Madison Jones, Southern Writer.

[Extollager]

Those interested are invited to discuss with me Madison Jones's short novel An Exile, also published as I Walk the Line. If you use abebooks.com or other such online vendors, search under each title for best selection. The book had US and UK publication.

I propose that discussion begin on Jan. 8, to give people time to get the book on interlibrary loan or for ordered copies to arrive.

It's half a year since I read it and I am already keen to read it again. Here's what I posted on 19 July:
"Yesterday I read Madison Jones's short novel An Exile, a compelling work of rural Southern noir if that is a possible category. A small-town sheriff remarkable for his integrity is picked on by his socially dissatisfied wife and discovers how terribly vulnerable he is to the temptation offered by the daughter of a a cunning and violent moonshiner. It's a downward spiral all the way for Hank Tawes, with plenty of suspense for the reader. The literary quality is high and I have no doubt I'll want to read it again before too long. A great followup to this author's excellent novel A Cry of Silence."

Critic Allan Tate:

"Madison Jones is our Southern Thomas Hardy: his small-town and backwoods characters are Everyman and Everywoman. I find in Sheriff Tawes both the dignity and the human weakness of the Mayor of Casterbridge. The plot of An Exile has a classical simplicity; Mr Jones develops it with great skill. I consider Madison Jones one of the most important contemporary American writers."

.......In February, we could go on to discuss Passage Through Gehenna. Is there an element of the supernatural here?

 

[GOLLUM]

Cool.

As suggested I won't be able to directly contribute to this thread until 2013 but I will be posting a couple of questions on Jones in the next week to elicit your opinion and also reading any extended review you do on An Exile.

 

[GOLLUM]

HMM..you preempted me a bit by posting Allan Tate's comment.

I was going to ask, can still ask I guess what your thoughts were on thar comment 'Madison Jones is our Southern Thomas Hardy'.

This is possibly an open question in so far that each book you read will presumably be able to add further to this statement.

You can elaborate further now if you wish by way of a general response and more specifically I was curious also as to whether Jones is on a par talent wise with Hardy versus more in style etc. ? That could I appreciate be a fairly large call to make if in the affirmative given Hardy is a far more established name, so respond now or when you've/Chronsfolk have sampled more of his ouevre....my personal interest being that I've read some of Hardy's ouevre as I'm sure you yourself and other folk here have.

I have other questions but will ration them out so to speak...

Have to dash, will log back in another 1/2 day or so.

 

[Extollager]

Gollum, I'm reluctant to invest much time in a discussion yet regarding authors that are like Madison Jones. I have been reminded of Dostoevsky. I don't want to generalize about the author very much. I can say that my experience of reading five novels this year leads me to expect that the next one I read for the first time will also please me, and that I could reread with enjoyment any of the ones I've read. As I said somewhere else, I have deliberately avoided reading very much about Jones and have read, so far, almost no discussion of any of his books. I hope this message isn't too disappointing!

 

[GOLLUM]

That's OK.

I'll wait until you and other Chrons folk begin posting about the first book in the new year...

It will give me an opportunity then to ask several other questions I'm storing up regarding Mr. Jones.

I'll try to get something of his in February, either the book you suggest or another I can lay my hands on.

Cheers and thank you for raising this thread.

 

[Extollager]

Gollum, this blogger Tony Shaw --Mainly the Obscure, and/or mainly 'Outsider' Literature

http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/search/label/Jones%20%28Madison%29

has some things to say about Jones. I have only glanced at this material.

 

[Extollager]

I'll try to get something of his in February, either the book you suggest or another I can lay my hands on.

An Exile was paperbacked by Penguin. I wish it were offered in that "black Classics" line that you love so well!




http://www.changethethought.com/mock-penguin-book-covers/

 

[Extollager]

Well, here is a short obituary on Jones. I didn't know that, when I read my second novel by him, his funeral had been held just a few days before.

MADISON P. JONES, JR. 1925 - 2012

Madison P. Jones, Jr. was born in Nashville in 1925. The distinguished novelist began writing at Vanderbilt where he lettered in football and met prominent teachers of literature who helped start his career. He did graduate work at the University of Florida where he met his wife Shailah. He came to Auburn University in 1956 and taught there for 37 years.

During this time he received many awards and prizes, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, The T.S. Elliot Prize for Fiction, The Harper Lee Award for A Distinguished Alabama Writer and The Michael Shaara Prize for Excellence in Civil War Fiction. Among his novels, An Exile was made into the movie, I Walk the Line.

Mr. Jones was preceded in death by his wife of 59 years, Shailah Jones. He is survived by his five children, Carroll Lofty, Madison Percy Jones, III, Ellen Green, Michael Jones, and Andrew Jones; and his twelve grandchildren. Visitation will be held on Thursday, July 12, 2012 from 4:00 until 6:00 p.m. at Fredericks Funeral Home. Funeral Mass will be held on Friday, July 13, 2012 at 10:00 a.m. at St. Michael's Catholic Church in Auburn, with Rev. Msgr. William J. Skoneki officiating. Interment will follow in Town Creek Cemetery.

 

[GOLLUM]

An Exile was paperbacked by Penguin. I wish it were offered in that "black Classics" line that you love so well!

That's no real problem. It's true I will generally take preference with a penguin black classic edition over almost any other publication but at the end of the day I'm just happy with a copy of whichever book it is I'm wishing to acquire.

I'll probably source a copy of An Exile in the New Year.

I'll check out that link on Jones in due course but looking at it briefly it appears that Buried Land and An Exile may be the pick of that particular bunch. I also know the novel Nashville 1864 is held in high regard as far as civil war literature is concerned, so I might pick that up along with either Exile or Buried Deep.

I'm also encouraged to read of Flannery O'Connor's generally high praise of Jones. Being an O'Connor fan since picking up her collected short fiction this is likely further encouragement for me to try something by Mr. Jones.

 

[Extollager]

I'll just go ahead and confirm Passage Through Gehenna as the Madison Jones book for February. I just got a copy in the mail and I feel like starting to read it and take discussion notes on it now.

 

[Extollager]

I've now seen the 1970 movie I Walk the Line, which is based on Madison Jones's An Exile. I don't recommend the movie and would be worry to hear that anyone saw it before reading the book.

 

[Extollager]

I read An Exile again yesterday. I'll suggest that, if people want to discuss it, the conversation be on the basis of having read the entire short novel.

I believe it was Madison Jones's fourth novel. I haven't read the first three yet, but they are much longer and my impression is that their style was much more elaborate.

If and when Chronsfolk discuss An Exile, we may want to discuss ways in which it is a noir (murder, secrecy, night, etc.) and ways in which it is tragedy of character. Details to consider include the Sheriff's dreams; his assistant's skin magazines; references to eyes and arms; the "wanted" posters of blank-faced criminals; growing things; the changing weather in the story; the multi-colored window in the room where the Sheriff has his illicit liaisons with the moonshiner's daughter; the artificial lake that drowned the valley where the Sheriff used to live; proper names (McCain, Snake, Alma, Sybil...). etc. This novel is carefully written but you'll probably find that you'll read it fast!

 

[Extollager]

I read A Buried Land, which like An Exile makes use of the drowning of places where people used to live, for the sake of flood control etc. Land -- my sixth Madison Jones novel -- was engrossing, probably an even better book than I expected it to be; some readers might find the intensifying pressure of fear and guilt upon the main character almost too much for a novel of almost 300 pages, although the novelist shifts to focus on other characters too and, thus, gives some relief. This is a very fine work of craftsmanship.

 

[Extollager]

Just a reminder that I'll be standing by in a few days for discussion -- if anyone is on board -- of Madison Jones's short novel An Exile. Several inexpensive used copies are available at Amazon. I don't want to "oversell" the book, but I would recommend it, particularly to readers who appreciate literate noir and are interested in a Southern (US) setting.

 

[dask]

Our library has the video, but not one of MJs books. Must have gotten lost on the Oregon Trail.

 

[Extollager]

I Walk the Line isn't a lousy movie, but it didn't have the compelling power, for me, that the novel exerted. However, if one had seen the movie first, An Exile might be less compelling -- so I hope people will read it first.

 

[Vertigo]

Just a reminder that I'll be standing by in a few days for discussion -- if anyone is on board -- of Madison Jones's short novel An Exile. Several inexpensive used copies are available at Amazon. I don't want to "oversell" the book, but I would recommend it, particularly to readers who appreciate literate noir and are interested in a Southern (US) setting.

I have it on order, not sure when it will arrive!

 

[Extollager]

I've been reading Madison Jones's Season of the Strangler. The book seems to be a collection of short stories that have, in common, being set in an Alabaman town during a time when someone is assaulting and murdering elderly women. It is also a time of racial conflict. The parts are identified as chapters, but they read like short stories and the book is classified as a collection of short stories in a Madison Jones bibliography. I've read the first four and was drawn well in with each one.

 

[Extollager]

Finished Season. All of the stories were at least good. The stories are related, some quite loosely, to one another because they happen at the same time and place and the murders are at least mentioned. However, the murders are not important for at least one or two of the stories, such as the last one. This wasn't a problem so far as my reading was concerned, because well before that final story I had become interested in this city and its time not simply because of the mysterious crimes going on. The author is interested in depicting how awareness of these crimes going on seems to elicit dark stuff from within people who are not involved in their commission. Of course, he's suggesting a serious theme about how evil thoughts and impressions do move within people once they are set moving. I think the book will interest readers the first time as stories any of which could have appeared in one of those paperback anthologies attributed to Alfred Hitchcock's editing -- but there's some important thinking underlying them.

 

[Extollager]

Anyone care to discuss Madison Jones's Passage Through Gehenna? I propose to reread it soon.

What I said at Amazon (5 stars) was brief --

Genuinely frightening novel in the high Gothic tradition

This is the fourth novel by this astonishing novelist that I have read in a few months. For readers interested in a compelling novel with possible supernatural overtones -- but it does not require that view -- this might be the one to try first.