I did not realize the soil in Jim Thompson’s “The Getaway” was so rich that it sprouted “The Grapes of Wrath”:
Doc knew people; and … he knew this kind [migratory farm workers] very well. Their existence was centered around existing. They had no hope of anything more, no comprehension that there might be anything more. In a sense they were an autonomous body, functioning within a society which was organized to grind them down. The law did not protect them; for them it was merely an instrument of harassment, a means of moving them on when it was against their interest to move, or detaining them where it was to their disadvantage to stay.
The Getaway, Jim Thompson, Orion, pg. 112
