Books Quarterly: The Sweet Science of Literary Revenge

Thom Jones has worked with some real assholes. Like the guy who stole credit for the ad copy Jones wrote, back when he toiled as a creative for one of the Chicago shops in the 1970s. Made him so mad he clean-and-jerked his IBM Selectric and hucked it out the window and nearly killed a woman. "I left," he explains, relaxing on the couch in his Olympia home. "Police came. Bad news." Or like the guy who canned him from his job as a reporter covering the Washington state Legislature. "Guy told me, 'You're not a very good writer,' Jones says. "Stupid asshole. He didn't even know how to read." Or the vice prinicipal of a Thurston County high school where Jones worked as a janitor. "He started jacking me around. We'd be in a room, and his whole body language was like, 'I'm gonna fuck you over and you can't do anything about it.'"

"But he didn't know," Jones says. None of them knew. "How smart I was. And how, if you want to go the distance with me, there's nothin' I won't do."

If you are among the jerks who have furthered the pain in Thom Jones' life, among the things he might do is snap your miserable ass into a short story that will be read by your grandchildren. The portrait will not be flattering. Because after five decades of a pug's life, Thom Jones has discovered that revenge is best taken on the cold, smooth page.

Take "Tarantula," one of the best stories in Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine, his new collection published by Little, Brown this month. It's the story of a power-hungry vice principal and his reign of terror over a high school's janitorial staff. The story turns on the vice principal's pet tarantula, which a janitor kills in retaliation for being dicked around. Most fiction writers will go to great lengths to claim that what they write is not true. Thom Jones—ex-Marine, ex-boxer, ex-janitor, exNational Book Award finalist, and pound for pound perhaps the best short-story writer of his generation—is not one of them.

"Oh yeah," he says. "He was based on a real guy. It's true, he had a tarantula. I kinda figure if somebody crosses you, you better get him back. But there was no legal way I could get to him. He had me. He changed my hours, which meant suddenly the baby-sitting situation was totally fucked." (Jones and his wife, a librarian at the school where he once janitored, have one daughter.) "He was really hitting me where I lived."

At this point I'm expecting some sort of watered-down version of the story; he kidnaps the spider for a couple of days or something. Nothing doing.

"So I got drunk one night and went into his office and I picked up a pencil and I stabbed that fuckin' spider, man. And it exploded! I didn't know they were so charged, their little thoraxes—all this shit went all over the walls." Jones says this without so much as a smirk. It's his matter-of-fact way of telling you: I am capable of anything.

The capsule version of Thom Jones' life so far: Spends youth boxing in Aurora, Illinois, steelworkers' hall; joins Marines; gets whacked in Marine boxing match, gets epilepsy, gets discharged, gets reprieve from death in Vietnam. Goes to college, attends Iowa Writer's Workshop, doesn't write fiction for next two decades. Spends 1970s quitting and getting fired from various writing jobs (cf. Chicago, Selectric, window). Works in late 1980s as high school janitor outside Olympia. In early 1990s, inspired by Gulf War to write story for a Marine buddy killed in Vietnam. Said story, "The Pugilist at Rest," written in a single day, becomes basis for National Book Awardnominated collection The Pugilist at Rest. Quits janitor job, spends rest of decade writing stories and movie scripts. Rubs elbows with literati, basks in glory.

There may be glory in Jones' life now, but he's quick to tell you there's still little glamour. On a drizzly February morning he greets me at the door of his spacious new home dressed in sweatpants and a University of Iowa sweatshirt. He's been working out in the three-car garage he uses as a gym. "My hands are all fucked up and I can't hit the [heavy] bag, so I just do speed work," he says. Jones is having a bad day. His insulin level is low, so his mouth is dry and his energy has tanked, and he's still on pins waiting for the reviews of Sonny Liston to come in. "The critics have been nice so far," he says about the reception given his two previous collections, The Pugilist at Rest (1993) and Cold Snap (1995). "But am I gonna get slammed this time? You worry about little stuff like that."

His publisher has repeatedly urged him to write a novel (they make more money), but Jones has refused, sticking with the form that brought him to the big dance. It's a decision that's not without its risks. "With most story collections, it's sort of like buying a CD," he says. "If you get a couple of good cuts, you're happy. Otherwise it's a Frisbee. From me, they expect Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, where everything is a goddamn hit. If I have one story that falls down a little bit, I get trashed."