Not a word on Thom Jones' passing?
-
Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Books
SeanJoyce — 9 years ago(October 24, 2016 08:29 AM)
I know his literary output was paltry (3 collections and the random essay or story), but Jones was a major voice in American short fiction in the 90s. I encountered "The Pugilist at Rest" in college plus a dozen times after that and it's still the single most powerful thing I've ever read.
A client whom I had recommended it to informed me of his passing 10 days ago and it floored meI was just reading some stories from it only last night.
Thoughts on this guy who was compared to Ernest Hemingway and Iowa Writer's Workshop tutor Raymond Carver, and proclaimed by John Updike to be 1 of the 2 most talented American writers after the publication of his first book?
http://jmoneyyourhoney.filmaf.com/owned -
SeanJoyce — 9 years ago(October 27, 2016 11:25 AM)
Jones was all the vogue in the 90s among the literary cognoscenti. A graduate of the esteemed Iowa Writer's workshop, he was employed as a janitor at the college his wife taught at when embarking on his career in earnest (as a pupil he was advised to take on non-demanding, stress-free work when writing.)
As a young man Jones was discharged from the Marine Corp with a head injury resulting in left-temporal lobe epilepsy. When convalescing he found solace in the writings of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky, and his world view was changed significantly. He wrote about what he knew, focusing on fighters, soldiers, addicts, and in general damaged people struggling to come to grips with the world and their mortality.
His contemporaries were Denis Johnson and Tim O'Brien but the comparisons to Carver and Hemingway are probably more apt.
"The Pugilist at Rest" was a big deal, and the title story won Jones the coveted O. Henry Award for short fiction. That story is indispensable to me and everybody whom I've recommended it to has been blown away.
I strongly suggest you check him out.
http://jmoneyyourhoney.filmaf.com/owned