Customer Reviews

The Pistol (Phoenix Fiction)

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Please Note: the title of this book is THE PISTOL


This short novel as JJ called it, or novella as others labeled it, begins on December 7, 1941, and continues into the short future until Hawaii realizes that the Japanese are not going to return and invade. The book did have an option also to reach the movie screen.

The book was written in New York sometime after From Here To Eternity and Some Came Running, with Some Came Running yet on the bestseller charts. Soon after completion he moved to Europe while at that time beginning work on The Thin Red Line. The entire writing took only 5 weeks for JJ to complete, and he was later to say in his letters that the writing had been enjoyable.

The issues at hand of both the pistol and other dramatic events are mainly autobiographical coming from events JJ participated in. As true with all fiction, many other items of plot come from the writer's direction and imagination. The theme of security and protection coupled with salvation are all interlocked in this short writing, with the touchstone being the pistol. JJ said in his letters that though he had showed the work to many people, the book always seemed to mean different things to each reader.

The Pistol, as with many other of JJ's writings, has generally been viewed a critical failure, but a popular success. Since his death in 1977 though, certain critics and biographers of insight have taken second looks at his works realizing this writer was one of our better ones. With no work of the 20th century portraying WWII as JJ experienced it any better than the trilogy he left us: From Here To Eternity, The Thin Red Line, and Whistle. In all of these books James Jones' soldier's eye and voice speak from hard experience. It was a war in which he participated and one he knew well.

For me this book is a wonderful addendum to From Here To Eternity, for it extends and adds to that work. For a couple night's reading no better work on Hawaii early in the war exists.

Semper Fi.

The Pistol is a quick, economical work which would be a great book to use as a "prologue" into the Army world painted by author James Jones with his trilogy:

From Here to Eternity

The Thin Red Line

Whistle (Delta World War II Library)

James Jones wrote Some Came Running (apparently out of print today and today most remembered as a film with Frank Sinatra & Dean Martin) about his time after WW2 struggling to become a writer and to come to terms with his home town and a difficult affair. It is a huge book.

The story which the James Jones persona in the novel(Sinatra in the film)is writing, is easily identifiable as The Pistol.

I have read it many years ago and enjoyed it.