Sonny Liston was a Friend of Mine by Thom Jones

Sonny Liston was a Friend of Mine by Thom Jones

Dilapidated fight arenas, Christmas in a psychiatric ward, chaotic emergency rooms - this is the world of Thom Jones, whose stories have a passion and depth which put them in a league of their own. Sonny Liston was a Friend of Mine, a collection of his stories, is a mixture of despair and exhilaration, surrealism and minutely observed realism. A Vietnam Vet swims alone across the English Channel to maintain the 'edge' that kept him alive in wartime. A young amateur fighter stoically endures repetitive beatings because he knows boxing shields him from the even crueller world beyond the ring. An unemployed man performs gruesome experiments on mice. No one writes better or more vividly than Jones about private apocalypses, about lives that swing between pain and sensual gratification, confusion and visionary clarity.

Thom Jones, who died in 2016, was a National Book Award finalist, O. Henry Award winner, and the author of three story collections: The Pugilist at Rest, Cold Snap, and Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine. He received an MFA from the University of Iowa in 1973 and thereafter worked an array of jobs, from copywriter to janitor, until he was published for the first time, in The New Yorker, in his mid-forties. His stories went on to be published in other magazines such as Harper's, Esquire, Playboy, and Story and were reprinted numerous times in The Best American Short Stories. John Updike chose his story 'I Want to Live!' for The Best American Short Stories of the Century.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780571201907
ISBN 10	0571201903
Title	Sonny Liston was a Friend of Mine
Author	Thom Jones
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Faber & Faber
Year published	2000-02-21
Number of pages	320
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.