Customer Reviews

The Pugilist at Rest: Stories

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I last read this book 11 years ago when it came out in its first edition, and I still remember each story with such clarity it's like I just finished reading it this morning. That's nothing to do with my (atrocious) memory, but with the power and clarity of Jones' writing.
I liken Thom Jones to a literary Tom Waits.

These are not stories to lull you to sleep at night. Reading Thom Jones is like running the marathon, or going several rounds in the ring or, for us desk jockeys, completing that hotly contested deal. You know you've been in a fight even if it is only a verbal one. Thom Jones' prose is raw and disturbing. Whether telling stories of Vietnam or boxing or struggles with serious illness, this collection bluntly but articulately tells of a dark and hostile world and the rage to live that constantly challenges it. Jones reexamines traditional machismo (even as demonstrated by female characters) and shows both the will to live and the naivete demonstrated therein. While these stories have a dark and cynical tone, they scream so loudly about the need to live that they are the perfect antidote to that feeling of cultural suffocation. Read them. They will leave their mark.

I generally don't post reviews on here, but seeing Thom Jones called 'tacky' is just too much for my sensitive mind to bear. There is nothing 'tacky' about this guy, and there's certainly nothing tacky about his stories. They're remarkable -- plot, prose, philosophy, sentiment... all are beyond reproach. He's simply the best living short story writer, period. Probably one of the best ever (it's all subjective, ain't it?). 'I want to live,' already discussed by several people, is unusually moving and manages to convey in a few short pages an overwhelming sense of what one not-too-old dying woman goes through. So what if Jones digs schopenhauer and is not afraid to tell us about him? Anything that can be done by fiction writers to make people consider philosophy -- especially long-underappreciated Schopenhauer -- is, to me, welcome. And the Ad Magic stories which appear in 'Cold Snap' and 'The Pugilist at Rest' are just incredible. As for the critique of Jones on the grounds that his medical knowledge is insufficient -- please. That's not any kind of literary criticism, even if Jones had gotten the drug stuff completely wrong. It's just irrelevant nit-picking.

If you have not read anything by Thom Jones, do it. Buy something on here. Go to the store. Check one of his books out from the library.

I beg to differ with the reader from New York/Arizona. I can't imagine a more compelling, realistic world than that which Thom Jones creates for his characters to inhabit. "I Want to Live" is easily the best short-story I've read during the past decade, and among the very best of the century. (It was, in fact, chosen for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories of the Century.) There's not a false word in this collection, as far as I'm concerned; not a sentence that doesn't ring true. This is as gritty and powerful as fiction gets.

Thom Jones' first collection of short stories is a good one. Eleven stories are included in "The Pugilist at Rest" and they average about 20 pages per story. The first three stories are brilliant Vietnam War stories (the best being the title story) on par with the best writing of this genre (see Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" or Larry Brown's "Dirty Work" for example). These stories are engaging and occasionally graphic and the writing of such quality that the reader is pulled into the story. The remaining eight stories are relationship stories (lovers, friends, family) with the two most moving centered around debilitating illnesses (cancer and alcoholism). "I Want To Live" is a powerful story about a woman's effort to survive cancer as she contemplates death and beyond(the narrator's agnostic viewpoint makes this story even more painful) and the collection closes with a boxer dealing with his trainer's alcoholism. Many of these stories involve boxers (both those in the ring and those on leashes), epilepsy, alcohol, and philosophy. This collection is thought-provoking and well-worth reading. One of the better short story collections I have read. Highly Recommended.

Transforms reading into a collision sport. These stories move with sheer force, evoking laughter and pain. The title story is a classic. Stories you will not soon forget. Just read it.

I write this review with perhaps a unique perspective: that of having read all three of Jones' published short story collections first. I gave "Cold Snap" and "Sonny Liston" three and five stars, respectively. I have not read three books by one author consecutively since -- and I know it's becoming a cliche', now -- E. Hemingway, F. Fitzgerald and F. Dostoyevski. Even James Joyce required a break after two consecutives. Granted, Thom Jones is lighter fare than the red meat of the great European writers; still, I think this is high praise. Especially when one considers that Jones is swimming against a literary current. He is emphatically politically incorrect, and doesn't try (at least objectively) to please any fashionable political school of criticism. He writes intelligently, universally and boldly. I've read several criticisms centering on an imputed lack of thematic material. Yet, many of the stories in the books have absolutely nothing in common, and are written (save for the inescapable vulgarity of speech) in totally disparate voices. Recently, I read an article suggesting that Huxley, not Orwell, was right about the death of literature in future generations (i.e., people lacking the motivation to consume intelligent art, as opposed to censorship). One has to agree with this as the trend: with one ready exception: Mr. Jones. He has the capacity of making us care about literature again.

I once met Thom Jones and had the opportunity to hear him read his then just published I Want to Live! from Harper's. Prior to our meeting and his reading, I had been given copies of his three New Yorker stories: The Pugilist at Rest, Break on Through and The Black Lights.

He was sincere, he was quiet -very low-key- and medicated to the gills, eyes glazed-over. He answered questions: Yes, he'd really boxed, and had epilepsy; Vietnam was, well, he didn't actually go; yes, he had fought drinking, and so on. He spoke like he wrote, I thought: An overdue suicide.

Thom Jones's stories struck me as brimming with so much unrelieved tension, forced emotion, and flailing frustration rather than "rage-filled" and "raw," that I felt cheated, and sometimes used. I thought he was an accomplished stylist with quite an eye for detail if not always dialogue, but offered few insights and little compassion for his characters; I found it hard to care much about them, though felt sorry for the author. Perhaps he was only doing to them what he thought life had done to him?

The first three stories in this collection impress me as good "Vietnam fiction" but not of the depth or caliber of Tim O'Brien, let alone WWII chroniclers like James Jones or Norman Mailer or Willi Heinrich.

Jones's worldview is decidedly bleak; for me, reading his prose is somewhat like a marathon of Richard Yates and Gina Berriault, but not as good.

When he finished reading I Want to Live!, I hate to say the piece left me thinking "so what?" I found the story superficial, emotionally false and manipulative. I Want to Live! made me thoughtful, a little sad -and disappointed in its writer.

I couldn't bring myself to purchase this book when it was first released (I got it for $3.00 at a used book store some years later); it seemed to me this book was more hyped than it deserved, though when I told people that their reactions made me feel stupid, like a literary Neanderthal. Maybe I am.

I give Jones three stars for the first three stories: They are very good Vietnam pieces, but the rest of his fiction leaves me cold. I wish he could find something redeeming for his readers and himself, something that would shine or creep through the unremitting darkness and bad luck. Even Richard Yates sometimes gave us that.

Thom Jones' "Pugilist at Rest" is a fine collection of stories. The highlight of this book, however, are the three stories in the first section. Starting with the title story, these three pieces "feel" real. They all involve the same character and narrate his experiences in the Vietnam War.
What's so great about the Vietnam stories is the authenticity. Not just in the description of the war, but in the emotions and thoughts of the protagonist. Many reviewers noted the author's hard-edged voice, the roughness, confusion, and violence swirling just beneath the surface. But what most fail to mention is the voice of longing and hope that create the foundation of Jones' Vietnam tales. The steamy jungles of Southeast Asia have taken a tough, street smart kid and wrung every drop of humanity from him. All that remained was a near-crazed epileptic with a detailed knowledge of boxing and Schopenhauer. But there's a spark of life and joy that drives the narrator on, that turns him outward and gives him inspiration to write. He's a fighter, aching to find a peaceful moment.

The remaining stories are raw and amateurish, containing passages of wonder, but largely unauthentic. It's as if Jones churned these out in a writing class, inspired by an exercise on voice. I never got the sense that he actually believed in any of these stories.

But the collection is worth the price of the book just for the opening three stories. In the same league as O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," Jones' war stories will no doubt be long considered as essential reading on the Vietnam War.

This is a great collection of stories. I agree that the first three stories, set in and after Vietnam, make the book. One could read these three stories and consider the book worth the time investment. The rest of the book is well written and memorable, delving into relationships, boxing, and Schopenhauer. Epilepsy figures into many of the stories, perhaps a reflection of "altered consciousness," a theme presented many times, induced by epilepsy, sex, drugs, knock outs, or death. Overall a great read.