1st from jones for me. i'd read the name in heller's memoir, Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here: A Memoir...never read the story, although i'd heard/read about it...perhaps saw it on the shelf a time or two...no recall if i saw a movie w/the same title...and figured now is the time to give i...
The great success of his first book From Here To Eternity established James Jones's reputation as a major novelist and an unrivalled interpreter of the American soldier. For his new novel, massive in scale and closely observed in its detail, the small town of Parkman, Illinois provides a civilian...
A true masterpiece and one of my favorite novels. Although it has all the realistic, gritty detailing that any novel recounting World War 2 Guadalcanal should have, it is so much more. The reader will indeed learn which gun is which and which rank is which. They will understand what needs to happ...
As bombs begin to fall on Pearl Harbor, nineteen-year-old PFC Richard Mask is wearing a pistol, a .45 caliber automatic that makes him feel connected to the army of the Wild West and Custer's Cavalry. In the chaos of his first days and weeks of the war, as Mask and his company move from Schofield...
I've never had much luck with Jones's classic FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (158 pages seems to be the furthest into it I've ever gotten), and I recall making a half-hearted attempted at the opening pages of this novel ages ago. Lately I found myself with an impulse to try it again; it starts out slowly,...
By now, almost three weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack, the initial invasion scare had tapered off and things had settled down at Makapoo considerably. Obviously if the Japanese were going to follow up their air attack with an immediate invasion, they would have done so within three weeks. Also...
. . LAST DAY IN ENDYMION, AT THE MARION HOME, AUTUMN 1943 “HE SAID HIS NAME WAS Lieutenant Watkins,” said Eddie, who had taken the call. “He sounded as if he wanted to make sure I heard the ‘Lieutenant.’ He called Erskine’s for you and Erskine told him you were down here.” Johnny laughed. “And I ...
I was relieved that she did. I did not have a dinner date that night. And I did not feel like going out and dining alone in some restaurant. The French are excessively rude about staring at lone diners. Somehow it seems to menace them, and they aren’t careful about hiding their disapproval. Norma...
Jefferson, our band had already been following his progress for over five years. His records used to cause more argument in our band than Stephen Grappelli’s Hot Four and the question of whether the violin ought not to be morally disqualified as a jazz instrument. All we had to do was to put on s...