still love Jones but prefer his earlier works

books:


	• Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine: Stories Thom Jones Back Bay Books, 2000 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 28 reviews view larger image
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still love Jones but prefer his earlier works

Jones is one of the top fiction writers in america today and a master of the short story.

for this reader, this book continued to shine with Jones' typical intensity when dealing with Vietnam Vets and boxers. However, I felt the teacher story as well as the story about the 40-year-old living at home lacked the prose cadence & intensity and just didn't grab me the way his other, admittedly more cinematic stories.

suPERB

I can't believe this book got some luke-warm readers' reviews here! Well I for one ate it up. I'm very impressed by this writer. He is one of those writers that makes me feel amazed that I am alive while he is actually producing these wonders. My only criticism of this book is a tiny one-- i felt disappointed in "A Run Through the Jungle" when Jones felt it necessary to point out the karmic significance of the fiery death of the road-runner killer. I just felt he should have had a bit more confidence in his readers' abilities to make that connection on their own. But that's it- my only complaint. Other than that- WOW! This book is incredibly well-written and the characters are amazing. Jones is a huge huge talent and i am certain that there will be many many a book report assigned on his work in future high-school/college English classes.

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Another good collection from Jones

Another set of good short stories from Jones. More varied in subject matter than THE PUGILIST AT REST and COLD SNAP, but you still get a fair dose of boxing and Viet Nam. And, as always, Jones' prose is sharp and hard-hitting. My favorite stories were "Sonny Liston Was a Friend Of Mine," "Tarantula," about an assistant principal with a sizeable ego, and "You Cheated, You Lied," which pulled me in and left me feeling like I'd just spent an entire novel with the characters.

Very good

The crazy science of Thom Jones is mesmerizing - blunt, strangely humorous and entirely off the wall. Great imagery and soul in this mean little collection - every story its own plausibly neurotic universe. "Mouses," "Tarantula," "I love you, Sophie Western" and the title story delivered the most punch for my money, but all dug deeply, relentlessly into the human drama of misfits, miscalculations and private lunacy. Fun, fun read.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Welcome back to the world of boot camp, boxing gyms, psych wards, and pharmaceutical highs. Once again, Thom Jones seems less to write fiction than to allow his characters to pour their stories directly into the reader's ear. Here the cast includes some of the usual suspects--jittery fighters, Marines, Vietnam vets--as well as some new but equally quirky voices, from a nebbishy vice principal to a 92-year-old woman. First seen in Jones's debut collection, ThePugilist at Rest, the crack Marine recon team Break On Thru makes several more sorties--most notably in "Fields of Purple Forever," in which the civilian Sergeant Ondine takes up swimming much the same way Odysseus, say, took up sailing: "Ondine a night swimmer and he all over the night. Captain of the night. I swim in the fields of purple. Nothing and no one can harm me forever." "Tarantula" chronicles the rise and fall of John Harold Hammermeister, vice principal of W.E.B. Du Bois High School, where the students fail to be impressed by his caged spider and the frustrated janitors prove his undoing. "My Heroic Mythic Journey" follows the downward career arc of its boxer protagonist, who becomes featherweight champion of the world only to fall for a "bleach-bottle blond with a cheating heart" and a loaded .38. Most winning of all is the elderly narrator of "Daddy's Girl," who manages to preserve her faith even with two dead husbands, countless family tragedies, and eyelids growing up into her eyes: "You have to believe like a little child. Believe it because it's impossible." Only the overlong concluding story, "You Cheated, You Lied," disappoints; as chaotic as the main characters' mood swings, it follows two crazy teenagers in love and off their medication. But this tale is an exception in an otherwise noteworthy collection. Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine only confirms Jones's place as one of the most original American writers at work today. --Mary Park

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