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 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.
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