Thom Jones
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thom Jones (born 1945) is an American writer, primarily of short stories. He was discovered, when well into his 40s, by the fiction editors of The New Yorker, who published a series of his stories in the early 1990s. One of the first of these stories, "The Pugilist at Rest," won an O. Henry Award.
His first book, published in 1993, was a collection of stories, also called The Pugilist at Rest. The stories deal with the common themes of mortality and pain, with characters that often find a kind of solace in the rather pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer. Boxing, absent or mentally ill fathers, physical trauma and the Vietnam War are also recurring motifs. The book was a National Book Award finalist.
His other books include Cold Snap (1995) and Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine (1999), both collections of short stories. At least insofar as measured by publications, he has been less active as a writer in recent years, compared to his 1990s pace.
