Długi tydzień w Parkman

by James Jones, Tadeusz Jan Dehnel (Translator)

James Jones zasłynął głównie dzięki powieści "Stąd do wieczności", w której bez lukru i propagandy sukcesu ukazał amerykańskie wojsko.
"Długi tydzień w Parkman" również dotyka tematu wojska i wojny. Bohater książki wraca jako zdemobilizowany żołnierz do domu, do małego miasteczka w stanie Illinois. Mężczyzna nie potrafi dostosować się i przyzwyczaić do nowej atmosfery, która wytworzyła się w Ameryce w latach powojennych. Wszystkie zamierzania bohatera, plany uczuciowe i zawodowe kończą się klęską.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics, American, World War II, Literary Fiction, Novels

596 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

James Jones was an American novelist best known for his explorations of World War II and its aftermath. His debut novel, From Here to Eternity (1951), won the National Book Award and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. The novel, along with The Thin Red Line (1962) and Whistle (published posthumously in 1978), formed his acclaimed war trilogy, drawing from his personal experiences in the military.
Born and raised in Robinson, Illinois, Jones enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1939 and served in the 25th Infantry Division. He was stationed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, where he witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor, and later fought in the Battle of Guadalcanal, where he was wounded. His military service deeply influenced his writing, shaping his unflinching portrayals of soldiers and war.
Following his discharge, Jones pursued writing and became involved with the Handy Writers' Colony in Illinois, a project led by his former mentor and lover, Lowney Handy. His second novel, Some Came Running (1957), was adapted into a film starring Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine. Over the years, he experimented with different literary styles but remained committed to exploring themes of war, masculinity, and the American experience.
Jones later moved to France with his wife, actress Gloria Mosolino, before settling in the United States. He also worked as a journalist covering the Vietnam War and wrote several non-fiction works, including Viet Journal (1974). His final novel, Whistle, was completed based on his notes after his death. In later years, his daughter Kaylie Jones helped revive interest in his work, including publishing an uncensored edition of From Here to Eternity.
Jones passed away from congestive heart failure in 1977, leaving behind a body of work that remains influential in American war literature.

Reviews

[Mark R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read James Jones' first novel, "From Here To Eternity," a few years ago, and was impressed by it, and finally recently got around to reading his second, "Some Came Running." Long out of print, I found some copies on half.com and ordered one up, only to find, upon its arrival in the mail, that I'd ordered the abridged version. I did a little research and found that the abridged version was first published in 1958, the year after the novel came out, in order to coincide with the film adaptation released at the time. The book's type was fairly small, and at six hundred pages, I wondered what all had been abridged.

Turns out, quite a bit. I ordered the (more expensive) original hardcover version, which comes in at over 1250 pages, and that's more or less taken up all of my reading time for the last forty days.

It's understandable why the publishing company (movie studio?) would have demanded a shortened version, and indeed there are long, somewhat rambling passages throughout the novel, though I wouldn't fault it for its length. The book contains a lot of melodrama, and takes place over the course of a few years, investing many different characters in the fictional town of Parkman, Illinois. In many ways, it has a soap opera type of feel, and reading it, I didn't often find myself up at two in the morning, compelled to keep turning pages, but was never bored. It's disappointing that one) the book is no longer in print; and that two) the abridgement was apparently the more popular, more published version.

The book doesn't have the excitement or emotional impact of the near-perfect "From Here to Eternity," but does succeed as a different kind of story, a story of a small town, which unfolds at a slow but appropriate pace, following a man named Dave Hirsch, returning to his home town after nineteen years away, time he spent in the army and with a group of young novelists.

I picked up a copy of the Vincente Minnelli film and watched it immediately upon finishing the book. Normally, that's how I like to do in cases where I haven't read a book or seen its film adaptation: one after the other. This time, I feel that was an error. At the outset, it seemed unlikely a film version of this book would work, not only because of the length and the constant profanity (which you couldn't get away with in 1957, of course), but because chief among the novel's themes are sex and writing, and how sexual thoughts and needs affect the creative mind.

The movie threw me a bit, because these are, obviously not the themes of the film. The writing is touched on, of course, but is not the main focus. The movie deals more with incorrect ideas and perceptions about people we don't know, and how they can often be wrong, sometimes devastatingly so. The sex is, of course, all but completely missing from the film.

Normally I can judge a movie based on its own merits, but I think that this time around, having spent over a month reading this wonderful book, I was too taken aback by the movie's different ideas and themes to enjoy as well as I could have.

I'd like to say something here about the grammar and punctuation of this novel, and of James Jones' work in general. From my research I learned that he got some shit from critics at the time for his lack of apostrophes and his creative bending of the usual rules of grammar. This was evident in "From Here to Eternity," where "can't" is written as "cant," and "readin'" is "readin"--but is even moreso in "Some Came Running." From what I understand, he abandoned this style later in his career (though I have no personal knowledge of that, as I have yet to read his later works). But there are a number of instances in "Some Came Running" in which apostrophes ARE used, but not for an discernible reason. It almost seems as though he set out with a particular style, taking the g's off word-endings and eliminating apostrophes, and this caused some difficulty for his publisher. The result is somewhat sloppy, but the intent didn't bother me. It's just that there's nothing uniform about the way it's written out.

The adverbs are the other thing I'd like mention. Normally a writer should try and avoid over-use of adverbs, as a general rule, but here, as in "From Here to Eternity," Jones revels in them. He uses adverbs constantly, including some very strange ones, like "fireily," as in, "'Get away from there!' he shouted fireily." Some other bizarre ones include "friendlily" and "sillily." Indeed, it seems Jones will make an adverb out of any word at all, sometimes stringing them together: ". . . he said fireily, angrily."

This doesn't bother me, though I'm not sure why. Normally I wouldn't be able to get through ten pages of a book so rife with adverbs. But there's something about his style, something I can't put my finger on, that I just love. And the adverbs not only don't bother me, but I rather enjoy them.

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

They were all like runners, runners with enormous feet. They were dependent upon their feet to run. But those same feet were always tangling them up and tripping them. And if they ever did win a race, it was both because of their feet and in spite of them.
But none of them knew this. All they knew was that they loved their big feet, for making them different, while they hated them bitterly for making them conspicuous. Such children.

Dave Hirsch is a writer running back from the war to his hometown of Parkman Illinois, around 1946. He was run out of town as teenager for getting a girl in trouble, he returns 19 years later as a middle aged man troubled by writer’s block, by loneliness, by alcoolism, by the sheer dreariness of existence in a small MidWestern town. To paraphrase Rushdie, in order to know Dave you have to swallow a whole world. He is a product of his times, his fate intertwinned with that of his family, of his bar buddies, of his literary friends and of his country coming out of the trauma of war and heading into the consummer frenzy of the baby boomers.

I know these towns. No bars. No burlique. No nightclubs. No racetracks.

Parkman, Illinois feels at times like miniature world under a glass dome, isolated from the larger world, its inhabitants prisoners of their own choice, like the guests of Hotel California (“You can check-out any time you like, But you can never leave!”) or the dwellers in Delany’s Dhalgren. Sometimes they evade for a short time to the neighboring towns, or for an escapade to Chicago, once even as far as Florida, but all of them return to Parkman, and to their futile dreams of another life in another place. One of the barflies in town, another army retiree, sums it up later in the novel:

I’m a rebel, he would say; just like you guys. Only I ain’t got anything to rebel against, even. What could I rebel against? Your brother Frank and Clark Hibbard and the Country Club? That ‘Lost Generation’ of the twenties, they loved it; they never had it so good. But my generation, we can’t even be lost – because we never been found. What was I ever taught? Nothing! that’s what. I never even learned to brush my teeth and make up my bed till I got in the Army. My folks was always too busy fighting. What do they give my generation to believe in: a happy home, a union to increase my wage, a new car, and an automatic washing machine. We’re not even a lost generation. We’re an unfound generation. The “Unfound Generation” of the forties.

The town is divided, the right and the wrong side of the tracks, with Frank Hirsch as the epitome of the ‘righteous’ citizen and ‘Bama Dillert as the leader of the pack for the ‘rebels’. Dave moves between the two worlds, craving acceptance and recognition as a writer and as a man, yet drifting persistently back to the bottom after each attempt to cross over.

Frank Hirsh, Dave’s elder brother, is the one that stayed behind while the youngster drifted to sunny California and became a writer. He feels threatened by Dave’s bohemian spirit in his stolid respectability that actually hides a fierce selfishness and the ambition to get a room at the top of the social heap. He’s in a disfunctional marriage with Agnes and has a teenage daughter, Dawn, who’s trying herself to find out who she is and what she wants. Frank is delusional, a character trait that is reiterated for most of the characters in the book. He believes he is a smooth operator, in business and in his love affairs, but people read him like an open book. Most revealing, he is both physically and mentally not so different from Frank the black sheep : disillusioned, insecure and terribly lonely. In one of his first scenes he has a row with Agnes:

So for the next hour, until he went to get Dave, with that singular and ferocious talent she alone had for separating him cell from cell and nerve from nerve, she asured Frank she would not allow Brother Dave on the premises for any reason, just on moral grounds alone, while at the same time she upbraided him sorely for not calling her first, and then went on to bring up also every little thing that he had done to her in their married life, over the whole twenty-some-odd years; and the real reason behind it all and all the previous reasons were not even mentioned at all, by either of them.

‘Bama Dillert has a magnetic personality, a professional gambler and a libertine / libertarian whose motto is ‘live and let live’. He strikes out an instant rapport with Dave, a bromance that is forged from high stakes poker games and drunked orgies and unexpected confessional and philosophical moments, some funny, others outrageous.

Way I see it, a guy almost has to be married. The trouble with women is the nice women won’t put out and the others don’t do you any good when they do. They put out to everybody. And if the nice ones do put out to you, something happens to them and they seem to stop being nice ones after a while. I didn’t make the rules.

Between Frank Hirsh and ‘Bama Dillert there’s a rich panoply of Parkman personalities, moving in and out of the spotlight, drawing Dave in or rejecting him: a cranky father, a resentful mother, a pair of literary professors from the town college – Bob and Gwen French, a young aspiring writer named Wally Dennis, a flock of factory girls with easy morals, Edith - a self-reliant young secretary that has a thing for her boss and her own family issues. Each of them deserves his or her own review. The novel is so generous in details and nuance regarding these secondary characters, I feel daunted in even considering how to go about it. Even limiting myself to Dave’s story, I could only scratch the surface of his motivations and aspirations, despite writing down page after page of quotes. I think I will cop out and let these snippets paint the picture for me, hoping I will have the stamina to get back to the novel and do a better job in a re-read. Because the title of the novel is apt in more ways than expected : I feel exhausted after the last page, as if I have run a marathon myself, emotionally drained yet loath to let go of the story that haunted me for the last couple of months.

I came to James Jones with high expectations, aware of the buzz and praise for his sprawling war novels (From Here to Eternity, The Thin Red Line), but I picked Some Came Running for my first foray into his work mainly because I really love the movie adaptation. I must have seen Sinatra, Martin and MacLaine playing Jones’ characters at last ten times, and I wanted to see how the source material compares to the film. Well, it’s a mixed bag : Minelli captured the essence of the book, but he was inevitably forced to drastically cut down on the plot and to streamline the story. The book is a lot more disturbing and bleak, but the main difference I think is in the choice of actors : Jones’ people are not the glamorous A-list stars I have come to identify with: Frank and Dave are short, fat and losing their hair, ‘Bama is tall and thin with a potbelly, Gwen is raw boned and horse-faced, Poor Ginnie is dumpy and disgusting. But her inner self is mostly the same from one medium to another:

She was really a nice gal, when you thought about it. Sort of sweet, and good-natured, and malleable. Even if she was not very bright. And ugly as a mud fence. At least there wasn’t any meanness in her.

Talking of Ginnie and Gwen, they are the feminine dichotomy that reflects the Frank / ‘Bama opposing forces that drive Dave from respectability to scandalous behaviour. Gwen is the highbrow virgin who pretends to be sophisticated in matters of the heart but cannot win against Ginnie, who would go out with anybody for a drink or a laugh. Each pretends to be somebody else, just like their men, playing a role, lying to themselves and lashing out when threatened with exposure. Both tragic in their inability to admit who they are. Ultimately it is Love that is put on trial as a mirage that promises us redemption and fails to deliver. Ginnie wants to become respectable, Gwen is writing a critical book on what makes writers tick:

My thesis was that it’s this abnormally high potential for falling in love, the really abnormal need for it and the inability to escape it, that largely both makes and destroys the creative personality in any given individual.

Dave Hirsch is her main subject of study, one that she tries to keep at a safe distance but who refuses to be jusged only through his intellectual achievements. Dave has a tendency to fall in love with every woman that gravitates close to him, thus proving the point of the critical Gwen:

Writing is a lot like sex exhibitionism. Like the man on the street who is under a compulsion to take his genitals out and show them to people. Especially to women.

The novel is not without problems : like my review it has a tendency to meander, to jump from one subject to another, most of all to go into long aimless and repetitive conversations, to get lost in minute details and to follow up on secondary characters instead of focusing on the main actors. Yet I don’t think the novel needs editing. I believe it is meant to be presented in this raw form and in this sprawling manner. It is after all meant to convey the loneliness and the stifling, horizonless society of a midtown America at a time when sexuality was still considered a shameful, tabu subject. ( ... and so, Dave thought drunkenly, still another ant had carried out still another grain of wheat.)

Jones portrayal of women is problematic, but this is something that can be said also of the genius of Dostoyevski. He is a product of his times, and if his heroines are shrill, manipulative, use sexual favors to control men and then henpeck them mercilessly at home, it might not be so much a sign of misoginy from the author so much as an example of how society viewed women before the sexual emancipation of the sixties.

He ingeniously accepted her as honest. Nobody but a writer would ever do that. ; and : Women hungered to be owned and dominated, he thought happily. They just weren’t like men. are just a couple of examples of what could bring today’s feminists up in arms against Dave or Frank Hirsch and their company.

Looking thought the rest of my selected quotes, I notice a leitmotif: Dave got on my nerves with his penchant for being sorry for himself and absolutely passive in doing anything to change the situation, but I couldn’t help remembering moments when I was down and blue in my turn, and believed nobody cared where I am and what I do:

All his life he had been horrified at the indifference the rest of the human race showed him. Even as a small boy, he was constantly shocked at the way people went about as if his existence meant nothing at all.
---
Waiting was always bad, especially waiting dressed and alone for it to be time to go to a party.
---
You’re a chameleon, he told himself, feeling in him the liquor he had drunk back at the hotel. An emotional chameleon, that’s what you are. You become somebody else with everyone you’re with. That may be a good thing in a writer, but it’s a damn poor trait in a human being.
---
Somehow loneliness was always much more terrifying when you were living cheaply and had no money.
---
Is it not also a paradox that in our efforts to escape pain we all run immediately for salvation to human love where we find the greatest pain of all?
---
All his life, it seemed, he had been just an onlooker, a sort of outsider. He had never participated; he had never acted.
---
But even so, such utter and complete loneliness – such aloneness – was almost physically unbearable. And no way out of it; not through love, not through work, not through play, not through courage, not through fear. No way.

Like I said, it gets kind of depressing after 1000+ pages of novel, and it’s not only Dave – all the other Parkman citizens share in the loneliness, live inside their shells looking out, or (in the case of Frank Hirsch) peeping in at night through the lighted windows of his neighbours, at life happening somewhere else while their years pass unchanging inside the bubble. There is even an acceleration of time as the novel progresses, from almost minute by minute presentations in the opening chapters to skipping entire years of working 9 to 5 in a factory towards the end. You can almost excuse and understand the need to go out and get stinkingly drunk on a regular basis at infamous watering holes like Smitty’s:

The tensions, vague fear, and that almost unbearable feeling that nobody on earth loved him, which had made him almost run down the stairs of the hotel, all left him as he parked under the dimly lit windows of the backbar, and got out and went around front and in the door. He quite suddeny felt excited, and anticipatory, and in some way, vastly relieved. [...]For a moment, he had a peculiar feeling that none of them had left, but had been here all that time, the perpetual hard-core nucleus of a never-ending party.

To quote ‘Bama Dillert on the subject:

Well, come on, the tall man said. We might as well, I guess. There’s nothing else to do around here.

Books are supposed to offer comfort and escape to the troubled mind instead of alcohol. Dave Hirsch carried with him through the Battle of the Bulge his favorites : There were five, all Viking Portables. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Wolfe – the five major influences his sister, Francine had called them. . Other people feel threatened by the written word, or by what these books might reveal about themselves : Frank did not read a book a year and said it was because he was too busy making a living, but the truth was books frightened him. He would never learn to read them easily. . Gwen pretends at academic detachment, giving voice maybe to the author’s own views on the role of the novel and a reason why he needed a thousand pages to make his point : What is poetry? It’s the evocation of an emotion. Fine. But novels not only evoke emotions in the reader, they also show what, and why they are really felt. They explain – or at least they should do. . The only one who apparently has won through to illumination, to peace of mind, is Bob French , the elderly poet and literature professor who casts an amiable gaze over the follies of the younger generation : I don’t know anything. I just guess – and hope. I read, and I wonder.

But there are no innocent bystanders in Parkman, Illinois, and Bob French in his detachment is as guilty as the other town inhabitans in the tragedy that ends Dave Hirsch’s life. . I might have looked with a kinder eye at his final speech about the educative power of suffering, if not for witnessing the damage that could have been avoided by a less cynical and laisez-faire atitude:

Every man must find his own salvation. It’s not to be found in another person. Not in friendship; but most particularly not in love. That’s where our American culture – our whole Western culture – has fallen down. It’s tried to teach us that salvation can be found there: in love. Listen to a love song on a radio and see how it affects you, emotionally, even while your mind may be laughing at it.
The simple avoidance of loneliness is not enough. The simple avoidance of pain, of discomfort, is not enough. That way we stagnate. That’s regression. We depend too much on creature comforts, in our culture; and love is one of the main ones of these. Did you ever notice how disgusting, how really idiotic, requited lovers are? Only when their love finally wears out do they really become human again, suffer again.

... because while Dave Hirsch is annoying and indecisive, he at least has the kind heart and the empathy to feel the pain of his fellow men, and to write about their dreary lives with compassion and understanding, viewing the American society of the early 50’s as a reenactment of the crepuscular days of the Roman Empire:

These were the Plebs, he thought looking around the booth. The maimed veterans of the Legions, the shopkeepers without shops, the wives without husbands, the whores without cribs. The teeming life-loving life-devouring ant heap of the Forum, living their lives out in the taverns and the occasional circus given them for their vote, hooting at the false virtue of their leaders – but their willing prey nonetheless – and trying hard to forget the barbarian hordes gathering like a thunderhead in the horizons of the north.

Another between the intellectual dryness of Gwen and the slovenliness of Ginnie Moorehead, Dave makes the gesture that should have ultimately saved his soul, marrying the hooker, but even this is not enough in the crushing reality of making ends meet and keeping up appearances of respectability:

Poor old Ginnie, who with nothing, the lowest of the lowly, could still go on and live and strive and hope, in her honest, dumb way. Ginnie was a symbol of the whole human race, and its own affirmation.

Less of a spoiler might be the information that this is not a novel with a happy ending. I prefer to finish my review though not by disclosing the resolution, but the wisdom that Dave Hirsch gained in his years of struggle with loneliness and self-awareness :

If he had ever believed in anything, Dave Hirsh believed fervently in the rights of the free individual. Every human being had the right to be treated like a human being, and not like some kind of animal. Every human being had the right to some measure of dignity – no matter how unbeautiful that human being might be physically, or how low mentally.

In a similar vein :

One simply cannot withdraw from life.

---
A failed masterpiece, too long and unfocused and depressing for its own good, but one that gives a strong vibe of authenticity, of honesty, probably the result of autobiographical elements that I understand mark the rest of the author’s novels. I plan to finally check out From Here to Eternity, hopefully also in unabridged version, something I keep putting off due to sheer size.

[Mathew Paust · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am yet under the spell Some Came Running put on me fifty-two years ago. If James Jones wasn't himself a sorcerer, he surely must have tapped into some magic reservoir of imagination when he created the most poignant romantic tragedy I've ever read.

I've kept the paperback copy from 1963 but haven't opened it since. Was afraid Jones's story might no longer affect the profound emotions it did back then in me—a small-town Midwesterner on the verge of running away to the Army to flee his failures. I've learned from sad experience along the way trying to recapture a past enchantment often dispels the memory's potency. Some Came Running's was one I had rather not risked losing.

What finally prompted me to take that risk was hearing “Gwen's Theme” from the novel's movie version. Now, the movie left so little impression on me I have barely a recollection of seeing it. I did not recognize the music. Knowing what it represented, though, I could feel through its peculiar, rending harmonies, its swells, diminishes, and earnest tempos, the depth of longing and anguish and sorrow shared by Gwen and her lover as they returned to me from the book. It drew me in like a siren song. With my old paperback copy still in boxes with hundreds of other books from my recent move, I went online to see if maybe there was an ebook version. This is when I learned not only that Some Came Running had been out of print for over half a century, but that a newly abridged edition appeared just last year.

Curious to see the impressions of others who'd returned to Some Came Running via this abridgment, I read a few of the “customer reviews” on Amazon.com. It was here I discovered that the version I had read was drastically cut from the original edition—down more than half the 1,266 pages of the original. The cut version had been published in conjunction with the movie. In her foreword to the new abridgment, the editing of which she supervised and which restored all but about 250 pages of the original, Jones's daughter, novelist Kaylie Jones, gives us a peek behind the curtain at her father's mindset when the first edition came out:

“Rereading it, I realized how important it is, and that it could have used a very good line editor.” she wrote. “I am speaking more from instinct and with hindsight than from certainty here, but I believe my father resisted edits because, expecting a harsh response from what he considered the snooty 'ivory tower' literary establishment, he decided to thumb his nose at it in every way possible.”

This would explain the missing apostrophes in contractions, an oddity I don't remember from my previous reading. I take an irreverent joy from this, fully appreciating the author's passion. Kaylie Jones's revelation also explains in part—for me, anyway—her father's genius for getting under social pretension and into the marrow of his readers' souls, enabling me to thumb my nose at such contemporaries of Jones as Norman Mailer and William Styron. Some months before my first reading of Some Came Running I had come across a piece of nasty gossip Mailer published about Styron reading aloud at a dinner party some of Jones's work (in his absence) and making fun of it.

At the time I highly admired all three novelists. Sadly I admit this disparagement of Jones's skill influenced me to regard him for a while thereafter in a lesser light. Time has proven to be the true test of their merits in my estimation, all three of them. Simply put, Some Came Running is more real to me today than anything I have read by Mailer or Styron—and not only because I've just finished reading it again. It is the reason I read it again. I remember Mailer and Styron as clever wordsmiths—Mailer, especially. Brilliant even. But that's about all I remember of their work. It was top-tier, original literary writing, which no doubt dazzled the hell out of me at the time I read it, but which has not remained with me at any depth.

Best-selling novelist Elmore Leonard in the most oft-repeated of his ten rules of writing said, “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” But of course top-tier literary writers thumb their nose at such advice. Theirs might as well be, if it doesn't sound like writing, I rewrite it. Leonard Michaels blamed his lack of commercial success on this concept, despite winning literary awards for his essays and short fiction and seeing his novel The Men's Club made into a movie. Michaels said in an entry to his journal: “My writing feels warm until I revise, make it better, and then it gets cold. I should revise further, mess up my sentences, make them warm, make money.” If this sounds cynical, here's an insightful squib from the introduction to a published abridgment of his journal, Time out of Mind: “I believed the notebooks contained 'real feelings.' not social feelings.”

And here he is again: “Style is the way an action continues to be like itself. It's an imitation of necessity. Max J. Friedlander, my favorite art historian, says, 'unconscious action leads to style. Conscious action to mannerism...the art form, insofar as it springs from the soul, is style, insofar as it issues from the mind is manner.”

Don't get me wrong, I love good writing. I'm not saying good writing precludes genius, or that genius must break the rules of good writing. I can't tell you what it takes a writer to reach genius. And it's apparent to me the “snooty 'ivory tower' literary establishment” can't, either. But I do know this: James Jones created a world that entering even only half of has kept me inside it for half a century. He did this by increments: subtle layers of consciousness, language and voice. You're in the main characters' heads whether they're actively thinking or merely in tune with the narrator, whose voice morphs into that of whichever character's point of view we are sharing. (I've gotten so accustomed to Jones's leaving the apostrophes out of contractions I almost did it above. It was a little distracting at first in the reading, and I really see no artistic need for it, but eventually if I noticed it at all I found myself enjoying the author's little literary bird flips.)

Come to think of it, there's something more particular within the world of Some Came Running that's held me prisoner all these years, although the ambience of the fictitious Parkman, Ill., tickles so many memories of my own hometown in Wisconsin I'm sure it is part of its hold on me. And I've no doubt this backdrop, this so familiar setting with its ways and its people, their attitudes and outlooks and vernacular, so familiar I find myself unconsciously substituting characters from my childhood for those in the novel, so familiar I feel the heavy pull of nostalgia for a hometown I haven't seen for so long and might not ever see again, this imaginary Parkman, Ill., has its own permanent residence somewhere in my memory. But the real, inclusive grip Some Came Running has on me, has on my heart and most likely always will, is a kitchen. Yes, you read that right. A damned kitchen.

It's the kitchen in the house where Gwen lives with her father, English professor/poet Bob. It is where they spend most of their time when they're home, where they entertain Dave and help him with his novel on his many many visits to the place they call Last Retreat. Long and rough-beamed, with a roaring brick fireplace at one end, this kitchen in my imagination glows with a soft amber light that brings a mystical life to the woodwork, the laden bookshelves and the sensible furniture. When Dave first sees it he imagines he is staring down a huge hall in a medieval castle.

After Dave has had a chance to take in this marvel as a first impression, Bob asks him what he thinks of it. “Its beautiful,” Dave said, “very beautiful.” And it was, too. It was like a haven, like a haven on a snowy blowing freezing night. Like in one of those oldfashioned Christmas card pictures you always loved to look at but didnt much believe in places like that any more.

This imaginary medieval kitchen has haunted my sleep dreams on and off ever since I made its acquaintance the year LBJ came to power. Emotions living there are as potent as any I have known when awake. It's where Gwen weeps alone in anguished frustration at the secret she keeps from everyone, the secret that keeps her from consummating her love for Dave. It's where Dave confronts Gwen, and later Bob, beseeching them with his own anguish over the tortured incomplete love affair.

James Jones alludes to this tragic situation in a special note he included with the original edition:

“There is a character in this novel which may cause surprise, or consternation, or even disbelief, among certain types of readers: that of the lady school teacher. In this connection, the author would like to point out that this character is—though changed and modified and personalized to suit the author’s need, of course—the result of the author’s fascination with, and great admiration for, Miss Emily Dickinson. The author would like to, and chooses to, believe that such ladies could exist in 1950 as well as 1850.”

Indeed, they do yet.

[M.R. Dowsing · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd wanted to read this for some time, but I've never actually seen a copy in the UK, and also there are three different versions of it out there, making it difficult to decide which to read. Decided to go with this new "definitive" version as an eBook as this is a seriously weighty tome of over 1000 pages, and I thought it would be easier than lugging the actual thing around. Also, from what I understand, there's a lack of punctuation in the original which is apparently annoying, but I didn't really want to go for the shorter abridged version either.

The book probably is overlong, but very seldom becomes tedious, so I don't think it matters much. However, some of the more mundane details do seem a little unnecessary. But there's something about James Jones I really like. He's not a very elegant writer, but his ambition and determination to dig right down to the real truth of people is certainly to be admired, and I think he's one of the most clear-sighted novelists I can think of. "The Thin Red Line", for example, is perhaps the most bullshit-free of all novels about men in combat. In "Some Came Running", we get to know quite a number of characters probably better than we get to know almost anyone in real life - so well, in fact, that it almost makes you feel a little queasy at times.

I'd seen the film version prior to reading this and I still think the film's pretty good, given the amount that had to be cut out both in order to appease the censors and to make a two hour film out of it. Frank Sinatra and Shirley Maclaine are a bit too good-looking for their characters as written by Jones, though... To me, the character of 'Bama Dillert called out for Robert Mitchum, but it was played by Dean Martin, presumably beacause his mate Frank was in it. Martin was very good in the film, but I actually found that 'Bama came across as less unpleasant in the book!

It's a shame that Jones is forgotten in the UK. If I mention his name all I get is a blank face. If I say he wrote "From Here To Eternity", people have only seen the film and seem to assume that the book was a trashy bestseller. If I mention "The Thin Red Line", people have no idea it was ever a book. Even these have been out of print here for years. It's good to see that his estate have made his catalogue available in good eBook and print-on-demand editions, but I doubt it will change anything over here. This is unfortunate because reading "Some Came Running" reminded me that Jones still has something important to tell us about ourselves, even if it is a rather pessimistic vision.

If anyone reading this is interested to find out more about Jones, I recommend the Paris Review interview here: http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi... and this doc on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeeIg...

[Jim Vuksic · Rating 3 out of 5]

I borrowed this book from the local library, believing it to be another great World War II novel, because the writer was James Jones, the author of "From Here to Eternity"

Only when I started to read it later that evening, did I discover that it had nothing at all to do with war or the military.

Too stubborn to admit my mistake, even to myself, I continued reading and I am very glad I did.

It is difficult to describe very much about this story without inadvertently leaking a spoiler; so I won't.

I will say this; anyone who has ever experienced the feeling that you just didn't fit in with a social situation in which you found yourself, will be able to relate to the main character's dilemma and how he struggles to adapt, or at least better understand the situation.

If you are familiar with Mr. Jones' realistic and gritty writing style, you know better than to hope that everyone will live happily ever after.

[wally · Rating 5 out of 5]

2nd from jones for me...having recently read his From Here to Eternity...a long, long story, one w/a nice conclusion, the end of a journey, the beginning of another...perhaps this is a continuance of that journey? i dunno.

t'would appear there's several variations of this story...an abridged version...although this one, "the definitive edition" seems to be the...original length...long. kindle...

there's a quote, 1st off...from --sir walter releigh:
one book among the rest is dear to me; as when a man, having tired himself in deed...against the world, and falling back to write, sated with love, or crazed with vanity, or drunk with joy, or maimed by fortune's spite, sets down his paternoster and his creed.

i for one am thankful people no longer speak that way.

&...another quote...this one from Don Quixote:
at last he was free of the damnable books of romance.

a comment on the preceding, perhaps?

&!...yet another quote!...this one from mark 10:17-22...i won't write the whole thing out...just the start off: and when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running...

&...yet another quote! from Edna St. Vincent Millay...from "dirge without music"...down, down, down into the darkness of the grave...

a dedication from jones: this novel is dedicated to the memory of my sister mary ann jones......followed by the second stanza from the above.

contents
special note...prologue
book one, the investment
book two, the job
book three, the craft
book four, the love affair
book five, the marriage
book six, the release
epilogue...

the special note...usual disclaimer...there is no parkman, illinois...no israel, either

story begins:
prologue
they came running through the fog across the snow, lumbering, the long rifles held up awkwardly high, the pot helmets they were all so proud of gleaming dully, running fast, but appearing to come slowly, lifting their feet high in the big, thick boots, foreign, alien, brain-chilling.

what came to be known as "the battle of the bulge".

and this idea is repeated:
it was the new way of life--without lawyers, without judges, without courts of appeal. no supreme court, no president, no congress, no fbi. and he knew, definitely, at last, that it would never stop.

book one: the investment begins:
of course, he knew the town when the bus slowed coming into it. he had known it nineteen years ago when he left it, and he would know it again nineteen years from now, if he should ever happen to come back a second time.

time & place
**the prologue is europe...the end of the war...concerns dave hirsh of the 3615th qm gas supply company, a medic...over thirty...1945
**1947, parkman, illinois...dave returns here...hometown, southern illinois, cray county illinois...several years are spent in the telling
*christmas, 1947...christmas, 1948
*by story end...it is the time of the korean war...
*1949...1950
*the hotel francis parkman
*ciro's, a beer tavern restaurant
*cray county bank...where brother frank is a member of the board
*2nd national bank
*smitty's...a tavern...real name, drop inn dram shop
*sternutol chemical, a big employer in area
*brassiere factory, another employer
*new lebanon, dark bend river...
*israel,little town five miles east of parkman on the banks of the river
*wabash river, wabash valley, eastern illinois...bradley...
**athletic club poolroom where dave meets w/'bama and the others
*west lancaster, nearby town
*terre haute...indianapolis...'bama takes dave and 2 girls there for an overnighter that turns into five days
*cincinnati...frank goes there on a buying trip...st. louis, another
*the taxi office, on plum street, right behind the foyer poolroom...came to be dubbed "frank's taxi service" although they painted the 3-4 cabs w/red & black checkers
*stephen a douglas hotel, a 3-story frame structure...on apple street...dave moves into here after deciding to stay on in parkman to help his bro begin a taxi service
*last retreat in israel, the french home
*the foyer...the other poolroom on the square
*the pump room at the ambassador east...for dinner, geneve & frank
*annie's restaurant, next door to ciro's
*canary cottage on the circle...indianapolis
*claypool hotel...indianapolis
*cray county country club
*little town of dering in central florida where dave/'bama meet jim and his uncle james
*miami, florida...'bama and dave are here for four months...on a whim
*winnie's little club...florida...bar of music...five o'clock club, more
*nite owl in the west end business district
*mcmillan's sporting goods in terre haute
*lake audubon...where dawn/wally go to get away
*st. vincent's hospital...where they took 'bama
*woodsmen's lodge...place dave/'bama play poker
*church of christ, saved
*castle finn...a strange, little settlement in the bottoms
*abraham lincoln...in springfield...frank stays here
*parkman village shopping center...big idea of frank's
*korea/epilogue
*pioneer days...in parkman...(spent time in iowa and this seems to be the fashion, still...mount vernon heritage days...solon beef days...north liberty heritage days...)
*factory where dave gets a job painting munitions...terre haute



characters
*those in prologue & epilogue not listed
*hirsh, david l., main protagonist...36-yr-old, later 37-yr-old...returning home after an absence of 19 years...as a senior in high school, he got a girl pregnant, was forced to leave, to join a circus, that was 1928...later...1943, drafted army/war...he has written/published...2? novels?...but has not written anything for a time...a poem he calls, "hunger"...love poem never pubbed...wants to write a comic combat novel...and, w/gwen and bob french's help...he tries to begin doing so...

*frank hirsh dave's brother, a jeweler in parkman, a member of the board, cray county bank, and from the time dave has been in the 5th grade, frank had acted as father, as the old man took off
*agnes marie, frank's wife...had been agnes towns
*little dawn, frank & agnes's daughter, dawn anne
*o'donnell...driver of the bus that brought dave to parkman
*freddy barker, the clerk at the hotel parkman
*francine...dave/frank's sister, in hollywood, an english teacher, and she is a twin w/frank
*three other brothers, one in milwaukee, one in new york, one in st. louis, edward, darrell, & george
*jake, a tall gray-headed, long-nosed man at ciro's, bartender/cook
*three men at ciro's, former soldiers...'bama dillert, dewey cole, & hubie murson
**'bama dillert, william howard taft dillert, born 1912
*anton wernz iii, second national bank
*wally...wallace french dennis...a young man, a writer, too young to have served...knows/read david hirsh's writing...officially he is 22, as he fixed his license...he also ends many sentences with, man.
*harriet bowman...of greater los angeles, now married to a lawyer, but a woman w/whom dave hirsh was...in love, or something
*elvira (bales) hirsh, dave's mother is still around...but he has yet to see her...17% into the story...still not seen by the 36% mark...lives in an apt frank leased for her at the wernz arms
*dave's father is in parkman, but he is a kind of...town drunk...left the family and he is dead to them...his name, old man herschmidt, victor herschmidt, ran off w/the wife of the family doctor, the doc's savings...but 5 years later returned, alone...and now lives in a pension home.
*guinevere "gwen" french...was a few years behind dave in school, now w/a phd english or a variation, 35-yr-old...still a virgin
*old man french, bob french, robert ball french...her father, high school english teacher, a poet, and the frenches live in israel, five miles away
*george blanca, kenny mckeean (suicide), & herman daniel...fellow writers w/dave hirsh...although none of them are writing now...and it is a project of gwen french to theorize why--because of love...
*al lowe, 32-yr-old...works for frank in jewelry store...frank is having an, has been having an affair, with al's wife
geneve...al's wife, 29-yr-old, works at the mode shop across the square...for
*dotty callter
*edith barclay...works for frank...knows what is going on despite frank's belief that she is clueless...her father,
*john barclay, works for sternutol chemical
*tom alexander's wife...customer
*judge steve deacon...yucky yuck mover shaker good ole boy
*ned roberts...2nd national bank officer
*mrs stevens and her daughter, virginia, the future bride, customers, just looking, pleased and thank you--the stevens-bookwright marriage
*arthur bookwright...the future groom
*harold bookwright, sales manager for the sternutol chemical company's local marketing division
*t l stevens...father of the bride...runs the western auto store
*frank's watch repairman...not named...a...grizzled old man
*old simon clatfelter across the square, another jeweler...carried the towle line, praise jesus, now and forevermore
*jane staley, edith's grandmother, 62-yr-old, goes bar-hopping w/older men
*doris fredric, daughter of paul fredric...a friend of edith who lives across the way
*paul fredric, president of the 2nd national bank
*gus nernst and raymond cole, dewey's brother...dave meets at poolhall
*girls at smitty's: martha garvey (hubie's girl)...lois wallup...(dewey's girl)...& ginnie moorehead...& rosalie sansome
*smitty's extra bartender, a one-armed youth of 21 or 2, eddie
*b.h. smith..."smitty"
*harold alberson...edith barclay is has been dating him...a kind of dweeb
*sherm ruedy, parkman chief of police
*old man garvey...martha's father...runs a big old fillin station out on the west end
*old lady archey...taxi customer...wantin to go over to miz burdieu's and gab awhile
*old lady rugel...dave/frank's father stays at some sort of...place...and she is the...caretaker, or something...of a pension home
*albie shipe, taxi driver...dave wants/gets him to split the many hours he had worked as 'manager'
*clark hibbard...oregonian editorial writer, a republican, and also the state representative w/his eyes on larger things
*ed delancie...owns a shop...gadget repair...where wally worked during high school...
*steve bennett...wally & him spent time in florida...st. pete/tampa area
*mrs mertz, the cleaning woman...knows wally's mom...mertz is a holy roller
*w/albin "albie" shipe, a youth named fitzjarrald...and a boy named lee...hired by frank as taxi drivers
*slim carroll...and slim's attorney...to do w/the purchase of cars...frank is a silent partner in slim's dodge-plymouth business
*marg...wally's mom
*betty lee hibbard
*jimmy shotridge...has proposed to dawn...a freshman at the u of ill
*old les, the pro at the country club
*doc cost...the doc whose wife ran off w/frank & dave's old man...they family doctor, still
*jim custis...man in florida that dave/'bama meet...and is part of the inspiration for a story, "the confederate" that dave writes & bob french helps get published
*jim's uncle hames frye
*elvie, the fat, crippled old vet known as the "custodian"...a kind of...barkeep/cook at a place
*dave's old man's younger brother, roland
*old lloyd monds, the livestock dealer, owns some prime real estate that frank is interested in...belief the bypass will be placed there
*betty lee hibbard
*dr clarence brock pirtle...at the local parkman college
*harv one of two mechanics that arrive to service dave's little plymouth, left, when he went to florida for four months
*mr & mrs gene alberson...own the house that dave/'bama rent...and parents of harold alberson
*lorelei shaw from terre haute...girlfriend of gus nernst, one of the habitual denizens of smitty's
*milton evans...gwen's 1st 'love'...from ago...high school
*mrs millar...friend of mrs. hirsh...elvira
*mrs ethel weller, another
*cousin wilson ball...gwen's cousin...in tucson
*walter, 7-yr-old boy that frank/agnes adopt
*susan, shotridge's older sister, a senior at illinois, champaign
*doc earl mitchell...treats 'bama
*a catholic nun...at hospital/'bama
*dewey cole's mother...hired as maid for dave/'bama...mrs "possum" cole, whose name was vona...biggest gossip in parkman
*shardine jones...worked one day as maid for dave/'bama...but quit as she is a religious lady and they are anything but...a negro woman and a devout methodist
*a chubby, pleasant little welfare man...to do w/the adoption...never named
*old max thompson...parkman's previous chief of police
*mildred pierce...another of the brassier factory workers...i think, not listed previously w/the other
*clint and murray...two croppers who work/live on 'bama's farm where his wife
*ruth...'bama's wife
*johnny...ted...taylor...couple of 'bama's children
*emmett...'bama's brother
*jim thurston...jimmer...from 'bama's past
*eddie barra...friend of clark's...clark hibbard...to do w/frank...looks after frank for the night
*the greek...not named...helps frank buy land...and is a "friend of clark's"
*allis...a land-owner to do w/the bypass/frank
*doctor goster...gwen
*rick, the one-armed marine...a kind of precursor to the one-armed man of the fugitive fame
*mr beckett...magazine guy to-do w/dawn and shotridge...weight: the magazine of opinion
*miss diana sue shotridge...baby of dawn/shotridge
*mrs georgia sheldon...divorcee...helps agnes discover things
*mary ellen in kansas city...agnes's sister
*mrs florence duboise...2nd nat'l bank cashier




a quote or two
because men who lived their kind of lives learned early that incuriosity is, at certain times, just as important or more so than curiosity is at others.

all his life he had been horrified at the indifference the rest of the human race showed him.

all of us seem to have two sides to our natures. the oldest bronze in existence is janus, you know.

an idea (or two) that is also present in From Here to Eternity
he remembered it finally got to be a vague disquieting impression he carried with him all the time that nothing was what you could actually call real.
--dave hirsh

words had no meaning, when he reached out to touch them, his hand seemed to go through them like fog, but when he pulled it back, it was not bloody, he could not wake up, he tried and tried, sleep would not go away.

tremendous amount of thought and energy was being expended, wasted--all because he had inadvertently said something about wanting to get fixed up.

a note on the narration
through the 1st four chapters the story is told through dave hirsh's p.o.v....and chap five changes to frank's...& there are also sections told through edith barclay's pov...her grandmother's pov...and agnes's pov...through dawn's pov...this by the 17%-mark on the kindle.

by the 36%-mark, many of the characters underlined above have been used as the focal point for the telling.

an idea that is repeated w/at least one comedic variation
writing is a lot like sex exhibitionism. like the man on the street who is under a compulsion to take his genitals out and show them to people. especially to women.

couple more ideas...to do w/gwen
unconscious and conscious writing...the 2nd a more evolved writing...

what she was trying to prove--if possibly conclusively--that the self-destructiveness of talent had to do with love--or the lack of it....and that was the main point of her thesis: that the love itself--or the illusion of it--was in every case more important than the talent...


another idea
it's the simple fact we don't give our children physical affection like we use to: holdin them, and pattin them, and rubbin them...when kids are little they need that kind of touch. they get something out of it. a confidence. they get a certain physical reassurance...

where do the ducks go when the pond is frozen?


several books are mentioned
storm, george r stewart
painted veils, huneker
decisive battles their influence upon history & civilization, jfc fuller
the kinsey report...several copies are floating around...or hidden...in the story...and...dunno if this a different book, but
sexual behavior in the human male by kinsey is also about
the man of the renaissance...ralph roeder
hawthorne's marble faun
light on the path...shun not the cloak of evil, for if you do it will be yours to wear...and if you turn with horror from it, when it is flung upon your shoulders, it will cling more closely to you.
emerson's poem...'bout the red slayer..."brahma"?

dave writes...as does bob...as does wally
"the confederate" by dave
"the peon's"...by dave
"the king is helpless" a poem by bob

some things i liked
the character of frank is a hoot...as the story progressed...he takes on qualities one finds in Flannery O'Connor & Harry Crews stories...and that's a clue as to the quality frank becomes...

some of the relationships
like the marriages of more than a few...mayhap all of them...'bama & his wife ruth...frank & agnes...'bama's wife allows him to get away w/pretty much anything he pleases and he pleases his self...frank is the same way, but whereas 'bama is from the poorer side of town...frank is a yucky-yuck...and then there's dave and the love he seeks though he never seems to find just what he is looking for...or does he?...in ginnie? even that is questionable.


update, finished, 24 dec 12, monday evening, 6:58 p.m. e.s.t.
this is an incredible story...i've marked it as a favorite...and that happened w/the conclusion, or shortly before the finale. both stories from jones now that i've read, both have a fantastic conclusion...a feat that seems lacking in most stories of this...caliber. jones knows how to tell a story...he knows how to end one.

there's a lot to like about the telling...the incredibly long telling...the characters, for one, their relationships w/one another...the married relationships in the story...the friendships...the whole shebang.

and...there's enough...what's the word...philosophy?...something like that...there's enough here to ponder and consider and keep you awake nights.

and...i like the way in which the writings of dave...i like how what he is hoping to accomplish w/his fiction seems to be an echo of the story here that is told. so yeah...in the end...things that will keep one awake at night...

i feel wrung out and hung up to dry...

the character/place list above is not complete...don't feel up to it now.

[Debbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Terribly long FIFTY-SIX HOURS AND TWENTY-NINE MINUTES on Audible. I waded through the whole thing; but it was wasted time all the same.

[Anne Monteith · Rating 1 out of 5]

This will be a long review and the first thing I want to say is if you’re thinking of reading this based on the movie, don’t; this is the only instance that I can say the movie is better than the book (Jones hated the movie). I first purchased the Kindle edition which I gave up reading because of editing and then I purchased a used paperback which was just as bad. In the forward his daughter states that she went through it and cut out some lines so it wouldn’t be the “leviathan” it was when first published, however, it’s still a hefty tome of 1148 pages. As for the missing words, dropped paragraphs, dropped letters and lack of apostrophes in contractions make this a book that you’re going back over because it is so disjointed (without punctuation she’d is shed, we’ll is well, I’ll is ill and we’re is were).

I read one review that said that Dave was supposedly based on the author, however, I think if this has any truth the author is mostly Dave, but also Bama and Frank. I’ve never read a book that contains so much angst, self-loathing, and sexual claptrap as this one. There’s only tows sympathetic characters in the whole book Bob French and Bams’s wife Ruth, everyone else is just a ridiculous travesty made up of the worst of human phobias.

Dave comes back into town after the war and the only reason he decides to stay is because he is determined to sleep with Gwen French whom he convinces himself that he is in love with and as the book progresses may be in love with. However, being in love with her doesn’t stop him from sleeping with the town whore, Ginnie Moorehead and many other women. Dave’s ability to punish himself is without end.

Gwen French does fall in love with Dave but refuses to sleep with him because she doesn’t want him tofind out that she’s not the sexually sophisticated woman who is so bored by sex that she no longer has any use for it in her life. Instead, she’s a 35-year-old virgin who will do anything to keep this from everyone, even denying herself the possibility of a relationship with a man she truly loves and one which could ultimately make them both happy.

Ginnie Moorehead, unlike the movie that gave her some redeeming characteristics in the book she has none. She is and has been the town whore since she was 12. She’s fat, has the face of a pig and a dumpy body, she’s so notorious that most men who sleep with her meet her in secret so no one else will see them with her and even after she takes up with Dave, she sleeps with other men in the same house that he and Bama have rented. The movie scene where she goes to Gwen makes you feel sorry for her character in the book you don’t because you see what a devious, dishonest ploy it was by completely odious person. Ginnie never tells Dave that she went to see Gwen and Gwen never tells him either, if he had found out maybe, just maybe there could have been two people in this story who found real happiness.

Franks and Agnes Hirsh could have been a happy couple if Frank didn’t feel the need to sleep with other women and be so stupid about it that Agnes always finds out. Unlike the in the book, she doesn’t hate Dave because of his first novel, she nor anyone else was in the novel. She doesn’t like him; however, she doesn’t like anyone in the Hirsh family except for her daughter and Frank and that will change in some way by the end of the novel.

The other characters are secondary and I won’t waste any time of them.

In the end I can only say that I’ve wasted a lot of time in reading a novel that has been on by TBR list forever and now I’ll read something light so I won’t have to think about this awful rubbish.

[Barth Siemens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many other reviewers, I was attracted to this epic novel following From Here to Eternity. The writing is more loosely structured; this made sense when I read that Some Came Running was written first—published later.

James Jones' sense of the unhurried story is similar to Herman Wouk's novels, in a way that I do not find in current writers. As a reader, I am content to sit in a scene if more life can be brought forth; I don't need to rush away to another distraction.

I hope to find and enjoy more of his works.

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Bama :''''(
Yeah so i'm ordering the unabridged version

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this tomb (definitive edition) because I heard the author was from Robinson, IL, and I had once spent a lonely summer there. I had added it to TBR because someone said the fictional Parkman, IL was a loose stand in for the town. And as I picked up the book I naturally decided to cast the real town of Palestine, IL as the fictional Israel, IL.

The book is a time capsule, but the dread and rising existential crisis of all the characters is timeless. Sometimes it was over the top, and very retro in listening to all the endless talks of "respectability" - I am very happy to be a lady alive today and not then. Overall I'm glad to hear someone felt somewhat similar to how I did about the place. Get out of there Gwen!

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "Some Came Running" James Jones, author of "From Here to Eternity", takes a seemingly personal and at times depressing look at the dark side of veterans returning home after WWII. Using the fictional town of Parkman, Illinois as a backdrop, Jones takes the reader deep into the Psyche of of the townspeople, returning GI's and civilians alike, showing the trauma of readjustment as well as the social changes happening in post war U.S. A very long and at times dark story, the book nonetheless is a must read for anyone curious about the effects of that war on middle America.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had a cold for 2 weeks, this kept me entertained for at least 5 days- since it was over a thousand kindle pages long. About a World War Two veteran coming home, and the less then top notch people he found to hang around with. There was so much booze flowin' I think I have a hangover. Yes, I think it was unnecessarily looooong, but now that it's over, I'm reading James Jones other novel "From Here to Eternity" that's almost just as long. thanks Kindle Unlimited!

[Susan Corbridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, though he does get long winded at times and the conversations or thoughts are not interesting. I read this as an ebook I got for 1.99, and it was the unabridged version. I saw the movie several years ago and was astonished by how much was changed from the book version. I do recommend this book, and will probably read From Here To Eternity.

[Bill Rafferty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I seen the movie when I was a teenager...so different. I thought it had a tendency to drag a little in written form. James Jones a world class writer could have added so much to this story to make it a real page turner... I am sad!

[Doug · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not finish...I got to page 530 out of 1266... and just couldn't continue. No narrative drive and just didn't keep my interest. Jones' first book, 'From Here to Eternity' was one of my favorite reads last year, but this just didn't do it for me. :-(

[Dejan Bohutinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book, James Jones is one of the best U.S.A. authors but also and the underrated!!!

[Denise Barney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chose this book because of the movie, starring Frank Sinatra as Dave Hirsh, Dean Martin as 'Bama Dillert, and Shirley MacLaine as Ginnie Moorehead. There are three editions. The original version, which I read and am reviewing here, is 1266 pages. The second edition came out after the movie was released and is 600 pages. The third edition was revised by James Jones' daughter and, according to her, is the definitive edition that is closer to the novel her father wanted to write. It's about 1000 pages. So this novel requires an investment of time and patience.

The Prologue is set during the Battle of the Bulge in WWII and introduces Dave Hirsh and his view of the war. The novel starts with Dave returning to his hometown of Parkman, IL, after his discharge from the Army. Dave has not been back in 19 years, having been forced to leave during his senior year due to a scandal. Dave doesn't really know why he came home, but figures he will only stay about a week.

Dave's oldest brother, Frank, still lives in Parkman. He married Agnes and built her father's notions store into a successful jewelry and fine gift shop. His goal is to be a successful and respected businessman in Parkman and he is worried that Dave's return will reignite the gossip about Dave's scandal. Frank raised Dave after their father ran off with the wife of the town doctor, and feels that Dave never gave him credit and the respect he (Frank) deserved for his efforts. (Their father, "The Old Man," returned without the doctor's wife and lives in Parkman, eking out a living on the margins.)

Frank feels it's his "duty" to invite Dave to dinner. Agnes is not happy about it, but puts together a dinner party that includes Bob French, a local poet and retired professor, and his daughter, Gwen, who is a current professor of English at the local college. Gwen is writing a book about a group of novelists from the area whose early promise was not fulfilled--and Dave is among them.

Dinner is tense. Dave has decided to give up writing and tells Gwen this, but she urges him to reconsider. He is fascinated by her and decides to stay in town, accepting an offer from Frank to form a partnership to operate a taxi service in Parkman. And he begins writing again.

However, Dave is restless and second-guesses his decision. He goes to one of the local bars and is introduced to the regulars there and meets 'Bama Dillert. 'Bama is a professional gambler; Dave is fascinated by 'Bama's physical quirks as well as by his unconventional philosophy of life. They hit it off. 'Bama notices that when Dave and he gamble together, they win, so they form a partnership.

The novel covers the years from 1949 through 1951. Most of the action takes place in Parkman, with side trips to Terre Haute, Chicago, and Springfield. Dave is the catalyst and the main character, but the other characters points-of-view of a given situation is often given. It's a rather bleak novel: no one really finds true happiness because, except for 'Bama, no one is really honest with himself (or herself) or the other characters. "Some Came Running" is a deep dive into the people in a small Midwestern town and their interactions with each other.

There is a lot of drinking, gambling, and sex--in fact, sex is almost an obsession with most of the characters. In fact, the significance of sex and love is the thesis of Gwen's book about the local authors.

The Epilogue takes place during the Korean War, mirroring the Prologue.

Because the book was originally published in 1958, it can be difficult to find. (I had to order it through the "Link+" system at my library.) "Some Came Running" was Mr. Jones' second novel, after "From Here to Eternity." He also chose to use non-standard spelling and word usage to try to capture the regional dialect. This can cause some confusion, especially with contractions: shed is she'd; wed is we'd--unless it's referring to an actual shed or a real wedding.

Was the novel worth the effort? Yes, especially since I vacationed in the Midwest and was able to get a feel for the location. But it's not a challenge to undertake lightly!

[Buzz Park · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this with a friend after watching the movie by the same name. The movie was excellent...

I bounced back and forth between the original, first edition hardcover and the Audible - these are the only two unabridged versions of the original book.

As noted by others, the title reference has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the book lol! The epilogue has some soldiers running in battle, but there's still zero connection with the title.

Let me start by saying that the voice actor, Dick Hill was absolutely fantastic. He made an otherwise extremely painful book somewhat entertaining...

That being said, what a painful and generally unpleasant reading experience. This is the only James Jordan book I read and, from what I've gathered from the book's original sales performance and reviews, it's his worst.

There's no question Jones was a very talented writer and the grammatical choices Jones made (omitting apostrophes, intentional misspellings, etc) didn't bother me at all like it did other readers. I think it added to the color of the characters.

HOWEVER - I hated, HATED all but one or two of the characters in this book. All the major characters in this story were unrealistically extreme caricatures - from cruel spinsters to sex-crazed sociopaths to pre-Internet incels. Jones' cynical sex-obsessed view of small-town Illinois society may have titillated readers in the late 50's, but it just doesn't ring true. If I didn't know better, I would think that the only thing people did in late 1940's America was constantly screwing, getting drunk, gambling, and consciously manipulating other people. I would also think that the entire nation was populated by emotionally unstable pretenders who couldn't stop lying if their lives depended on it lol.

While the writing was talented and colorful, the characters' responses weren't realistic at all. Throughout the book, we hear the inner thoughts and musings of all the major characters except 'Bama Dillard (one of the few characters I actually enjoyed). As such, you come to realize the influence that the Kinsey Reports and Freudian school of psychoanalytical thought had on the author (not uncommon with authors in the 50's I guess). Every character was obsessed with sex and every character was incapable of functioning well because they were trying to compensate for some deficiency in their childhood. Every response Dave, Wally, Gwen, Frank, Agnes and Ginnie had was mentally unstable with extreme emotional swings from rage to joy to despair - all in the span of a few minutes! In reality, no person could function if every interaction was cause for severe double-mindedness and mood swings.

After awhile, I was literally exhausted from all the internal mental gymnastics these people went through lol.

Lastly, without getting into spoilers, the climax was fairly predictable and quite underwhelming, in my opinion.

So, ultimately I'm glad I read this book for literary reasons, but I cannot say I enjoyed it. It was all I could do to slog through it, even trying to read it in context of being authored in the 50's. As others have said, the movie is MUCH better - the movie captures the characters very VERY well (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine) and has a much more cohesive and believable story.

Two stars and not recommended unless you REALLY like 50's Freudian-influenced literature

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I'm now a member of the I Finished SOME CAME RUNNING Club. First off, this book was unfairly savaged by the critics upon its release. The first 700 pages of this massive novel are as great as James Jones at his best. The critics completely misunderstood Jones's unusual stylistic technique of misspelled words and elided apostrophes serving as transcribed speech and, in turn, close omniscient narration. The masterpiece that turned James Jones into a writer was Thomas Wolfe's LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL and its influential fingerprints are all over this. Eliza's tendency to buy up property to anticipate urban development (in ANGEL, a street behind the boarding house; in RUNNING, a bypass) is similar to Frank Hirsch's. I also liked the way Jones juxtaposed men with big business ambitions (largely Frank) with the sex and adulterous affairs. (Interestingly enough, Dawn's aspirations to be an actress match a girl whom Eugene Gant is smitten with.) Unfortunately, Jones loses control of the narrative in the last 300 pages. I didn't mind the melodramatic ideas about "love" expressed in this book -- which are, in some ways, carried over from FROM HERE TO ETERNITY. But the anarchic spirit of Maggio from that masterpiece has been placed into Dave and 'Bama and it quickly becomes tedious (although there is a funny scene in which 'Bama is faced with a grim medical diagnosis for all of his boozing and hard living). Jones deserves considerable props for depicting rampant sex at a time when it was unfashionable to do so, but his resolution of the plot threads leaves a lot to be desired, even though the epilogue set during the Korean War is a fitting end to show how disposable we all are. If you decide to tackle this book, you will also have to contend with the way that Jones writes women, which are largely perceived from the vantage point of men. He did this in ETERNITY and it largely works here, although the Ginnie character is a one-dimensional and uninteresting drunk. Still, one should very much respect Jones's vision here. He was more than capable of writing about other subjects aside from World War II. He had serious ambition as a writer. And while he blows the ending here, this opus is worth reading if you are interested (as I am) in Jones's colossal talent.

[David Marshall · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't say that I am a great fan of James Jones but I will wholeheartedly say I am a fan of his first novel, From Here to Eternity, (which, truthfully, is bloody amazing). I admit I have a heavy affection for the waaaay long, multi-character novels of the late 1950s and 60s-- and as such, Some Came Running hits all the pleasure points for my super long novel addiction. Was this second work by Jones as good as the first? Not quite. Although the character insights that were the main reason I so loved From Here to Eternity are certainly here, overall it read more like an intellectual look at a lower class Peyton Place than what I had hoped for. This is the type of work that used to be called "gritty" but reading it now comes off more as "kinda grubby". A little less attempt at shock and little more ability to personally identify and empathize would have made it a better read. But that's just me. For an intricate and well-plotted examination of the time period, the town which is a character in itself, and societal prejudice during the brief span between WWII and the Korean war, you can't do much better.

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

Having thoroughly enjoyed "From Here to Eternity", I looked forward to this read.

According to my eReader, I read 35% of the book before I packed it in. There were three reasons:

1. Recognizing that Jones made a conscious decision to use spelling and grammar that reflects the lowbrow characters, I just couldn't hack it. I could only take so many "shed" ("she would") and "redbrick" and the like. I felt it eventually became unreadable.

2. I read the abridged edition, which reduced approximately 1200 pages to around 1000. Still, I found it was excessive. The book was too slow paced for me.

3. (My fault). This book is too large to read on an iPhone.

On a positive note, I really enjoyed the setting and the descriptions of life in the 1940s. Also, the characters are excellent. While I did not empathize with any of the characters - I wouldn't invite any of them for dinner - I found them all fascinating. This is a tribute to Jones' capabilities as an author.

[Judith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read James Jones' novel "Some Came Running" in the past. It is fascinating but extremely over-long in length (I utilized an e-book format). I believe Maxwell Perkins discovered James Jones but did not serve as editor (he died in 1947) on "From Here to Eternity" nor "Some Came Running"; had he been present to do so I think "Some Came Running" may have been a better book when published. Nevertheless "Some Came Running" sold very well. I found the book to be very tough on women which I think would succeed in making it not terribly readable for a younger generation. I think the best thing that came out of the novel was the adaptation made for the motion picture which corrected many of the flaws of Mr. Jones' novel, retaining the honky-tonk world as well as the hypocrisy of a small town.

I am respectful of the two major James Jones novels, but have a hard time with his style - not grammatical but philosophical.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ambitious but flawed novel published in 1957 but written about the after WWII period and ends at the Korean Conflict. Might also be named The Town of Liars. The story of Parkman IL (fictional town) and it's inhabitants. Drinking liquor seems to be the town sport. Dave, the main character is the person the story revolves around. He is a novelist struggling with his process. I do feel as if I know the people in the novel. Could have done with some serious editing- even though it is the abridged version. Psychology and the relations between men and women are very much at the center of the book and the battle of the sexes from this vantage point is pretty quaint. Even though most of the characters are not likable, with a few exceptions, they do come alive.

Anyone who likes a saga and long books should give this a try. At over 1,000 pages, it is a commitment that I am glad I made.

[Frank Marzano · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's nominally set in a small town in Southern Illinois, but if you've ever lived in any American small town, you'll recognize a lot of familiar elements. Jones' characters cover a wide cross-section of small town America. The movers-and-shakers, the down-and-outers, the town drunks, the abusive cops... all of these are thoughtfully depicted.

One thing I found slightly distracting was Jones' integration of the vernacular into the narrative (e.g. walkin intsead of walking, as well as various grammatical errors). But it's a compelling story that, even at 1000+ pages, was hard to put down.

[SpiritualKungFu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this because I like the film adaptation, it takes a lot of different twists and turns and certain subplots are cut entirely from the film, no doubt partly due to censorship, the characters here are all a little harsher and the motivations are far less pure, it full of interesting observations about relationships and sex not all I would say I agree with but are interesting anyway, I would constantly switch opinions on characters as I read and enjoyed the book a lot overall.

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

“The reason he was able to win, this once, was because all he had to do was just sit, and stay sat. Whereas Ginny had to move him. Inertia was on his side. The victory, however, did not give him much comfort.
The pattern was beginning to emerge, and he could see it. The truth was … Gennie wanted more than anything else in the world to be respectable.” p.963

[Peter P. Bernard · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jones, abridged

This is a five star novel, reduced to one star because of Jones' insistence in adding more writing than was necessary. He should have given readers the ability to understand what he didn't need to include.
While the film distorted the story, the director made a bareable story of an unbareable novel.

[Duncan McCurdie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic character driven novel centered around a small town in Illinois between World War 2 and the Korean War. A sprawling rambling novel that explores a few themes but even though it can be very melodramatic is one of the most human novels I've read.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have given it a 5 * but, it was a tad way too long for me! And, personally I enjoyed the movie more - just because it was quicker! I did enjoy the characters and historical part though!