Jim Thompson: The Legendary American of Thailand, by William Warren (TPB, 1970, $2)
One year in high school I read The Ugly American. It was the first time I had ever considered that Americans could be greedy, selfish, arrogant, or stupid. Well, I was pretty naive back then.
Jim Thompson is an example of the best America can offer. He was from wealth, graduated from Princeton, and then designed homes for the rich. During WWII the OSS sent him to Thailand. After the war he returned to the private sector but stayed in Thailand. He was amazed by the indigenous woven silk, but the industry was dying. Local vegetable dyes were unpredictable and often faded with use. Silk, in general, was seen as either too old fashioned, or too expensive. Few people in Thailand wanted it. Enter our Mr. Thompson, who was fascinated by everything Thai: their people, architecture, art, and textiles.
He started his silk company in the 1950s. He insisted his weavers use color-fast dyes, and that the silk fibers be of the best quality. He had a spectacular eye for color, and an amazing ability to combine colors and patterns, so his fabrics were different from anything anyone had ever seen before, even in Japan.
Thompson believed strongly in helping the Thai people. First he insisted his weavers work out of their own homes and not in factories, so they could maintain their culture. He also insisted that 51% of his silk company's owners be Thai citizens. He made sure profits went to his workers and the people of Thailand. His board of directors kept trying to raise his salary, and he kept saying he made enough.
He was lucky. Rogers and Hammerstein's The King and I dressed its performers in Thompson's silk. Now everyone wanted it. Queen Elizabeth redecorated a room in Windsor Castle with it. Movie stars wore it, both when they were filming, and when they were not. Other companies tried to compete, but Thompson's silk was always the best.
Eventually he wanted a place to display the art he had collected over the years. He designed a "museum" he could also live in. He moved 6 antique Thai dwellings onto his property, and connected them. Then he started to entertain. Anyone who was anyone could be found there, as well as a lot of just regular people that Thompson thought interesting.
Tragedy struck in 1967. He went for an "evening stroll" in the jungle and never returned. Was it murder? Did he stage his own disappearance? Had he been injured, or gotten lost? Everyone looked for him. Nobody found him.
Reading about Thompson's disappearance is fascinating, but this book drags it out for too long, and keeps coming back to it, again and again. Otherwise, I really liked this book, and this man. Now he would have been someone to meet!
Look for the book on the new non-fiction table. (L-Th)
According to the internet, some bones were found in 2007 that might be his, but tests to determine if they were have not been done. Apparently the bones "are in a safe place", whatever that means.
