what he really needs is to be under the care of the surgeons who performed the lobotomy that's rendered Van Twyne all but a vegetable. But the money's good -- until the rag-tag group of ne'er-do-wells at El Healtho begin to wreak havoc with Dr. Murphy's plans, and suddenly no one day has ever seemed so long.

A literary precursor to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Alcoholics is Thompson like you've never read him before, a pitch-black, mad-cap portrait of deviant behavior that is at once darkly comic, humane and harrowing.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316403954
• ISBN13: 9780316403955
• Release Date: August 2014
• Publisher: Mulholland Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A Very Funny, Engaging Book

I suspect Thompson may have revealed more of himself in this book than in any other novel. He was, of course, an alcoholic. He was also a smart, talented writer who thought more deeply about the human condition than most thriller writers. This book reflects that thinking -- the penetrating, often cruel insights of a gifted man who was frustrated at watching less intelligent, less talented people succeed where he failed simply because they were able to remain sober. The book is riven through with this resentful perspective -- but it's a black comedy, not a bitter tragedy. Thompson was able to laugh at himself. As others have pointed out, this book is not a typical Thompson noir thriller. In some respects, it has an almost proto-Bukowski quality in its self-revelatory, let-it-all-hang-out style, and in the somewhat shaggy dog aspect of the story (Post Office and Hollywood come to mind as analogues from the Bukowski canon). Although not a great book, The Alcoholics is a good read, and a particular treat for any Thompson fan with an interest in getting inside the enigmatic author's head.

A less dark, more sympathetic Jim Thompson novel

Jim Thompson is one of the crime novel greats. Author of "The Killer Inside Me," "The Grifters" and many others (quite a few of which have been made into movies), Thompson celebrates the darker side of the petty criminal, the small town sherrif and the down on his luck con man. Usually, that is. In this slim 1953 novel, Thompson turns his attention to alcoholism as a disease and its treatment. Ho-hum? No way. Thompson makes the hero sympathetic and his plight the source of palpable tension and discomfort. The reader really gets drawn into Thompson's portrayal of the depressing, bizarre world of the poor sap who just can't stop drinking, and doesn't know why. Although the book was written over forty years ago, it's extremely modern in many ways. For example, it contains competent, capable black characters, something that's missing in much of modern fiction. Thompson's very recognition and acceptance of alcoholism, in 1953, is quite unusual; he talks about Alcoholics Anonymous before it was the well-known concept it is today. In parts, this book reads like a denunciatory tract against demon liquor, written by an old-timer A.A. man. Then again, as I said, this was exploring new ground when Thomspon wrote it. And aside from those brief (but informative) passages, it was pretty good. Not Thompson's usual stuff, but variety is the spice of life, eh