The title of the symposium is "The James Jones Papers at the University of Texas: New Research Opportunities." The symposium will celebrate the completion of the processing of the Jones papers, which will make them more accessible to scholars, and open up new avenues of research.

Highlights of the Symposium will include panel discussions on the portrayal of women in Jones's fiction, the publication history of his works, and the adaptation of his novels into film. JJLS President Kevin Heisler will present the JJLS Lifetime Achievement Award to Terrence Malick, director of the 1999 film adaptation of The Thin Red Line. There also will be presentations of the 2002 and 2003 First Novel Fellowship Awards and the Hendrick Research Award.

James Jones in Tucson, Arizona, 1950.

A collection of oral histories of WWII veterans collected and edited by JJLS Board Member Robert G. Thobaben has been published by McFarland & Co., Inc. of Jefferson, North Carolina. The book is entitled For Comrade and Country: Oral Histories of World War II.

Ray Hill was a cook and machine gunner who survived the sinking of a PT boat by a kamikaze. German forces in the middle of the Siegfried defensive line captured Robert Corbin, a forward artillery observer officer who later escaped after 140 days of captivity. Arthur Ensley, a B–25 pilot, was shot down on his 79th mission into the Brenner Pass. He was helped by Italian partisans. Don Barrett, a Marine, was involved in three Pacific campaigns—Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, and Peleliu, where he was badly wounded.

Fellow World War II veteran Thobaben gathered their reports and others from men who were young soldiers in the war. This book presents 30 oral histories, 14 from the Pacific Theater and 16 from the European.

In addition to describing their individual experiences, these Marine, Army, Navy and Air Forces privates, sergeants and officers also discuss such questions as why men fight, how soldiers cope, why it is important to record their stories, and what they think about the ethics of war.

Robert G. Thobaben is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. He was a PFC in the 111th Infantry Regiment and participated in three campaigns (the Gilbert, Marshall and Palau Islands).

For Comrade and Country (ISBN: 0-7864-1396-4; 315pp., photographs, appendices, glossary, index; $29.95 softcover, 2003) may be ordered from McFarland & Co. by telephone (800-253-2187), mail order (Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640), fax (336-246-4403), or online at www.mcfarlandpub.com/.

Champaign, Illinois - To pay tribute to the men and women of what has been called "the greatest generation" and to commemorate the film adaptations of Illinois author James Jones' war-related works, a James Jones Film Festival will be held Dec. 5-7, 2003, at the historic Virginia Theatre in Champaign, Illinois.

In addition to showing a series of films, accompanied by discussion panels, the festival will also include a concert by the area favorite Medicare 7, 8 or 9 Dixieland Jazz Band, whose members include several World War II veterans. A session about the significant role music played in World War II will feature the band, as well.

"As our World War II veterans continue on into their later years, they deserve to know the full extent of gratitude and appreciation Americans of all ages feel for their contributions and sacrifices in the name of our freedom," said Ray Elliott, an author, James Jones Literary Society board member and one of the key organizers of the festival. "They paid a high price for us all to enjoy the life we have today in this country."

A number of local and national sponsors are coordinating and/or contributing to the event, including the James Jones Literary Society, the Champaign Park District, the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, WILL AM-FM-TV, Tales Press, Barham Benefit Group and a number of area veterans organizations and individuals.

Films to be shown at the festival include From Here to Eternity, The Thin Red Line, Some Came Running, The Longest Day (in which Jones served as a scriptwriter and consultant) and the documentary, James Jones: Reveille to Taps.

Special guests are currently being recruited to participate in the panels that will discuss aspects of the films and their cultural impact.

An exhibit area adjacent to the Virginia Theatre will display period letters, photos and other memorabilia on loan from area veterans and their families, as well.

A complete festival pass for the Medicare concert and all films is available for $35 per person and currently on sale at the Virginia Theatre, 203 W. Park Ave., Champaign; by phone at 217-356-9063; or online at www.thevirginia.org.

James Jones, The Guillotine, and a Passage to India

David L. Goodrich

Goodrich, a Yale graduate, lives in New York City and is the author of a novel and three non-fiction books. His latest book is The Real Nick and Nora: Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, Writers of Stage and Screen Classics (Southern Illinois University Press).

In the summer of 1960, I was living in Paris, trying to support myself by writing magazine articles. One night, in a bar called Les Nuages, where American writers hung out, someone introduced me to James Jones and his bright, beautiful wife, Gloria. Jones was small, with a big chest and a jutting jaw. He spoke with a midwestern accent, sometimes referring reverently to eminent French writers — Proust, Voltaire, Stendhal. I'd heard that he occasionally acted like a character out of his great World War II novel, From Here to Eternity — crazy drinking, barroom battles, explosive rages: once, he'd splattered a wall with blood while pounding it with his fist — and I wondered if that frightening reputation for violence was deserved, and what sort of man he really was. A few days later, I got a chance to learn more: the Joneses sent a note, inviting me to dinner.

The invitation was thrilling: this famous couple, whose friends included literary superstars, had asked me to a party even though I was young, and had published almost nothing. Arriving on the dot, I climbed quickly to the Joneses' apartment, on the second floor of 10 Quai d'Orleans, on the gorgeous Île St. Louis. The large living-dining room had a miraculous view of the Seine and its bridges and barges, and was furnished with handsome armchairs, a Louis XIII refectory table, and a bar fashioned from a medieval pulpit. There were three other guests: Scotty MacGregor, an attractive, dark-haired American actress; Johnny Romero; and James Baldwin.

James Baldwin was short, intense but soft-spoken: his interest in what others were saying shone in his eyes. Having read and admired Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni's Room, I felt that, in a way, I'd already met him. I had met Johnny Romero; he owned Les Nuages. Romero was good-looking; born in Puerto Rico, he'd run a money-making bar in Greenwich Village, and said he'd closed it and moved to Paris because of Mafia payoff pressure. I was later told that the black racketeer hero of Charles Gordon's 1970 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, No Place to Be Somebody, was modelled on Johnny Romero.

Jones made drinks, and the six of us talked. Plainly, Jones's accomplishments hadn't made him feel superior; he seemed genuinely interested in my writing. (I'd started in the Army; Jones liked hearing that I'd been a GI, and that my first magazine sale had paid $750, almost ten times my enlisted man's monthly $78.) He asked about the piece I was then working on, about the current use of the guillotine. I told him that, although there'd been no state-ordered beheadings for several years, French law still said a guillotine had to be available, and a middle-aged Parisian named André Obrecht had the lightweight, easily-assembled "Cigar Cutter" in his garage, and stood ready to transport it overnight to anywhere in the country. Obrecht, I said, had a daytime job, and as official executioner was paid an extra, tax-free $120 a month. He drove an olive-drab Renault truck; he kept the guillotine blade in a sturdy black box painted red inside. I was interested in these macabre details because putting them down on paper would help pay my rent, but Jones seemed more than merely interested. He seemed fascinated, and once again I wondered about him.

I don't recall anything else that was said before dinner, except that a couple of us told Jones how much we'd liked his recently published novella, The Pistol. At the dining table, we were served by a uniformed, live-in couple. The wife, whose name I forget — let's call her Dora — was youngish, pale, blonde, and English-born. She circled behind us, offering the dishes she'd prepared. Her husband, a dark-skinned, disagreeable-looking Indian named Ghosh, filled our wine glasses.

So far, the evening had gone pleasantly — but Johnny Romero evidently thought that having a cook and butler was pretentious; he dropped a remark about "high-class living." And while helping himself to leg of lamb, he teasingly asked Dora something like, "How's it feel for a white lady like you to be serving two black men?"

Dora flushed, finished passing the lamb, and left the room. The rest of us were silent. Jones said mildly, "Hey, Johnny!"

We all resumed talking; after a moment, Dora returned with vegetables — and Romero made another crack about her being a servant.

Again, Dora left. Now Jones was annoyed. "Johnny, you don't talk to her like that!"

Romero smiled, plainly enjoying the situation. Baldwin said, "Johnny's only joking."

A few minutes later, Dora was back — and Romero wisecracked again.

I remember thinking that now, trouble would start. Jones had been drinking; he didn't look drunk, but who knew what might happen?

To reconstruct the rest of the evening the best I can:

Jones told Romero he fuckin' well wasn't going to treat his servants that way. Baldwin said Romero was a guest, so Jones should overlook his teasing: besides, Jones didn't understand the feelings of black men. Jones replied that he did understand black men and cared about them, and that Baldwin damn well knew it. Voices rose, hands gestured, Gloria loudly and repeatedly told everyone to shut up, Scotty and I looked on—

And then a liquid began splashing onto my lap.

---

"I don't remember their exact words, but Baldwin's thrust continued to be, roughly, "White men can't truly understand the feelings of black men," while Jones's was "Not all of us are insensitive."

Jones yelled, "What are you doing?"

"She didn't tell me to stop," Ghosh yelled back. He slammed the empty bottle down on the table and strode from the room, looking as if he wanted to kill someone.

Jones blamed Ghosh's eruption on Romero: "Dora told him what you've been saying to her." There was more back-and-forth about where the Joneses' loyalties should be, with their guests or their servants Jones rang a bell, trying to get someone to come and mop up the wine; when there was no reply, he went into another room and returned with a pistol(silently reminding us all of his novella). He checked the cylinder, stuck the weapon in his pocket, then, saying that Ghosh and Dora had probably gone to their rooms above the kitchen, disappeared.

Okay, this had to be real trouble.

After maybe ten minutes, Jones returned, looking pale and not al all like the tough guy he was reputed to be. He went quickly to the bar, and swallowed a drink. Upstairs, he said, he'd found Ghosh with one hand bleeding heavily. He'd taken a carving knife from the kitchen and, showing Dora how he was going to disembowel Jones (whom he'd previously liked but now hated), he'd stabbed the wall and run his palm up the blade. Jones had helped him stem the bleeding; before leaving for the hospital, Ghosh had told him off.

"He hates working here," Jones reported. "And he says he's read everything I've written, and I'm a lousy writer. I asked him, 'Who do you like, C.P Fucking Snow?' He's heard I want to hunt tigers in India, and he's a member of the Thugee clan, and if I go to India I'll find it's easy to get in, but hard to get out. I fired him and Dora. They get a month's pay, and they leave tomorrow. That's the end of them."

Well, as it turned out, not quite.

Now there was sponging to do, and the rest of the dinner to be served. While the others coped, Jones and Baldwin (Romero had fallen silent) started arguing about who was to blame for the evening's disaster — and then, as the talk went on, for all of America's racial problems. I don't remember their exact words, but Baldwin's thrust continued to be, roughly, "White men can't truly understand the feelings of black men," while Jones's was "Not all of us are insensitive." I've since read that there was a strong friendship between the two, based on more than just admiring one another's work: they'd both lived on society's lower rungs, Jones in the army, Baldwin in Harlem. Also, Baldwin evidently respected Jones as a genuine liberal. Their closeness was such, it had been said, that Jones told Baldwin to "forget all that nigger shit" when writing — because, he felt, in fiction, things like race were less important than character. All of that jibes with what I saw that evening: firing off curses and obscenities — the kind that may be common now, but were shocking then — the two men attacked each other, even shouted at each other — but without taking offense or losing control. Despite all their noise, it was obvious that, down deep, both were perceptive and compassionate.

We finished dessert, and moved onto the armchairs for coffee. The debate seemed to be subsiding —

But then the first after-dinner guests arrived.

They were William and Rose Styron. They were good-looking, smart, urbane; Styron had a judicious, gentlemanly air. He'd had a tiring day, so he stretched out his back on the floor, with his whiskey glass balanced on his stomach. Then someone related what had been going on, which revived the blame-assigning and gamey words. Styron, who'd been brought up in the South and knew a lot about black-white relations, had thoughts to offer; I can't recall them precisely, but they began to calm the debaters —

And then in came Bill and Gretchen, young Americans attending their first Jones party. He welcomed them, got them drinks; the barracks expletives resumed. Gretchen (she told me years later) had "never heard those words before," or seen a supine intellectual with a glass bouncing on his belly, or seen a man (Baldwin), while urinating in a bathroom, stick his head around the open door so he could keep on talking. After a few minutes, she whispered to Bill, "Take me home!"

"And miss being with three of America's greatest writers? I'll call you a taxi."

Finally, the squabbling ended. More people arrived, and the party lasted pleasantly until some horrendous hour. As I was leaving, I asked Jones if he planned to write about the evening.

"Maybe," he said, "I'll call it 'A Passage to India.'"

The next day, it rained. I ran into Jones a few days later. "I saw Dora and Ghosh out the window that morning," he said, "waiting for a taxi with their luggage. His hand was bandaged, and he had an expensive English umbrella of mine in his other hand. I started to go and get it, but I decided not to."

Several days after that (Gloria told me), Jones met Ghosh by chance on the street. Ghosh hadn't found another job, so Jones gave him a hundred dollars — serious money then — and told him, "You're a crazy person. I feel sorry for you."

That gift confirmed my feeling that James Jones was kind and caring. Another thought I'm left with: the Jones-Baldwin disagreement ended peacefully mostly because they were too intelligent to let anger kill their friendship. I know that sounds banal — but don't we ache nowadays for that kind of intelligence? Another insight into Jones's character came several years after the evening described here, when he said in a magazine article, "There is no one to blame for war, for genocide… not Napoleon, or Hitler…we must blame ourselves. We must learn to control the earthly violence within each of us. We must move out of primitive violence toward something better of the spirit."

Epilogue:

A few weeks after his generous gift to Ghosh, Jones leaned that Interpol had been pursuing Ghosh and Dora for years because they were jewel thieves. They'd recently been arrested in England; applying for jobs, they'd offered a letter of recommendation from Jones which they'd forged on stationery they'd stolen from him. This shows how careful we all must be when staffing our Paris apartments with cooks and butlers.

Akashic Books to Publish
1999 JJLS First Novel Fellowship Winner
Louise Wareham

Akashic Books will publish Since You Ask by Louise Wareham, the winner of the 1999 James Jones First Novel Fellowship.

Wareham is a 1987 graduate of Columbia College in New York and also studied at Canada's Humber School for Writers. Her poems have appeared in Poetry magazine. She worked as a reporter since age 15 in New York City and New Zealand and was a senior editor and travel writer at Yachting magazine when she left journalism to work on her novel and her poetry writing.

Past winners of the James Jones First Novel Fellowship: