The Pugilist at Rest

The Pugilist at Rest PDF Author: Thom Jones
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316438634
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Thom Jones made his literary debut in The New Yorker in 1991. Within six months his stories appeared in Harper's, Esquire, Mirabella, Story, Buzz, and in The New Yorker twice more. "The Pugilist at Rest" - the title story from this stunning collection - took first place in Prize Stories 1993: The O. Henry Awards and was selected for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 1992. He is a writer of astonishing talent. Jones's stories - whether set in the combat zones of Vietnam or the brittle social and intellectual milieu of an elite New England college, whether recounting the poignant last battles of an alcoholic ex-fighter or the hallucinatory visions of an American wandering lost in Bombay in the aftermath of an epileptic fugue - are fueled by an almost brutal vision of the human condition, in a world without mercy or redemption. Physically battered, soul-sick, and morally exhausted, Jones's characters are yet unable to concede defeat: his stories are infused with the improbable grace of the spirit that ought to collapse, but cannot. For in these extraordinary pieces of fiction, it is not goodness that finally redeems us, but the heart's illogical resilience, and the ennobling tenacity with which we cling to each other and to our lives. The publication of The Pugilist at Rest is a major literary event, heralding the arrival of an electrifying new voice in American fiction, and a writer of magnificent depth and range. With these eleven stories, Thom Jones takes his place among the ranks of this country's most important authors.

The Pugilist at Rest

The Pugilist at Rest PDF Author: Thom Jones
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316438634
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book

Book Description
Thom Jones made his literary debut in The New Yorker in 1991. Within six months his stories appeared in Harper's, Esquire, Mirabella, Story, Buzz, and in The New Yorker twice more. "The Pugilist at Rest" - the title story from this stunning collection - took first place in Prize Stories 1993: The O. Henry Awards and was selected for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 1992. He is a writer of astonishing talent. Jones's stories - whether set in the combat zones of Vietnam or the brittle social and intellectual milieu of an elite New England college, whether recounting the poignant last battles of an alcoholic ex-fighter or the hallucinatory visions of an American wandering lost in Bombay in the aftermath of an epileptic fugue - are fueled by an almost brutal vision of the human condition, in a world without mercy or redemption. Physically battered, soul-sick, and morally exhausted, Jones's characters are yet unable to concede defeat: his stories are infused with the improbable grace of the spirit that ought to collapse, but cannot. For in these extraordinary pieces of fiction, it is not goodness that finally redeems us, but the heart's illogical resilience, and the ennobling tenacity with which we cling to each other and to our lives. The publication of The Pugilist at Rest is a major literary event, heralding the arrival of an electrifying new voice in American fiction, and a writer of magnificent depth and range. With these eleven stories, Thom Jones takes his place among the ranks of this country's most important authors.

Night Train

Night Train PDF Author: Thom Jones
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316449350
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
A posthumous and definitive collection of new and selected stories by "virtuoso of the short story" (Esquire) and National Book Award finalist Thom Jones. This scorching collection from award-winning author Thom Jones features his best new short fiction alongside a selection of outstanding stories from three previous books. Jones's stories are full of high-octane, prose-drunk entertainment. His characters are grifters and drifters, rogues and ne'er-do-wells, would-be do-gooders whose human frailties usually get the better of them. Some are lovable, others are not, but each has an indelible and irresistible voice. They include Vietnam soldiers, amateur boxers, devoted doctors, strung-out advertising writers, pill poppers and veterans of the psych ward, and an unforgettable adolescent DJ radio host, among others. The stories here are excursions into a unique world that veers between abject desperation and fleeting transcendence. Perhaps no other writer in recent memory could encapsulate in such short spaces the profound and the devastating, the poignant and the hallucinatory, with such an exquisite balance of darkness and light. Jones's fiction reveals again and again the resilience and grace of characters who refuse to succumb. In stories that can at once delight us with their wicked humor and sting us with their affecting pathos, Night Train perfectly captures the essence of this iconic American master, showcasing in a single collection the breadth of power of his inimitable fiction.

Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine

Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine PDF Author: Thom Jones
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN: 031609305X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
The author's world encompasses dilapidated fight arenas, state mental hospitals & chaotic emergency rooms. The inhabitants are his brilliantly etched characters, who battle desperately against fate in a game of life they cannot win but dare not lose. As we approach the end of the century & the millennium, no one writes better or more vividly than Jones does about the personal, private apocalypses we all face in our darkest moments. In one story, a Vietnam vet, a Recon Marine, swims alone across the English Channel, the Straits of Gibraltar, & the Bosporus to maintain "the edge" that kept him alive in wartime - & that is all he now has left. In another, a brilliant doctor verges on a breakdown. In the title story, a young amateur fighter stoically endures repetitive beatings because he knows the world of boxing shields & protects him from the even crueler world outside of the ring. A number of these stories have appeared in different forms in the New Yorker, Playboy, & Esquire.

Cold Snap

Cold Snap PDF Author: Thom Jones
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316438642
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Following his celebrated debut collection, The Pugilist at Rest, National Book Award nominee Thom Jones delivers a lacerating collection of stories that plunges us once again into an edgy, adrenalized world of desire, mania, and rage. In ten new stories, Jones introduces us to hard-luck fighters steeling themselves for battles they've already lost, doctors who fall in love with their illnesses, and a strung-out advertising writer who uses the hand of the devil to do the work of God. At the end of the day, the only ones still standing have gone head-to-head with the world's brutality--and remain ready, hopelessly potent yet irreversibly doomed, to battle all over again. Thom Jones has a wicked appetite for existential calamity and unflagging humor in its presence; his writing is mesmerizing, sometimes fevered, and impossible to put down. Cold Snap resoundingly confirms what thousands already know: Thom Jones is here to stay.

Body & Soul

Body & Soul PDF Author: Loïc J. D. Wacquant
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195305620
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
In the late 1980s Wacquant, a white, French-born, French and American sociology graduate student, entered the Woodlawn gym on 63rd Street in Chicago and began training as a boxer. This text invites us to follow Wacquant's immersion into the everyday world of Chicago's boxers.

Brief Encounters with Che Guevara

Brief Encounters with Che Guevara PDF Author: Ben Fountain
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061847623
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award * A National Bestseller “An exceptional story collection.” —New York Times Book Review The well-intentioned protagonists of Brief Encounters with Che Guevera—including a disillusioned NGO worker, the wife of a special operations officer, and an obssessed ornithologist—are caught, to both disastrous and hilarious effect, in the maelstrom of political and social upheaval surrounding them. With masterful pacing and a robust sense of the absurd, each story is a self-contained adventure, steeped in the heady mix of tragedy and danger, excitement and hope, that characterizes countries in transition. An intelligent and keenly observed collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevera marks the arrival of a striking and resonant new voice that speaks adeptly to the intimate connection between the foreign, the familiar, and the inescapably human.

Rust and Bone

Rust and Bone PDF Author: Craig Davidson
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 0330543040
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Rust and Bone conjures a savage world of prizefighters, gamblers and sex addicts; dogs fight to the death and bare-knuckled men fight for survival on the most extreme margins. And yet these gritty stories are tempered by gentleness, the quiet understanding in the most intimate relationships. A whale trainer’s accident, a boy’s life endangered – where human vulnerability is so close to the surface, the humanity of these characters heralds redemption and hope.

The Pugilist at Rest

The Pugilist at Rest PDF Author: Thom Jones
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN: 9780316473026
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
An anthology of stories tackles such subjects as the combat zones of Vietnam, an alcoholic former boxer, and adultery

A Study Guide for Thom Jones's "The Pugilist at Rest"

A Study Guide for Thom Jones's Author: Gale, Cengage Learning
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning
ISBN: 1410356043
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Book Description


The Pugilist at Rest: Stories

The Pugilist at Rest: Stories PDF Author: Thom Jones
Publisher: Turtleback Books
ISBN: 9781417707676
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Thom Jones's stories strike with a profound and devastating impact. HIs vision of the human condition is almost brutal, for in ithe world of Jones's fiction there is such a preponderance of darkness that light itself becomes a form of torture. Yet each story in this collection is infused with the surprising, perhaps even ennobling grace of the spirit that ought to collapse, but cannot.