Being There: Thoughts on the James Jones Literary Society Symposium at LIU, Southampton, NY, June 26, 1999

I went out to SFO airport, headed for the James Jones Literary Society's annual symposium in Long Island, NY, as excited as a football fan following his team to the Superbowl. I'm a lifelong student of literature and a great fan of James Jones' World War II Trilogy. Literary notables such as William Styron and Norman Mailer would be there, speaking about the life and work of Jones. Passing some time in a book store as I waited for my flight, I came across a curious book, Message From Nam, by Danielle Steel. I knew her as a writer of steamy romance novels and was surprised to find a book about Nam. To tell the truth, as the writer of a so-far unpublished novel about my experiences as an infantryman in Vietnam, it made me a little jealous. It had a stylized chopper on the cover, the title in faux-Asian typeface. As I scanned the pages they began to board my flight and I put it down. On the plane I sat next to a kid (he said he was twenty-five; I'm fifty) who was going to his brother's wedding on Long Island. He was well-mannered and articulate, and our conversation shifted directions rapidly, from the latest miracle drug his company was working on (he was a chemist) to Pynchon (he's a big fan and I admitted to having only read Gravity's Rainbow) to saltwater crocodiles (I've forgotten how we got to that.) But, sadly, he seemed reluctant to discuss the issues of the day, the war in Kosovo, Clinton's troubles, etc. I've noticed this in many of today's young people. I went back to the book I'd been reading, James Jones's Viet Journal. He and I have something in common; we've both been to Vietnam.

At JFK, the pilot seemed to have to fight for control of the craft as we descended. The plane, a 767, landed hard, the fuselage torquing and shuddering so much I thought the luggage would fall out of the overhead compartments. It didn't. I picked up a little rented Escort, with air, and headed for LIU, Southampton. The ride was pleasant and uneventful. At the college I went into an official-looking building and picked up the keys to the single dorm room I'd be staying in. In a 50's era, red brick building I opened the door to number 8 and got a shock. It was more a monk's cell than a room, with a thin sliver of bed, a tiny desk, a wall-mounted bookshelf with space for no more than a dozen volumes, and a closet that resembled an upright coffin. In September, the student who moved into this room, this dry sensory-deprivation tank, would find nothing to distract him or her from their meditations and readings. And the writer in me appreciated that. But it might get a little crowded in there if my imagined student got lucky on a Saturday night.

I drove out to highway 27 to find some dinner. There were 7-11's, a Burger King, MacDonald's, but not much more. Then a little further down the highway I spied a Chinese restaurant. I had a lovely meal of broccoli and tofu over steamed rice (I'm from California), washed down with two bottles of Tsingtao, one of the better German lagers (the Germans built the brewery in China before the revolution; the Chinese have been running it ever since). I read a piece in a local freebie paper about how prohibition and the resultant booze smuggling had changed Long Island and the nation almost overnight. I clipped the article to give to my son, imagining how much James Jones would have appreciated something like that, maybe even saving it as fodder for a future novel. Finishing my meal, I opened up the ubiquitous fortune cookie and read, "You're filled with life's most precious treasure - hope!" How did they know? Rhymes with dope, hope does, that carrot on a stick. Ask any young writer who's sent out a manuscript to a dozen different agents, had eleven of them return with form rejection letters, and is waiting for the last. But hope is a good thing, I guess, hardwired into us. It's gotten us Americans through all kinds of horrors, most notably, and indirectly the reason for my being here, World War II. For probably it was World War II that drove James Jones to write so passionately and wonderfully. Getting back to the mundane level, hope and a cup of coffee will get most of us up and out of bed morning after morning.

On the way back to that lonely little dorm room, I stopped at a pay phone (I couldn't find any in the dorm) to call my wife and kids. As I waited for the computerized E-operator to ask my wife if she would accept the charges, I looked around. A dozen or so college-aged kids hung out by the gas pumps, the girls, throwing back their hair and preening, the boys, baseball caps on backwards, wearing the bored, dangerous expressions that black rap artists have made popular. Out on Hwy 27 many more American youth had appeared with the darkness to flit in and out of parking lots in their little Japanese cars and trucks, frantic, pheromone-driven, like moths around neon. Maybe they had spent too much time in a little room like mine. I said goodnight to my wife and kids and hung up.

Back in my borrowed cell, I read some more of Viet Journal. I was touched by James Jones's worry over a helicopter journey he and his UN hosts would make to Dak Pek the following day. The NVA would be below, their fingers on the AA gun triggers, and the choppers would be unarmed. It grew awfully hot and humid and I opened the window (of course there's no air conditioner). A slight breeze entered along with the sounds of a dorm party. A drunken male voice shouted "fuck you!" over and over, DeNiro-like. Happily he soon quieted down and I slept.

In the morning I bought some Dunkin Doughnuts coffee and crullers, and hurried back to the lecture hall. There were eight rows of twenty seats, almost all filled up, and another row forming behind them made up of fold-up chairs. In the air conditioned comfort of the room, Kaylie Jones, author and daughter of James Jones, opened the symposium by welcoming all and especially the guest speakers. Bud Schulburg took the podium. The author of What Makes Sammy Run?, Schulburg spoke in warm, fatherly tones of James Jones "wanting to get it all down as honestly as he could." He told how James Jones practically moved into his (Schulburg's) apartment, wanting to discuss writing, and his latest work in progress, Some Came Running. Jones confided his loneliness to Schulburg and Schulburg introduced him to the woman who would become his wife, Gloria. Next, Joseph Heller of Catch 22 fame, looked both brilliant and playful as he took the podium to admit that he hadn't known James Jones all that well. But he went on to share some anecdotes about the times they were together, like the almost-brawl he and James Jones got into with some tough-looking French truck drivers. Heller's voice took on a touch of sadness as he described James Jones's worsening heart condition at Sagaponek, Long Island. Then lyricist and screen-writer Betty Comden shared some amusing stories of times spent with the Joneses at Jamaica. She talked warmly of James Jones's skin diving adventures, his love of the Poet, Yeats, and his request for his poems as he lay dying. Norman Mailer was next. As sharp and combative as ever, he said that, "James Jones's book (From Here To Eternity) went deeper into the nature of what it's like to be a soldier than any other." The candor these writers exhibited, never lapsing into phony 'feel good-isms' was moving and admirable. Mailer laughingly shared a comment Jones had made to him that, "You're the most intelligent person I've ever known, but the most evil." William Styron appeared professorial, in his element, as he spoke next, telling of James Jones's reverential study of the Civil War, and his feeling about Hemmingway being a "war lover." Styron was asked a leading question by an enthusiastic Some Came Running fan, and Styron stuck to his opinion that the book was flawed, and did not represent the best of Jones's work. Again, such honesty ... Peter Matthiessen, author of Killing Mister Watson, spoke next. Younger than the other speakers, I could imagine him looking up to James Jones as older brother and mentor. Matthiessen spoke about times he'd spent drinking and partying with James Jones in Paris. He spoke of "Jim's realization of his impending death," and described a weakening James Jones working in a brave and soldierly way to finish Whistle. Matthiessen concluded with a description of the end that came in the hospital, of a brave man smiling to give them courage, of them leaving his room to cry out their grief to one another out of his sight. There was speculative talk by several of the writers present about the future of war novels, the feeling being that it was tapering off, that war had become too mechanically-efficient and brutal, and that that perhaps made it an unfitting subject, too repulsive for a modern reader to get through. The other theme that came up again and again was that Jones's WWII trilogy would probably remain the pinnacle of writing about war. As the symposium drew to a close, I found myself thinking again of that little dorm room I'd stayed in. Perhaps my imaginary student will write the first draft of a great novel there, maybe a novel about a bloodless war fought on campus, a war over what can and cannot be read or said.

Finally it was over and everyone was on their feet, clapping. Kaylie announced that Larry Heinemann, National Book Award winning Vietnam novelist was present. After having the books I had brought signed by these wonderful writers, I went over and shook Larry Heinemann's hand. I told him that I too was a writer, with an unpublished novel about Vietnam, and I was surprised at a sudden onset of nervousness. Despite the fact that you couldn't find a more magnanimous bunch of folks anywhere, I suddenly felt out of my element, a beggar at a banquet. I left and headed for the car. A few miles down the road I felt my earlier exhilaration return. To hell with these fleeting anxieties. I would take them and turn them into something else someday, hopefully an honest novel that even these fine writers would approve of. And I would find a publisher for my war novel too. After all, If Danielle Steel could find a publisher for her Nam romance, so too could I find one for my tragedy.