Work
Jones called his first novel They Shall Inherit the Laughter. It was a thinly disguised autobiographical novel of his experiences in Robinson immediately after World War II. After several rejections —with various complaints and claims for the work being too shrill and lacking perspective— he abandoned it and began writing From Here to Eternity.
Charles Scribner's Sons published Eternity in 1951 and it won the annual U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. The Modern Library Board later named it one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.
His second published novel, Some Came Running (1957), had its roots in the abandoned first effort. In contrast to Eternity, it was savaged by the critics. They were especially harsh with the frequently misspelled words and punctuation errors; they didn't recognize that such elements were a conscious style choice by Jones to evoke the provinciality of the novel's characters and setting. Jones apparently played around with this style in several short stories written at about the same time as Some Came Running (later collected in The Ice-Cream Headache and Other Stories), only to abandon it altogether by the time he finished The Thin Red Line in 1962, in favor of the blunt but more grammatically sound style most associated with Jones today. Some Came Running was immediately adapted as film starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine, which was critically acclaimed and nominated for several Oscars.
Jones would not live long enough to see the completion of his last novel, Whistle, (Jones knew he was dying of congestive heart failure while writing it). However, Jones did leave behind copious notes for Willie Morris to complete the final section after his death, and Whistle was published only a year later, in 1978. That completed 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."
While many have come to recognize Jones' genius and effectiveness, perhaps the most unusual is Jimmy Buffett by poignantly memorializing him in his song "Sending the Old Man Home" with the line that the retiring Admiral won't forget his battles at sea but will only have "the memories, or great books by James Jones."
Read more about this topic: James Jones (author)
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“Part of the pain in leaving our children to go to work is that we miss them, wish we could be with them. We also hate to turn them over to someone who is not identical to us, who will do things, at best, differently—at worst, in ways we don’t believe are good for children. We are up against this whenever we share the care of our children with others—even grandparents or trusted and loved ones.”
—Joan Sheingold Ditzion (20th century)
“It is not at all monstrous in me to say ... that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest artist’s work ever produced.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“You live on hopes, I guess. You always dream that someday you might have a lot of money, your ship might come in. But if the ship doesn’t come in, I’m going to work as long as I can.”
—Marion Gray (b. c. 1914)