Night Train: New and Selected Stories [B1422]

2019 PB in excellent condition. A posthumous and definitive collection of new and selected stories by the "virtuoso of the short story" (Esquire) and National Book Award finalist - and Olympia author, Thom Jones. "Jones was an oracle . . . It's impossible not to marvel at the urgency of these stories." --Wall Street Journal. 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.

From recent-ish Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "What a nice surprise. Short stories like I've never had the chance to read before. Highly recommended!"; "Life experienced. Short stories that tear out your heart and bring you to the brink of word explosion. There aren't many, if any, like Thom Jones. I go back and read these every 5 years."; "Crazy people who write, where would we be without them? Thom Jones punched the clouds. He jiu-jitsued each page."; "You need to read all three of his collections to really get the full Thom Jones. He worked around, plumbed several autobiographical realities including epilepsy, diabetes, pill-popping and of course boxing. A truly distinctive voice."