Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine: Stories (Hardcover)

by Thom Jones (Author) "AS SOON AS the turquoise blue Impala pulled in the driveway, Kid Dynamite was out of the backseat, across the lawn, into the house, and..." (more)
Key Phrases: head custodian, morphine tablets, Kid Dynamite, Thom Jones, Mary Lou (more...)

Editorial Reviews

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T); 1st edition (January 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316472239
• ISBN-13: 978-0316472234
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,407,211 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars suPERB, February 16, 2004

By	Karin S. Chenowith "kharoe" (Richmond, VA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine: Stories (Paperback)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps the Only 90's Writer Who May Be Considered Great, April 30, 1999

By A Customer

I gave "Cold Snap" only three stars because of what I saw as a creeping political correctness marring the veracity of the storytelling. This book is a five star wonder. Jones has a few flaws, still. (The vulgarity of the dialogue loses its edge because it is so omnipresent.) But I was breathless while reading these stories. We're in the presence of a potential giant, in the Hemingway sense, here. The stories actually have meaning. They don't spend half the prose on paying obesiance to modern schools of feminist and critical thought. They're a phenomenon in that they succeed largely because they refuse to do so. They're about our fathers, mothers, ourselves. Real people, real world, real ache and redemption. After a decade which has promulgated the most politically dogmatic prose since Stalin (nearly every novel has been about racism, sexism, or the virtue of homosexuality), this is magically liberating stuff.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New Stories from a Shamefully Underrated National Treasure, March 7, 1999

By	David Liam Moran (Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews

This new story collection shows a huge talent, cruising steadily at the height of his powers, three books in and still going strong. Easily as deft and accomplished as his previous high-water mark, Pugilist At Rest, this book seizes you with vividly drawn characters and the habit-forming tempos of Jones' brilliant, un-flowery prose. One of the only writers around who possesses the quintessentially American combination of being a seasoned, masterly stylist and also compulsively readable, Thom Jones is not only good, but he's good FOR you. And if you've come to expect this from him, then this book will in no respect let you down. Sonny Liston Was A Friend of Mine is Thom Jones being really ON. Some of the stories in this collection feature characters that, if you've read Jones' other two books (and, trust me, you should), you will have seen before. And you'll be glad they're back, they're some of Jones' sharpest creations. That Thom Jones languishes in a nether-world between (relative) obscurity and mass popularity while certain American authors without Jones' skill and without Jones' robust inventiveness sell inferior books by the truckload, is a travesty. This darling of the critics is one who truly does deserve the wide readership that other, lesser writers enjoy. If you've not read any Thom Jones before, what can I tell you? It's all good, and this is as perfect a place to start as any. For fireball prose that hits like a hammer yet cuts finer than a razor, Thom Jones is peerless.