Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine: Stories (ISBN 0316472409)

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

suPERB:
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.

Ugh:
When reading the postmodern preenings of a Rick Moody or David Foster Wallace there is always a suspicion that behind the poses there might be a writer capable of an occasionally compelling sentence or metaphor, and that they simply choose imposture instead because of hubris or lack of self. With Thom Jones' writing there is no such suspicion at all. He's simply a bad writer. How this- well, to call him a hack would be to convey that he was capable of what I just denied, so let's call him a troglodyte; yes, troglodyte! No, that's too rough. If PoMo writers are fey, he's neolithic. That's it! How this neolith not only got into print, but has also been lauded and awarded (his first book, The Pugilist At Rest, was a ­National Book Award finalist), acts as an object lesson in why demoticism in the arts is a terrible thing- after all, what published book isn't nominated for some half-baked award? Sonny Liston Was A Friend Of Mine is apparently Jones' third short story collection, released in 1999, and follows mostly pugs, mugs, and losers, in a very masculist style of writing. But, Jones is no Hemingway- not even close, although Jones claims literary descent from him. And this comes from someone who thinks old Papa was vastly overrated. Instead, he writes pretty much as you might think someone who proudly declaims he was an ex-Marine, ex-boxer, and ex-janitor would write. And that's no slur- I've cleaned many a toilet in my three decades-plus of working, but I can create compelling poems, stories, characters, narratives. Jones writes- and, hell, let me go for the easy stuff just this once- like a guy who has been shell-shocked, punch-drunk, and inhaled too much ammonia and bleach together. His writing is horrible at worst, with only a dozen or so moments in the book that even rise above tedium. I am used to Postmodern crap, PC crap, Romance-level crap, but this is just plain old bad, bad writing 101. And the editing of the book is bad, as well. And I'm not talking deliberate colloquial misspellings of `want to' as wanna, or the like, but misspelling simple words, with no attempt at rendering a character's accent. Even the grammar and punctuation in this book is bad. About the only thing Jones can claim is that he tackles topics no other published writer does. In fact, this was why I bought the book- for its title- as I have always been a big Sonny Liston fan. But, instead of even refried Ring Lardner I got comic book level writing- and not that of modern graphic novels, but that of the 1950s Comics Code level....Some critics have called Jones' prose style `zippo prose', meaning nothing more than the basics. These same critics also feel there's something significant to the fact that modern boxing matches go twelve rounds and there are a dozen tales, too. Wow! That's like- symbolism, dude? I'd say the zippo portion accurately reflects the fact that there is nothing offered in the tales. I do not know whether Jones' prose is part of his pugilist act or not. If it is, he should drop it, as he's a sexagenarian now. He's old, and so is his schtick- even though magazines like the New Yorker and Gentleman's Quarterly inexplicably think this crap is publishable. Jones simply lacks range, insight, and most of all- the ability to write engaging sentences. Jones also has a tin ear for convincing dialogue- his pugs somehow are able to have moments that only Woody Allen dilettantes should have, no idea when a story has hit its apex- he consistently violates the wise dictum of not having the climax less than ninety percent of the way into a tale, for his tales drag terribly with events that do not serve the narrative, then often just wheeze to an end that is not really an end. Only in this age, where there are far too many writers, and far too few editors, could this garbage have gotten published. Yet, he's merely a symptom of the problem. It is those who foist the Thom Joneses of the world upon us that are the real problem. They have abdicated even the barest of their duties- as I said, this book is rife with typographical, grammatical, and plain old spelling errors. As well as containing the mentally ill, unemployed, drug abusers, drinkers, psychotics, veterans, and sciolists- often with one character toting three or more of these traits. Yet, not a drop of insight. The old saying is that `everyone has a story', and Jones believes this. And it is true. But, not everyone has an interesting story, and, for those without, a good writer is needed to tell their tales. Jones lacks characters with real stories and is simply not the man to tell their tales. He wants his tales to be macho and scary, but instead, they come off as the rantings of a big, dumb loser that the young kids tease as he impotently rages at them that he was once, ala Terry Malloy's lament, `a contenduh'. No. He was always just a big dumb palooka. The upside is that better writers have written of that type far better than Jones. Find them, and let Jones return to his mop and bucket. Wring hard, now!

still love Jones but prefer his earlier works:
Jones is one of the top fiction writers in america today and a master of the short story. for this reader, this book continued to shine with Jones' typical intensity when dealing with Vietnam Vets and boxers. However, I felt the teacher story as well as the story about the 40-year-old living at home lacked the prose cadence & intensity and just didn't grab me the way his other, admittedly more cinematic stories.

Very good:
The crazy science of Thom Jones is mesmerizing - blunt, strangely humorous and entirely off the wall. Great imagery and soul in this mean little collection - every story its own plausibly neurotic universe. "Mouses," "Tarantula," "I love you, Sophie Western" and the title story delivered the most punch for my money, but all dug deeply, relentlessly into the human drama of misfits, miscalculations and private lunacy. Fun, fun read.

Another good collection from Jones:
Another set of good short stories from Jones. More varied in subject matter than THE PUGILIST AT REST and COLD SNAP, but you still get a fair dose of boxing and Viet Nam. And, as always, Jones' prose is sharp and hard-hitting. My favorite stories were "Sonny Liston Was a Friend Of Mine," "Tarantula," about an assistant principal with a sizeable ego, and "You Cheated, You Lied," which pulled me in and left me feeling like I'd just spent an entire novel with the characters.