Customer Reviews

The Ice-Cream Headache: and Other Stories

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I read these stories many years ago and was thrilled to see how well they hold up. The study guide by Prof. Judith Everson makes me want to teach these stories to my graduate students. I'm particularly fond of the childhood stories, which seem so perceptive and sincere and harsh at the same time. It's nice also to see the development of the writer over a ten-year period, from his early years after he got out of the Army, to his later stories, after the publication of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY.

After reading James Jones' daughter Kaylie's memoir, Lies My Mother Never Told Me, a few months ago, I thought I should read something by her father for perspective. And short stories, a genre I enjoy, seemed a better choice than From Here to Eternity. The thirteen stories, most of which can either be categorized as childhood or war-themed, are ordered chronologically based on completion date. I loved some of them, especially A Bottle of Cream, which, in the before-story blurb, he claims is "probably" his "favorite in the whole book." It's about a guy gone wrong who did right...back in the day. These background-information containing blurbs preceding each story are one of the book's best features. Of the war stories, some of which contain characters from other books, I most liked Greater Love (read the spoiler-containing blurb on this one afterwards) about some soldiers that go out "to dig up casualties." The five childhood stories are autobiographical. He answered his nine-year-old daughter's question about them thusly, "They're all true...I just had to change a few things sometimes, you know, lie a little, to make them better stories." As a parent of children of about that age, I question his decision to suggest she read the two stories I liked least: The Tennis Game, involving a young boy, which was, according to Jones, about "male masochism, and the title story, which gave me the creeps due to its, as the author calls it, `"near-but-not-quite-incest" thing.' My only other complaint would be the less than thrilling study guide. In summary, The Ice Cream Headache is an interesting, unconventional collection of short stories by a man most famous for his award-winning war writing. Also good: The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, The Turning: Stories by Tim Winton, and Flyboys by Jim Bradley.