Forum / Forgotten Books: Some Came Running, by James Jones
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Mathew PaustOct 08, 03:04pmAs serendipities go this was a dilly. A dipsy doodle of a dilly, a chance coincidence that has gifted me back half a century to a novel that lodged itself more pervasively throughout my psyche than any other. Reading that last sentence scares me a little as I'm not often so definitive, preferring instead to hedge and dillydally leaving as many doors and windows—escape hatches--open as I can without appearing blatantly chickenshit. But I've given this some thought, and I cannot think of another novel that has stayed with me as has Some Came Running.
[it's all here: http://tinyurl.com/pvnfm4h]
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David AckleyOct 08, 09:01pmA good review, Mathew. I read SOME CAME RUNNING a long time ago, but remember liking it even at the unwieldy, overblown length of the oof original 1200 odd pages. The same with other books of his that I read. I really got into FROM HERE TO ETERNITY and curiously, ended up stationed where it's set, for my two year peacetime hitch. Jones is a writer who tended to be underestimated in his own time for the clumsiness, at times, of his sentences, and perhaps the further sin of being excessively popular. But I recently read a very fair reconsideration of him in, I think, the New York Review of Books, so the wheel may be turning again in his favor. His books all had the power of emotional honesty, great stories, and a real capacity to convincingly relate the inner lives of ordinary people. I suspect these and his other virtues as a writer will never grow stale.
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James Lloyd DavisOct 09, 01:32amJames Jones was a fine novelist. His work deserves a place in the archives of literature. He wrote with a primeval sense of place and a full understanding of his people. From Here to Eternity is masterful.
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Mathew PaustOct 09, 03:51pm
I thought I might have a chance to meet him back in the mid-60s when I was on leave in Paris. Ran into a fellow American on the fringe of an anti-Vietnam demonstration. He had a date with Jones's daughter and was on his way to their home on the Ile de St. Louis. He'd not read anything buy Jones. I suggested he tell him he'd enjoyed The Pistol and the others, to win Jones's favor. I was remembering Mailer wrote how JFK impressed the hell out of him by saying he enjoyed "the Deeah Pahk and the othahs," knowing how badly The Deer Park had bombed with the critics. I asked this fellow in any event to tell Jones I was a fan and ask him if I might drop by for a visit. Gave the guy the number of my hotel. Never heard from the SOB.
Jones was working on The Merry Month of May at the time, set during the student demonstrations at that time, I learned much later.
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Mathew PaustOct 09, 03:56pm
I plumbed my memory a little more and now I think it was 1968 or 69. I came home from Germany in '67, finished my degree and returned to Europe for two or three months. And the student demos described in Merry Month of May were in '68. That book came out in '71.
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James Lloyd DavisOct 09, 04:17pm
'68 was the crucial year for nearly every strata and the student riots in the West were the sudden street theater that signaled something was rotten in the wake of the age of Eisenhower, de Gaulle, Churchill, and Stalin. Hypocrisy was the native tongue of all Western governments and their children weren't buying the domino theory. Too bad the Russians took so long to catch up.
Also the year Mailer did Miami and the Siege of Chicago. Never read Merry Month of May. Will check it out.
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Mathew PaustOct 09, 04:58pm
I've learned since my last post on this thread that Jones's daughter Kaylie was born in 1960, which meant the guy who told me he had a date with her was either bullshitting me, or was a pedophile. There's no evidence Jones had any other children. He and his wife adopted a son while he was in Paris.
I Tweeted my review to Kaylie, who's published several books herself. I just downloaded Lies My Mother Never Told Me, which covers the family's years in Paris. Maybe has some clues to the mystery.
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James Lloyd DavisOct 09, 07:13pm
Parts I, II, and III are here... an interesting portrait of Jones from 67.
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Mathew PaustOct 09, 08:46pm
Tks, JDR.
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