Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine: Stories - Hardcover

Jones, Thom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316472239 ISBN 13: 9780316472234

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 1999

Synopsis

Twelve short stories by the National Book Award finalist of Pugilist at Rest follow the stories of mental hospital affiliates, including a Vietnam vet, a brilliant but burned out doctor, and a young amateur fighter. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

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

About the Author

Thom Jones is the author of two previous short story collections, COLD SOUP and THE PUGILIST AT REST, a National Book Award finalist. His stories, including several in this collection, have appeared in such magazines as the New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, GQ, and Harper's. He lives in Olympia, Washington, with his wife and daughter.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0316472239
• ISBN 13: 9780316472234
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312