James Jones (author)

James Jones (November 6, 1921 – May 9, 1977) is a midwestern American author best known for the fictional portrayals of his real life accounts as a witness to the Pearl Harbor attacks and as a soldier in World War II. The first of these depictions, "From Here to Eternity" (1951) has been named one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library.

At the onstart of his career in the 1950's, Jones was regarded as one of the major novelists of his generation. Today, his works are some of the best material for examining the complete soldiering experience from a spiritual and humanistic perspective.

Life

Born in 1921 in the small community of Robinson, Illinois, James Jones was the son of a Ramon, an alcoholic dentist, and a very religious mother, Ada Blessing. Jones was a perceptive youth, showing early signs that he was something of a born writer. Says Barbara Moody, a friend of Jones' from his earlier years:

"He was intensely interested in people. When you talked with him you were the only person there. He made no judgements. He treated everyone the same, whether he was talking to a small child or anyone."

James, endowed with a sensitive and passionate nature, stood apart from most other inhabitants of Robinson. According to Moody, he tended to live on the edge and was not understood well by others. He enlisted in the Army in 1939 and served in the US 25th Infantry Division before and during World War II, first in Hawaii, where he had the distinction of being the only individual who would become a major writer to witness the attacks on Pearl Harbor. He studied briefly at the University of Hawaii while awaiting his regiment's assignment. Eventually he would enter combat at Guadalcanal for which he earned both a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart for a wound he received in January, 1943. He spent time recovering at a Memphis military hospital before receiving an honorable discharge from the army, returning home to Illinois in 1944 an embittered and angry man.

Back in his hometown, Jones became a drinker and a brawler, revealing a new side of him that contrasted his more compassionate qualities. It was during this time that Jones also became a writer, turning to his experiences in Hawaii and Guadalcanal for the substance of his work. He moved out east in early 1945 to study at NYU. Here he met Maxwell Perkins of Scribner's, to whom he submitted his apprentice novel, "They Shall Inherit the Laughter," a story about soldiers returning home from World War II. The manuscript was rejected, but Perkins gave Jones a monetary advance on a story idea he had about his pre-World War II experience in Hawaii. The author then returned to Illinois where he went back to the drawing board with his second attempt at a novel. During this time Jones also, together with his mentor and lover, local intellectual and free spirit Lowney Handy, formed the Handy Writer's Colony in 1949 just 15 miles north in Marshall, Illinois. The colony was conceived as a Utopian commune where emerging writers could focus on their projects.

That same year, Jones completed what would become his career's catalyst, the novel, "From Here to Eternity". The book was an international best seller and received high critical acclaim. Its success earned Jones, for the first time in his life, both fame and money as well as the National Book Award in 1952. Jones continued to write fiction ("Some Came Running") while still maintaining residence in Robinson, where he built himself a dream-house batchler pad for $85,000. During this time, he frequently travelled, especially to New York City, the literary mecca of the 1950s, where he quickly made friends with literary figures such as James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Budd Schulberg, among others. On one occassion in New York, Styron, Jones, and Mailer were out on the town in Greenwich Village; as they paused for a stoplight, Styron threw his arms around both companions and made the famous statement: "Here we are, the three best writers of our generation, and we're all together!"

In 1957, the author married the enigmatic Gloria Mosalino, who fellow writer Irwin Shaw described as "the candle that kept the house alight." The couple soon moved to Paris as part of the second generation of American Expatriate writers and artists, becoming central figures for the postwar European literary scene. The two lived a lifestyle typical of the Beat generation, spending most of their time in the St-Germain section of the Left Bank, an area "full of all kinds of artistic ferment—painters, writers, poets, playwrights, many of whom are Americans," he wrote a friend in 1959.

Jim and Gloria, deeply in love, had two children in Paris. Jones continued to write books, his next piece 1962's "The Thin Red Line", which served as the second part of his World War II trilogy following "From Here to Eternity." Compelled by an attractive multi-book contract offer from the American publishing house, Dell, Jones left Scribner's at the end of 1964, producing for his new publisher, "Go to the Widow-maker" (1967) and "The Ice-cream Headache and Other Stories" (1968). During this time Jones also served as a European talent scout for Dell and spent considerable time critiquing and encouraging young writers. Work on the final volume of his military trilogy was interrupted twice to produce "The Merry Month of May" (1971) and "A Touch of Danger" (1973).

Following a reportorial trip to Viet Nam in early 1973 Jones published Viet Journal and began to think seriously of a return to the United States. In 1974 he accepted a one-year teaching position at Florida International University in Miami, and wrote the text for the illustrated history WWII. At the end of his FIU tenure, James Jones moved to Sagaponack, Long Island, and began again to work on Whistle, the culmination of the story begun with From Here to Eternity. Struggling with increasing health problems, Jones worked in 1976 and early 1977 to complete Whistle. Following his death on May 9, 1977, his friend Willie Morris added an outline of the unfinished final chapters of the novel, which was published in 1978.

World War II Trilogy

The acclaimed World War II author James Jones set down a trilogy examining the evolutionary process an individual undergoes to become a soldier when he wrote From Here To Eternity, The Thin Red Line, and Whistle. This process he experienced first-hand and influenced his writing for the rest of his life. In his book WWII he defined what this evolutionary process culminates in for a soldier:

I think that when all the nationalistic or ideological and patriotic slogans are put aside, all the straining to convince a soldier that he is dying for something, it is the individual soldier's final full acceptance of the fact that his name is already written down in the rolls of the already dead. (54)

The trilogy chronicles the complete soldiering experience of military life, the brutality of combat and the impact this may have on those that survive. It is this process that Jones came to call "the evolution of a soldier." The author firmly believes that it was an absolute miracle this country evolved such superb soldiers in such a short amount of time during World War II. Militarism was, and is, an anathema to the values this country is committed to and put us at a decided disadvantage when facing the powers of Germany, Japan and Italy. Jones writes of pre-war America in WWII.

While most nations were spending young fortunes for wars, and indeed often engaging in them in one form or another, we were teaching our young that war was immoral, and evil, and that, in fact, it was so costly in both treasure and spirit that mankind simply could no longer afford it. All conditions devoutly to be wished, but hardly a realistic description of the 1930s. (30)

In order to re-create this evolutionary process, Jones has us examine a fictionalized view of his personal wartime trilogy. In From Here To Eternity we see Army life in pre-war Hawaii; The Thin Red Line exposed us to intense jungle combat on Guadalcanal; and in Whistle the wounded come home to an Army hospital in the deep South. Each novel will present these experiences as they relate to Jones's evolution concept.

But his trilogy asks us to remember that the process was not as antisceptic as the history books present things. Real people, just like the ones we know and meet everyday, were crippled, maimed and died horribly, sometimes alone, sometimes for no other reason than they were told to "get up and move that way" and they did; they were sons, they were brothers, they were fathers, they were soldiers.

His wartime experiences inspired some of his most famous works. He witnessed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which led to his first published novel, From Here to Eternity. The Thin Red Line reflected his combat experiences on Guadalcanal. His last novel, Whistle, was based on his hospital stay in Memphis, Tennessee, recovering from his wounds. Jones would not live long enough to see the completion of his last novel, however Jones did leave behind copious notes for Willie Morris to complete the final section of Whistle upon his death.

The posthumous publication of Whistle in 1978 saw the completion of Jones' war trilogy (the first parts being From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line), of which he wrote: "It will say just about everything I have ever had to say, or will ever have to say, on the human condition of war and what it means to us, as against what we claim it means to us."

Jones is the father of author Kaylie Jones, best known for writing A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, a thinly veiled memoir of the Joneses living in Paris during the 1960s. Ms. Jones' novel was made into a film starring Kris Kristofferson, Barbara Hershey and Leelee Sobieski in 1998. The release of this film, which coincided with the release of a new film version of The Thin Red Line, directed by Terrence Malick, sparked a revival in James Jones' life and his works.

In his book James Jones, James R. Giles brings this fact to light within the first few pages; Giles writes,

For almost thirty years, James Jones was the friend, and frequently the benefactor, of American writers at home and abroad. Despite his clear importance in the writing community, the academy still largely ignores him. PMLA biographies from 1951 to 1976 list only ten articles about his work in scholarly journals and essay collections, three of which are in publications outside the United States. It often seems that, when academicians remember Jones, it is as the spokesman for an anachronistic male supremacy or as a writer of flawed naturalistic prose. (5)

Still, 34 years have passed since Some Came Running was published, and amends are being made. Two years ago an eclectic blend of community members and renowned scholars started The James Jones Society, which claims at least 145 members from 20 states and Puerto Rico. Jones's boyhood home is being restored as a tourist attraction, and a $2000 fellowship will be conferred annually to an unpublished writer.

He wrote. From Here to Eternity topped the bestseller list in 1951. Other books followed, some great (like The Thin Red Line) and some not well received (such as Some Came Running), and

Jones died in Long Island in 1977. He had become one of the most significant writers of his time.

Bibliography

• From Here to Eternity, (1951) (made into a film in 1953)
• Some Came Running, (1957) (made into a film in 1958)
• The Pistol, (1959)
• The Thin Red Line, (1962) (made into a film in both 1964 and 1998)
• Go to the Widow-Maker, (1967)
• The Ice-Cream Headache and Other Stories, (1968)
• The Merry Month of May, (1971)
• A Touch of Danger, (1973)
• WW II, (1975)
• Whistle, (1978) (completed by Willie Morris)

External links

• The James Jones Literary Society
• James Jones Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
• 1975 Audio Interview with James Jones - RealAudio
• James Jones on Find-A-Grave
• Read Jones's interview with The Paris Review

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