To the End of the War (2 page)

I am back inside my body with its straining antenna of fear.

I am safe—at least for now,

But I cannot relax:

I know I must go back some day—provided that I live.

I must see this place in stillness—when the jungle has reclaimed it.

Or I shall never rest.

I cannot sleep tonight. . . . Perhaps a pill.

Once his ankle began to improve, Jones was given passes to go into Memphis, where he rented a suite in the Peabody Hotel for six weeks. It was a wild, drunken time for him, with local women ready to go to bed with him. For a time, he wrote that he didn’t get pleasure from laying a woman unless he was drunk.

Jones’s psychological state worsened, and he began to pick fights in bars. Not only was he haunted by the memories of death and destruction on Guadalcanal, but also he faced being sent to England preparing for the coming invasion of the Continent. Hospital personnel seem not to have recognized his psychological state at this time. He did get some relief from the horrors when he was engrossed in writing sketches of his wartime experiences and those told him by the men in the Memphis hospital. At this point, his fiction had not been shaped or put into any discernible order.

This is the backstory for the novel he was beginning, a work eventually called
They Shall Inherit the Laughter
.

Callous doctors certified this man Jones, with a weak ankle and with severe psychological problems, to be fit for duty. Disgusted, he went over the hill, heading for Robinson, probably on November 1, 1943. He stayed with his uncle Charles Jones and wife, Sadie, who now lived in the mansion once owned by George Jones. Jones and other members of his family believed that Uncle Charlie had managed to possess more of George Jones’s estate than was legal or ethical.

Uncle Charlie was a staid attorney offended by his nephew’s drunkenness and public scenes. The uncle was more interested in protecting the family name than helping his troubled nephew. He even let the drunken Jones spend the night in jail to teach him a lesson. Jones wanted to become a writer, but Uncle Charlie could not understand that. His advice: Jones should get a job once he was discharged from the army and do his writing in his spare time.

After a few days in Robinson, with all the memories of the past and the problems of the present, Jones was intoxicated most of the time, out of control, headed for a scene with his uncle or with leaders of the community whom he considered hypocrites. Aunt Sadie was more sympathetic to Jones than her husband was, and she decided to ask Lowney Handy to help Jones.

Lowney was an unconventional woman married to the superintendent of the Ohio Oil Refinery there in Robinson. She was about forty, childless, something of an unofficial social worker, early on helping the down-and-out, and during the war, servicemen. Kentucky-born, she was a brilliant conversationalist. She had read widely but unsystematically. She attempted to write fiction but was not successful, for she lacked control over her material. Her husband, Harry, was one of the most important men in Robinson. Once she played a role in social events, but she retreated from such activities. She was at times eccentric and often quixotic. She was an early New Ager, interested in Madame Blavatsky and Theosophy, Hindu religious texts, and other Eastern religions. She was a good listener and would give full attention to the stories of the troubled people who sought her out. She was, in this early period when she knew Jones, an admirable person. Jones did not do her justice in
They Shall Inherit the Laughter
, in
Some Came Running
, and in
Go to the Widow-Maker
, where she was caricatured. Later, she became autocratic, possessive, and destructive.

Aunt Sadie brought Jones to see Lowney early in November, 1943. A.B.C. Whipple in “James Jones and His Angel,”
Life
, May 7, 1951, gave Lowney’s account of the meeting: “He swaggered; he wore dark glasses; he even asked me to read his poetry aloud. He had obviously come over for a free drink. Then he saw my books. . . . He flipped through them and plopped them back as if he were gulping down what they had in them.” Jones’s account of this meeting is in “Johnny Meets Sandy.”

Jones returned to the Handy home the next day, and he and Lowney spent the rest of the day in bed. Because she liked his writing and believed in his future as a writer, Jones wrote that “she subjected herself to me and made herself my disciple in everything from writing to love.” Lowney certainly did not believe what she told this young man she had just met. She made quick decisions; after seeing a part of what he had written, she set out to help him be a published writer. In order to do that she began to control his antisocial activities, and she became his warden, his keeper. She certainly did not become his subject. She was not an experienced teacher, but she decided to help him learn to write.

As part of Lowney’s control over Jones, she met his sexual needs. She had little interest in sex. Her husband had passed on gonorrhea to her, and as part of the treatment, she had a hysterectomy. In their fashion, Harry and Lowney loved each other; he supported her expensive book-buying and did not ask her to return to the social life in Robinson she now scorned. She stayed with him through his alcoholism and his own affairs.

Before Jones returned to army duty in Camp Campbell in Kentucky, he wrote the Handys that he wanted to live with them, and Lowney and Harry decided to take Jones into their home. In reality, Lowney decided and Harry offered no opposition. Once Jones was back on duty, Lowney began to maneuver to get him released from the army. Jones continued to go AWOL to work on his novel, which had been nebulous until after he met Lowney.

At Camp Campbell, he became company clerk but was disgusted when the army mistreated a Jewish officer whom Jones admired. Again, he went AWOL; when he returned, he was placed in the stockade and then transferred to a prison ward in the hospital. He saw a psychiatrist, and Jones wrote his older brother, Jeff, a summary: He told the doctor “that I am genius (altho they probably won’t believe that); that if they attempt to send me overseas again, I’ll commit suicide; that if I don’t get out of the army I’ll either go mad or turn into a criminal—which is just next door to a writer anyway. . . .” All he wanted to do was write. Jones obviously had all these feelings, but Lowney probably helped him shape them into a narrative for the psychiatrist. Lowney was persistent: Jones the genius needed to get out of the army and fulfill his destiny. Jones was also persevering. He had done his part in the war. He had no luck left. He wanted out.

Jones received an honorable discharge on July 6, 1944. Before he returned to Robinson, he traveled to Asheville, North Carolina, where Thomas Wolfe was born and lived with his dysfunctional family until he went away to college. Then Jones went to live with Lowney and Harry, with Harry providing money for him until
From Here to Eternity
was completed in 1950. Harry had a room built for Jones at the back of the family home and later bought Jones a Jeep and a trailer, which allowed him to get away from Robinson for short periods of time. Harry seems to have been completely aware of the sexual relationship of his wife and her young writer and raised no objections. In many ways, Harry was the unsung hero in this story. He gave Jones a home and an allowance, providing the time for the young veteran to learn to write.

Jones began to shape his novel, and Lowney must have played a major part in crafting an outline and in providing special details about Robinsonians. By the time he left the army in 1944, he probably had written some battle scenes and accounts of his first going AWOL and the drunken episode on the night train. He had undoubtedly written some account of his hell-raising in Robinson and about his quarrel with Uncle Charlie (named Erskine Carter in the novel). When he came to writing about Lowney, he omitted their love affair and did little with her interest in teaching him to write.

For many years, Jones was besotted with Lowney, but even early in their relationships he subconsciously seemed to have misgivings about her. In
They Shall Inherit the Laughter
, Lowney is given the name Cornelia but is always called by her nickname, Corny. In many sections of the novel, she fits the classic definitions of that word: trite, banal.

One of Jones’s successes in his first novel was his dialogue, especially among servicemen. All the resentments come pouring out, overbearing, pompous, insolent officers; doctors who were indifferent to suffering and were little better than butchers; self-righteous chief clerks; the politics in the army; anti-Semitism and discrimination against people of color; the hypocrisy of mindless religious support of war by ministers and civilians alike; the civilian and military misunderstanding of the walking wounded. Few wanted to listen to the army groundlings who came from poor families and who had little education. Veterans of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and assorted mini-wars would understand the dissatisfactions of Jones’s combat soldiers in World War II.

Jones in
They Shall Inherit the Laughter
dared to discuss taboo subjects. He defended a musician friend who was alleged to be gay; he wrote sensitively about the musician’s friend who was an African-American; and he opposed anti-Semitism in the army.

What kind of framework would allow Jones to put the parts together? Undoubtedly with the help of Lowney, the decision was made to have two central characters—Johnny Carter (based on Jones) and Corny Marion (based on Lowney). Physically or psychologically wounded men would meet at the home of Corny and Eddie Marion. These men who were not getting the help they needed from military personnel or the understanding they needed from family on the home front had turned to mindless carousing, fueled by alcohol. Corny and her husband provided them with a refuge to talk to other servicemen who understood what they had gone through. Corny, in the latter part of the novel, becomes the men’s therapist, trying to help them solve their intractable problems. Jones the student/lover of Lowney, appears to be a true believer in Corny’s solutions, but Perkins and other editors at Scribner’s understood the novel was flawed. Unfortunately, Perkins did not work with Jones to tear the novel apart and remove much of the material based on Lowney. Perkins helped Wolfe revise and reduce the size of the immense manuscript
Look Homeward, Angel
, but Perkins was in ill health when he began reading
They Shall Inherit the Laughter
and unable to do for Jones what he did for Wolfe.

It is likely that Lowney suggested the title for this first novel, using words from beatitudes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount:

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5)

“Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh.” (Luke 6:21)

In addition to references to Theosophy and to Hindu texts, Lowney often used biblical quotations. She interested Jones in religious views drawn from many sources, including the Bible, but in
They Shall Inherit the Laughter
, Jones had not internalized these ideas and they seem awkwardly attached to quite unaccepting materials. In the war stories and the talk of enlisted men, Jones had a tragic view of life. Emersonian Transcendentalism, Theosophy, and Eastern texts, interesting and useful as they are, did not mesh with his core beliefs.

Jones worked on the novel from the time he left the army in July 1944 until January 1945, when he had a finished manuscript. He then decided to enroll for the spring semester at New York University, where Wolfe had once taught. He wanted to submit the novel to the fabled editor Maxwell Perkins, who had worked with Wolfe, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald. He arrived at Perkins’s office without an appointment, carrying with him his manuscript. The receptionist told Jones that Perkins was out of the office, but that if he would leave his manuscript it would be read. Jones was not willing to do that. The receptionist disappeared, then returned to say that Perkins had returned by way of a back entrance and would see him. The story was fictional: There was no back entrance.

The two men began an intense discussion of the war, ignoring the novel itself. Finally, late in the afternoon, Perkins suggested the two adjourn to the Ritz Bar for “tea.” Jones impressed Perkins, who clearly wanted to find a new World War II writer for the Scribner’s list. He passed the manuscript on to other editors, who read it but sensibly recommended against publication. The poet John Hall Wheelock, an editor at Scribner’s, wrote Maxwell Aley, Jones’s agent, that the novel was “a serious attempt to do a big piece of work.” Perkins wrote Aley that
Laughter
lacked “the technique” to make it publishable. Left open was the resubmission of a revised manuscript. Unfortunately, Jones was not given the specifics he needed to make successful changes.

Maxwell Aley did give the manuscript a thorough reading. He wrote Jones on March 25, 1945: “The problem of the book remains Corny.” He was frank: “She sounds like a high school girl not a mature woman. . . . your reader would laugh because Corny is grandiose. She speaks like a second-rate editorial in a Southern newspaper.” Still, Aley did not recommend that Corny’s role in the novel be severely diminished; instead, he gave general advice: “Make it human. Break it up. You’re writing a novel not a tract, and when you are writing about Johnny you are usually adult and often first-rate by any standards.” Aley was correct about the Johnny sections, but many of the Corny sections needed to be abandoned.

It is safe to speculate that Lowney did not see her fictional portrait as Aley did. Jones, no doubt with Lowney’s strong support, dropped Aley as his agent. Without the editorial help he needed, Jones started to work with his revisions. He wrote Perkins on November 20, 1945, that he would be ready to resubmit the manuscript in four or five weeks. In that letter, he noted that Perkins had told him that the novel had “lacked resolution,” and that he had corrected that problem. He did submit the manuscript on January 17, 1946.

One of the readers for Perkins was Burroughs Mitchell, to be Jones’s editor after Perkins’s death. Mitchell thought the novel was “a clumsy, ill-proportioned book.” He believed the faults were too large to make another revision promising.