Amazon.com Review
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,
The Pugilist 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
From Publishers Weekly
Like any good prizefighter, Jones (The Pugilist at Rest) sticks to what he does best, perfects his technique and doesn't waste his energy. The 12 stories in his third collection are as recognizably his as is any champion's style: crazed, damaged, hell-bent characters banging around in a product-strewn American landscape trying in some fashion, in whatever fashion is handy, to feel good. All this is delivered in a voice that is colloquial, tough-guy and well-read. In the title story, Jones goes inside amateur boxing to follow Kid Dynamite, who fights for an innocent glory, but also to impress his girlfriend and, typically, his stepfather. His big moment is having his broken nose noticed by Sonny Liston at a publicity event. Other stories feature a hypochondriac layabout son tormenting his dying mother ("40, Still at Home"); an ambitious but clearly insane assistant principal who keeps a live deadly spider on his desk ("Tarantula"); a Viet Nam vet who endures his harrowing memories of atrocities by covering himself with Vaseline and taking marathon ocean swims. Throughout, Jones's (mostly male) protagonists self-medicate by gulping Xanax, Tylenol, Advil, morphine pills, whiskey, beer, codeine. His world is a scary one, which he renders without judgment or sentiment. What lingers for the reader is the unsettling knowledge that the streets are populated with people who are somehow still alive, survivors still kicking because they don't care about anyone, not even themselves. When, in the final story, two mental patients seem to have found true love, we know better, making the poignancy of their affections all the more moving.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
