James Jones Estate
James Jones was the winner of the National Book Award in 1952. He was born in southern Illinois in 1921 and grew up a child of the Great Depression. Without money for college or any other hopeful prospects for work, he joined the Army after high school, choosing to be stationed in Hawaii because his father, a WWI veteran, told him the war would never reach there. Jones was on Oahu on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. A year later, he landed on Guadalcanal with the 25th Infantry Division. His experiences in the peace time army became the basis of his novel From Here to Eternity, published in 1951 to great literary acclaim. The film version won eight Academy Awards in 1953. In 1958, Jones moved to Paris, France with his wife, Gloria. In 1963 he published the second volume of his world-renowned war trilogy, The Thin Red Line. Suffering from heart failure, he returned with his family to the US in 1975 and settled in Sagaponack, Long Island, where many of his literary friends, including George Plimpton, Peter Matthiessen, Truman Capote, Willie Morris, and Kurt Vonnegut, had already moved. He died in 1977 in Southampton, Long Island. His last novel, Whistle, the last book of the trilogy, was published posthumously in 1978.
FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1951)
From Here to Eternity recreates the authentic soldier experience and captures, like nothing else, the honor and savagery of man. Hailed as “ferocious” (The New Yorker) and “a work of genius” (Saturday Review), it is widely considered the most important novel to come out of World War II.
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
THE COMPLETE UNCENSORED EDITION • THE WORLD WAR II MASTERPIECE AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE READ • WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
Diamond Head, Hawaii, 1941. Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt is a champion welterweight and a fine bugler. But when he refuses to join the company’s boxing team, he gets “the treatment” that may break him or kill him. First Sgt. Milton Anthony Warden knows how to soldier better than almost anyone, yet he’s risking his career to have an affair with his commanding officer’s wife. Both Warden and Prewitt are bound by a common bond: The Army is their heart and blood—and, possibly, their death.
This new edition features an Afterword by George Hendrick, a James Jones scholar, who discusses the novel’s origin and eventual censorship at the hands of its first publisher. Now the original language has at last been restored to the most important American novel to come out of World War II. From Here to Eternity re-creates the authentic soldier experience and captures, like nothing else, the honor and savagery of man.
Foreword by William Styron
“A work of genius.”—Saturday Review
“Extraordinary and utterly irresistible . . . a compelling and compassionate story.”—Los Angeles Times
“A blockbuster of a book . . . raw and brutal and angry.”—The New York Times
“Ferocious . . . the most realistic and forceful novel I’ve read about life in the army.”—The New Yorker
The musical adaptation of From Here to Eternity—produced by Tim Rice (Evita, The Lion King) and Lee Menzies—debuted on the London stage in October of 2013 and opened in 2016 on the US stage.
Random House released a newly uncensored edition with a foreword by William Styron, correspondence between James Jones and his editor, the famous Maxwell Perkins, and cover art inspired by the original jacket.
The uncensored edition won The National Coalition Against Censorship Award.
Recently adapted into a musical performed in West End, and is now being performed stateside.
Rights: The Dial Press, North America; Trivium Kft, Hungary; Beijing Pengfeiyili Book, Chinese simple; Ediciones B, Spain; The Open Books Co., Korea; Penguin, UK; Ksiaznica, Poland; Neripozza, Italy; Link, the Netherlands
THE THIN RED LINE (1962)
A classic of combat fiction, The Thin Red Line is also one of the most significant explorations of male identity in American literature, establishing Jones as a novelist of the caliber of Herman Melville and Stephen Crane.
“The Thin Red Line moves so intensely and inexorably that it almost seems like the war it’s describing.”—The New York Times
They are the men of C-for-Charlie company—“Mad” 1st Sgt. Eddie Welsh, Pvt. 1st Class Don Doll, Pvt. John Bell, Capt. James Stein, Cpl. Fife, and dozens more just like them—infantrymen who are about to land, grim and white-faced, on an atoll in the Pacific called Guadalcanal. This is their story, a shatteringly realistic walk into hell and back.
In the days ahead, some will earn medals, others will do anything they can dream up to get evacuated before they land in a muddy grave. But they will all discover the thin red line that divides the sane from the mad—and the living from the dead—in this unforgettable portrait that captures for all time the total experience of men at war.
“Brutal, direct, and powerful . . . The men are real, the words are real, death is real, imminent and immediate.”—Los Angeles Times
“A rare and splendid accomplishment . . . strong and ambitious, spacious, and as honest as any novel ever written.”— Newsweek
“[A] major novel of combat in World War II . . . reminiscent of Stephen Crane in The Red Badge of Courage.”—The Christian Science Monitor
“The Thin Red Line moves so intensely and inexorably that it almost seems like the war it is describing.”—The New York Times Book Review
In July of 2013, The Thin Red Line reissue hit the #1 spot on Amazon’s Kindle bestseller list.
Random House released a newly uncensored edition with a foreword by Francine Prose and fresh art inspired by the original cover.
The uncensored edition won The National Coalition Against Censorship Award.
Rights: The Dial Press, North America; Waseda Prep School, Japan (educational extract); R.C.S. Libri SpA, Italy; Visvis/Etiuda Publishing House, Poland; Penguin, UK; Beijing Pengfeiyili Book, Chinese simple; Minumsa Publishing Co., Korea
GO TO THE WIDOW MAKER (1967)
A playwright vacationing in Jamaica becomes dangerously obsessed with deep-sea diving
Ron Grant is one of the finest playwrights of his generation, second only to Tennessee Williams in pure genius. But success does not mean he feels like a man. On vacation in Jamaica with his mistress, an ice queen who considers him her personal trophy, his thoughts are back in New York City, with a beautiful young girl he met a few days before he left town. As the stress bears down on him, the brilliant playwright goes nearly to pieces before he finds his salvation under water.
On his first deep-sea dive, Grant falls in love with the haunting beauty of the reef. He returns as soon as he can, staying longer and swimming deeper until all his problems seep away. But a man can’t breathe underwater forever—and his obsession will drive him to take increasing risks that will change his life forever.
“In Go to the Widow-Maker . . . [Jones has] demonstrated his ability to create a remarkable novel of ordinary civilian life, of human relationships which are both typical and strange, of love and passion and pathology.” —Maxwell Geismar
“One of the significant writers of his generation.” —The New York Times Book Review
“The only one of my contemporaries who I felt had more talent than myself was James Jones. And he has also been the only writer of any time for whom I felt any love.” —Norman Mailer
Rights: OpenRoad Media, World English E-Book
THE ICE-CREAM HEADACHE AND OTHER STORIES (1968)
A collection of short stories by one of America’s great twentieth-century writers
In his introduction to this collection of sharply crafted short stories, James Jones compares novel writing to a long-term, chronic illness. Writing short stories, he says, is like a brief, intense fever: the kind that can kill or disappear in a matter of days. Although best known for epic war novels such as From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line, Jones also wrote short stories, and the ones in this volume burn with deadly intensity.
Besides the expected stories of the soldier’s life, Jones gives us something surprising: five stories of childhood, tender and horrifying at the same time, inspired by his early life in the Depression-stricken Midwest. They and the other shorts in this volume are accompanied by author’s notes, which supplement Jones’s introduction, and a preface by his daughter, Kaylie Jones.
“One of the significant writers of his generation.” —The New York Times Book Review
“The only one of my contemporaries who I felt had more talent than myself was James Jones. And he has also been the only writer of any time for whom I felt any love.” —Norman Mailer
Rights: Akashic Books, US; World English E-Book, OpenRoad Media, World English E-book; Gallimard (pocketbook edition), France
THE MERRY MONTH OF MAY (1971)
A family of intellectuals comes apart at the seams during the 1968 student revolts in Paris
The Parisian student revolts of May 1968 shook the country—and the European continent—to its foundations. In a tradition-obsessed nation where the old-guard bourgeoisie had spent decades oppressing youthful unrest, every flavor of rage suddenly had a voice.
Hill Gallagher is there—a brash young intellectual grown tired of pretending that the world doesn’t make him angry. Despite the protests of his screenwriter father, he becomes involved in the movement, joining in on protests with the fervor of a man who isn’t afraid to destroy his country—or his family.
In The Merry Month of May, James Jones draws on his own experiences living in Paris and witnessing the 1968 revolts firsthand to create an unforgettable portrait of a society at war with itself—and torn apart by change.
“One of the significant writers of his generation.”—The New York Times Book Review
“The only one of my contemporaries who I felt had more talent than myself was James Jones. And he has also been the only writer of any time for whom I felt any love.”—Norman Mailer
Rights: Akashic Books, US; OpenRoad Media, World English E-Book; Wydawnictwo Ksiaznica, Poland; AST, Russia
THE PISTOL (1959)
As Japanese planes attack Pearl Harbor, an army private commits a simple crime that will change his life forever
Richard Mast is a misfit in the infantry unit at Pearl Harbor. A bright mind in a sea of grunts, his only joy on the morning of December 7, 1941, is that today he has guard duty, which means he gets to carry a pistol. Usually reserved only for officers, the close-quarters weapon is coveted by every man in the infantry for its beauty and the sense of strength it gives the wearer. Mast intends to return the gun at the end of his shift—until the Japanese Navy intervenes.
Turmoil erupts when the first bombs fall, and as the Army scrambles to organize its response to the swarm of enemy aircraft, Mast decides to hang on to the weapon, becoming a criminal on the day his country most needs heroes.
“The Pistol is remarkable in that it shows that Jones, who has been regarded as a kind of Tom Wolfe of the Army life, can write a successful, disciplined, polished jewel of a story if he wants to.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“One of the significant writers of his generation.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Few men write as effectively about the American army as James Jones.” —Newsweek
“The only one of my contemporaries who I felt had more talent than myself was James Jones. And he has also been the only writer of any time for whom I felt any love.”—Norman Mailer
Rights: University of Chicago Press, US; OpenRoad Media, World English E-Book
SOME CAME RUNNING (1957)
James Jones’s saga of life in the American Midwest, newly revised five decades after it was first published and including a new foreword by his daughter, Kaylie Jones
After the blockbuster international success of From Here to Eternity, James Jones retreated from public life, making his home at the Handy Writers’ Colony in Illinois. His goal was to write something larger than a war novel, and the result, six years in the making, was Some Came Running, a stirring portrait of small-town life in the American Midwest at a time when our country and its people were striving to find their place in the new postwar world.
Five decades later, it has been revised and reedited under the direction of the Jones estate to allow for a leaner, tighter read. The result is the masterpiece Jones intended: a tale whose brutal honesty is as shocking now as on the day it was first published.
“The towering work of native social realism that American writers once dreamed of writing.” —Willie Morris
“One of the significant writers of his generation.” —The New York Times Book Review
“The only one of my contemporaries who I felt had more talent than myself was James Jones. And he has also been the only writer of any time for whom I felt any love.” —Norman Mailer
Rights: OpenRoad Media, All
TO THE END OF THE WAR (formerly THEY SHALL INHERIT THE LAUGHTER)
Never-before-published fiction by one of the finest war authors of the twentieth century
In 1943, a young soldier named James Jones returned from the Pacific, lightly wounded and psychologically tormented by the horrors of Guadalcanal. When he was well enough to leave the hospital, he went AWOL rather than return to service, and began work on a novel of the World War II experience.
Jones’s AWOL period was brief, but he returned to the novel at war’s end, bringing him to the attention of Maxwell Perkins, the legendary editor of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. Jones would then go on to write From Here to Eternity, the National Book Award–winning novel that catapulted him into the ranks of the literary elite.
Now, for the first time, Jones’s earliest writings are presented here, as a collection of stories about man and war, a testament to the great artist he was about to become.
“One of the significant writers of his generation.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Few men write as effectively about the American army as James Jones.” —Newsweek
“The only one of my contemporaries who I felt had more talent than myself was James Jones. And he has also been the only writer of any time for whom I felt any love.” —Norman Mailer
Rights: OpenRoad Media, All
A TOUCH OF DANGER (1973)
A vacation in the Greek islands becomes complicated when a private eye is drawn into the murky waters of international hashish smuggling
His name is Frank Davies, but friends and clients call him Lobo. A private eye with a law degree, Lobo doesn’t like to get rough but he’ll do it for a friend. When a rich friend sends him to Paris to retrieve some stolen money, he earns himself a trip to Greece as a reward. It’s supposed to be a vacation, but as soon as he arrives he’s working again.
First his landlady, an English woman married to a Greek, asks his help bringing her cheating husband to heel. Though he doesn’t like her, he finds himself morbidly fascinated by her train wreck of a marriage. Then he meets a countess with a blackmail problem, and offers her a little pro-bono work. As he digs beneath the island’s sunny surface, Lobo learns that no matter how beautiful the scenery, secrets are always ugly.
“James Jones gives you a lot of groceries for your money. Not from the gourmet shop—just plain, hearty, belly-filling fare.”—The New York Times Book Review
“The only one of my contemporaries who I felt had more talent than myself was James Jones. And he has also been the only writer of any time for whom I felt any love.” —Norman Mailer
Rights: OpenRoad Media, World English E-Book; AST, Russia
VIET JOURNAL (1974)
Rights: Union Literary