Discover new books on Goodreads

See if your friends have read any of Thom Jones's books

Thom Jones’s Followers (120)

Thom Jones

Born

in Aurora, Illinois, The United States

January 26, 1945

Died

October 14, 2016

Genre

Fiction, Short Story

edit data

Thom Jones (born January 26, 1945) was an American writer, primarily of short stories.

Jones was raised in Aurora, Illinois, and attended the University of Hawaii, where he played catcher on the baseball team. He later attended the University of Washington, from which he graduated in 1970, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, from which he received an M.F.A. in 1973.
Jones trained in Force Reconnaissance in the Marine Corps but was discharged before his unit was sent to Vietnam. This and other personal experiences, including the suicide of his boxer father in a mental institution, have become important sources of material for his fiction. After graduation from college, he worked as a copywriter for a Chicago advertising a Thom Jones (born January 26, 1945) was an American writer, primarily of short stories.

Jones was raised in Aurora, Illinois, and attended the University of Hawaii, where he played catcher on the baseball team. He later attended the University of Washington, from which he graduated in 1970, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, from which he received an M.F.A. in 1973.
Jones trained in Force Reconnaissance in the Marine Corps but was discharged before his unit was sent to Vietnam. This and other personal experiences, including the suicide of his boxer father in a mental institution, have become important sources of material for his fiction. After graduation from college, he worked as a copywriter for a Chicago advertising agency and later as a janitor, all the while reading and writing for hours each day. He was "discovered" well into his forties by the fiction editors of The New Yorker, who published a series of his stories in the early 1990s, including "The Pugilist at Rest", which won an O. Henry Award.
Jones resided in Olympia, Washington. He had temporal lobe epilepsy and suffered from diabetes.

In 1973, Jones published an animal-fantasy allegory in the dystopian George Orwell mode titled "Brother Dodo's Revenge" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

His first book, published in 1993, was the short-story collection The Pugilist at Rest. The stories deal with 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 collection was a National Book Award finalist. Jones' other two collections of short stories include Cold Snap (1995) and Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine (1999).

His story "Night Train," which originally appeared in the magazine Tin House, was included in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004. A humorous essay, "Easter Island Noodles Almondine," about time Jones spent as a youth working for the General Mills plant in Aurora, Illinois, appeared in an issue of Granta focused on Chicago, published in 2009. And "Bomb Shelter Noel," a story about a diabetic girl, was published in the January 2011 issue of Playboy.

Reports have appeared stating Jones wrote scripts for feature films, including a Vietnam screenplay for Cheyenne Enterprises, and an adaptation of Larry Brown's novel, The Rabbit Factory, for Ithaka Films.

John Updike in a Salon.com interview praised Jones as one of two writers of a younger generation he admired, and Updike included Jones' story, "I Want To Live!", in the anthology The Best American Short Stories of the Century. ...more

Combine Editions
Thom Jones’s books

Average rating: 4.06 · 8,364 ratings · 706 reviews · 29 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Pugilist at Rest 4.18 avg rating — 3,519 ratings — published 1993 — 27 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine 3.93 avg rating — 905 ratings — published 1998 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cold Snap 3.89 avg rating — 874 ratings — published 1995 — 21 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Night Train: New and Selected Stories by Thom Jones, Amy Bloom (Introduction) 4.12 avg rating — 215 ratings — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Black Lights 3.82 avg rating — 17 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	I want to live! 3.88 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 1992	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Introduction to Forensic Science 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2014 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Way Down Deep it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cold Snap it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Serpents of the Pelladorn Sea: The Guardians of Elestra 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Thom Jones…

Quotes by Thom Jones (?)

“Human behavior, ninety-eight percent of it, is an abomination.”
― Thom Jones, The Pugilist at Rest

11 likes

“when you hate daylight, when you hate anything, you will develop a certain ambiguity about life and you get reckless in your habits.”
― Thom Jones

9 likes

“A friend of mine in the ER told me that the animal consciousness is one of the here-and-now and that the human being can approximate it by drinking five martinis while soaking in a hot tub.”
― Thom Jones, The Pugilist at Rest

4 likes

See all Thom Jones's quotes »

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
The Next Best Boo...: The Title Game	20218	14623	May 30, 2013 12:53PM
Colosseum. Sfide ...: Wishlist Dicembre	232	76	Dec 15, 2017 01:13PM
Goodreads România: Care a fost pentru voi cartea anului 2017?	28	305	Jan 23, 2018 06:29AM
Reading with Style: SU24 Planning	13	39	Aug 09, 2024 10:41AM
Pulp Fiction: August 2025 - Fat City	23	32	Sep 02, 2025 07:58PM
Pulp Fiction: * Group Reads - Themes	302	297	3 hours, 4 min ago

More…

Thom Jones’s Followers (120)

Thom Jones

Combine EditionsThom Jones’s books

Topics Mentioning This Author

Combine Editions
Thom Jones’s books