James Jones Biography and List of Works

American author, whose in many novels depict warfare and military life. Jones's best-know work is FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1951), a story of the pre-World War II army. The book was adapted for the screen, and the film received an Academy Award for best picture in 1953. Jones's attitude toward war was paradoxical. His early works presented the destruction of human character in modern war, but later novels were less critical.

James Jones was born in Robinson, Illinois, the son of a dentist, Ramon Jones and Ada Blessing Jones. His father had problems with alcohol and his mother was religious, in this atmosphere of hot emotions Jones grew up. His grandfather owned one of the oldest and biggest houses on East Main Street. He had much social prestige based on oil money but the social bottom of the family fell out after his death. Jones has admitted, that this experience gave him a talent for seeing beneath the surface of life and various social prestiges'.

Jones completed his high school education in Illinois. Because of the Depression, he couldn't continue his studies. During the World War II he served in the US army as a sergeant (1939-44). He was at Pearl Harbour when the Japanese attacked, and on the Guadalcanal he was injured in combat, and received the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. He also boxed as a welterweight in Golden Gloves tournaments. Jones's boxing experiences were the basis for fight scenes in From Here to Eternity. To make up for his lack of higher education, Jones attended the University of Hawaii for a short time in 1942 while stationed on Oahu. In 1945 he attended New York University.

Jones's wartime experiences in Hawaii formed the background for his first novel, From Here to Eternity, which depicted life in a Marine base at the time of Pearl Harbour. Jones spent six years writing the book. The unembellished use of the language of the barrack-room, the beauty and power of the narrative, and the sexually explicit events contributed to the novel's meteoric success. The central character is Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt, a brave man who loves the army but who is in conflict with its system. It was a Book of the Month Club selection and received the National Book Award for fiction in 1951.

With the money he earned from his best seller, Jones purchased and furnished a house in Marshall, Illinois, and established a writers' colony with the assistance of Lowney Handy. Jones was very sensitive to criticism about his work and worked seven years before his second book, SOME CAME RUNNING (1957), was published. It drew on his life in Illinois after the war and did not gain much critical acclaim.

In 1957 Jones married Gloria Mosalino. They lived in Paris from 1958 until 1975, when they returned to the United States. In France their house became a meeting place for writers and artists. From this period dates material for the critical novel about the Paris student riots of 1968, THE MERRY MONT OF MAY (1970). It was particularly praised for its description of Paris and its ambience. Jones other works include PISTOL (1958), a story of an army private who accidentally obtains a gun on the day of the Pearl Harbour attack. THE THIN RED LINE (1962) was a war novel about raw recruits, who land on Guadalcanal. The second in the trilogy of Jones's war novels demonstrated the author's ability to create many individualized characters and dramatic episodes. The book formed basis for Terence Malick's three-hour drama (1998). Unlike the more successful war film from the same year, Steven Spielberg's Oscar winner Saving Private Ryan, Malick avoided all hero worship.

"This was war? There was no superior test of strength here, no superb swordsmanship, no bellowing Viking heroism, no expert marksmanship. This was only numbers. He was being killed for numbers. Why of why had he not found and taken to himself that clerkish desk job far in the rear which he could have had?"
(from The Thin Red Line)

Jones's last work, WHISTLE (1978), was published posthumously. It concerned a group of wounded soldiers sent home and their attempts to adjust to normal life. The four central characters appearing in the novel are the same personae - with different names - that appeared in From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line, illustrating the various kinds of tragedy that come to the soldier. Jones did not finish the last three chapters. They were completed by his friend Willie Morris, who used the author's notes and conversations with him. Whistle ended Jones's Great War trilogy.

In 1974 Jones was offered a teaching position at Florida International University in Miami. At the end of the 1976 school year, the Jones's moved to Southampton, New York. He died in Long Island, on May 9, 1977.

For further information: Encyclopaedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999, vol. 2); Into Eternity: The Life of James Jones, an American Writer by Frank MacShane (1985); James Jones by G.P. Garrett (1984); James Jones by J.R. Giles (1981); James Jones by W. Morris (1978)

Other great war novels about the war in the Pacific: Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, Herman Wouk's The 'Caine' Mutiny, Pierre Boulle's Bridge on the River Kwai, J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun, James Dickey's The Performance, Tamiki Hara's Glittering Fragments, John Ciardi's The Massive Retalion, Nobuyuki Saga's The Myth of Hiroshima, Nobuo Ayukawa's Saigon 1943.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, (1951)