Review: "The Pugilist at Rest" by Thom Jones

This collection kicks ass and kicks your ass, but in a good, humane and sympathetic way. Thom Jones, while being stuck with a very suspect name, seems to have spent his life fighting: he was a marine in Vietnam, a boxer with 150 fights to his name, an epileptic who was diagnosed after a terrible bar fight. All these elements he brings into his stories, and more importantly the people who inhabit them. They are fighting against an indifferent world and their cruel existence, and somehow try to find grace within their circumstances. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t, but all the while they cling to their dignity, which may be the only thing that reminds them that they are human. A lot of Jones’ life story may remind you of Hemingway, but what sets him apart (and what I think makes him better) is the way he distances himself from the autobiographical material yet still maintains a sympathetic eye. While we may want to inhabit the men from certain Hemingway novels, here it is not the case. Jones’ has none of the preening or posturing machismo that Hemingway forced into his stories. These are people whose life has been uncharacteristically harsh, and all they want to do is survive. The eleven stories are split up into 4 sections, each loosely having a different theme, such as boxing, combat, or the blue-collar workforce. Some of the standouts include “The Black Lights”, which tells of an epileptic whose being observed in a VA hospital, and the wounded men, both physically and psychologically, that surround him as he is being observed. There are also funny stories, such as “Mosquitos”, where a man is so determined to get his brother divorced from his nasty wife that he decides to sleep with her. The melancholic “Rocket Man” about an aging philosophy reading prize fighter mentoring a young up and coming fighter, leaves a hint of sadness in the readers heart, because “there’s nothing more useless to the world than a washed up prizefighter.” The most rewarding stories are the ones with a great sense of triumph to them, like “I Want To Live!” where a cancer-ridden woman reaches a meaningful place in her life in the throes of death. On a smaller but just as profound level of meaning, “Silhouettes” tells the tale of how a man in the lower echelon of life stands up for himself against the janitors he works with and the woman who uses him. The ending is fantastic and perfect while also being funny and cathartic. This is a criminally hard to find collection by a writer who does not publish that much nowadays, which is a little disappointing. You can pick it up pretty easily on Amazon (where I got mine with an autograph) and is totally worth the money. These stories are simply amazing and awe-inspiring. They are not always pretty, but they are always truthful in showing how ugly circumstances can sometimes create beautiful things. 
Rating: 5/5