by James Jones
Jones thought he could write the Stewart novel in six months. He was too optimistic; he worked on the manuscript from 1946 to 1950. At times, he wrote Perkins on March 4, 1946, he was “stumbling along in the dark,” “with nobody to teach him what he must learn.” This was a plea to Perkins for more assistance and a recognition that Lowney had her shortcomings as a teacher. On March 16, 1947, he wrote Perkins that Laughter had been autobiographical, and he had a ready-made plot. In the Stewart novel, “I have nothing to go on except certain people I knew in the army and what made them tick. There is no plot at all except what I can create.”
Perkins was in failing health, and his letters to Jones were encouraging, but his suggestions were general in nature. Perkins died on June 17, 1947, and by that time he had read several chapters of the manuscript now titled From Here to Eternity. He had faith in the novel and regarded Jones as his last American discovery. Scribner’s then assigned Burroughs Mitchell, a young editor who had served as enlisted man and then officer in the Navy during the war, to be Jones’s editor.
Jones and Mitchell were soon friendly. Although a few years older than Jones, Mitchell’s service in the Navy gave him an understanding of the world Jones was attempting to capture in his novel. Jones was plagued with self-doubts and Mitchell tried to reassure him in a quiet way. Lowney, however, was not low-keyed in her encouragement. She wrote Jones on March 29, 1948, “After thirty you should be far ahead of Tolstoy when he was eighty. . . . You will be the greatest creative artist in the writing of fiction to come out of this age—perhaps the greatest that America ever produces.”
Harry Handy helped Jones buy a Jeep and a trailer, allowing Jones to get away from Robinson, especially in winter months. The work on the manuscript continued, until it was finally 1,381 pages in length.
Jones sent Mitchell the chapter on Pearl Harbor on October 30, 1949, from Albuquerque, New Mexico. He called the chapter a “tour de force” and “the climax, peak, end focus.” He saw that the end of all of his struggles to write this vast novel were almost over. He believed that his Pearl Harbor would “stack up with Stendhal’s Waterloo or Tolstoy’s Austerlitz,” and he promised to rewrite any sections not living up to that almost impossible standard. With some humor, he wrote, “We must remember people will be reading this book a couple hundred years after I’m dead, and that the Scribner’s first edition will be worth its weight in gold by then. We must never forget that.”
Jones continued to travel and write. On November 18, 1949, he was in Tucson, Arizona, and working on the chapter in which Prewitt was killed: “I kind of hate to do it in a way, I’ve got so used to the son of a bitch being around. But my first loyalty goes to the book I guess,” he wrote Harry Handy.
Living in a trailer in North Hollywood, Jones finished Eternity on February 27, 1950, and mailed the last chapter to Mitchell, writing him that he was drinking his third martini. He felt “peculiar. Not elated. Not depressed. But peculiar.” He planned to send acknowledgments soon. On March 18, 1950, he wrote Mitchell that he thought Eternity was a “magnificent memorial to Perkins.”
The editors at Scribner’s—Mitchell, John Hall Wheelock, and others—were enthusiastic in their praise of the novel. Jones had remained in North Hollywood, and on March 29, 1950, the edited manuscript reached Jones. Jones was blindsided. There was nothing in Perkins’s letters to Jones about avoiding obscene language. Mitchell told Jones in November 1947 that Jones’s “reproduction of the army talk, the idiom, is remarkable. . . .” There had been no objections to using the word Mailer had spelled “fug.” There had been no objections to sex scenes, but in the revised manuscript page after page had deletions of words, sentences, paragraphs, and pages.
Jones was distressed by what he saw. He responded to Mitchell that day in a long letter indicating he was not amenable to many of the deletions and changes. He softened his letter somewhat by indicating that in some instances he had rewritten paragraphs and improved them. He particularly objected to the many deletions of the word “fuck” for, he wrote in the manuscript margin, removing it interfered with the rhythm of sentences.
Jones decried the removal of an extended scene between Warden and the clerk about painting; he thought the deletion was perhaps a way to remove “cunt” from the text. Jones fought to keep that scene because it showed the depth of character and knowledge of Warden.
Jones explained why be used the slang term “cunt-pictures.” The words were not used for their shock value but because “cunt” was as common a word in the Army as “latrine” or “chow down.” He argued that cunt is what “us American men of the lower classes, especially in the Army, are interested in.” He concluded, “But that term, and not the term ‘pinups’ was the term used in the Army.”
Jones objected to the deletions in Prewitt’s masturbation scene. He argued that Prew was a proud man and would not have done it unless it was necessary, “not on account of the loneliness and frustration . . . but on account of the pure subject of the fact that guys are forced to masturbate in the Army.”
Jones objected to the removal of Red’s wet dream. He was willing to make some minor changes, but he wanted to keep that scene. He argued that “the people of this country don’t know what the hell goes on in it,” and perhaps that was why “they’re such sanctimonious bastards.” Jones failed to save the scene. He was also aware that many of the changes were dictated by Horace Manges, the attorney for Scribner’s, who was concerned about possible “obscenity” charges against the novel.
Jones also objected that “piece of ass” was removed everywhere it was used. He pointed out that “piece of tail” was commonly used by other writers. Manges was adamant.
Jones felt that Mitchell and Manges were being too cautious and that the editing was heavy handed. He agreed to some changes because he did not want Eternity “to be a Henry Miller ‘limited edition.’’’ During this emotional time Jones sometimes argued that passages in the novel should be printed exactly as he wrote them, and at other times, he was agreeable to deletions or to his making changes in the text.
The editing of the manuscript soon became a farce. Manges kept a “score sheet” while he was reading and found “259 fucks, 91 shits, and 5 pricks. He did not count the pisses for some reason.” Jones and Mitchell went through the manuscript in the Scribner’s office and “cut the fucks to 146 and shits to 45.” Manges agreed to all the changes except for some four letter words, and “he cut the fucks down again to around 106 and some shits.” Mitchell wrote Jones that Manges wanted the fucks reduced to 25 or 6, but Mitchell had refused because he had promised Jones to print “fucks in unprecedented scale.”
The scavenger hunt for objectionable words went on in Robinson, Illinois, also. Helen Howe, married to Jones’s boyhood friend Sylvanus (Tinker) Howe, received a telephone call from Lowney one evening reporting that the galleys had come, had to be proofed, and that four-letter words had to be removed. Four or five people, Jones included, sat around a table at Lowney’s house, and when they came to a four-letter word, they’d say, “The sentence says so and so. Can we take that one out?”
“Hell, no,” Jones would say. Helen remembers that “they needed to delete sixty-three and Jones only agreed to removing fifty-one.”
Jones liked Manges and was willing to horsetrade with him: “If I take this out, can we keep this.” The counting and horsetrading became a joke end ultimately collapsed, but the damage to the novel was not undone. It must be remembered that Jones generally handled this trying time with grace; he remained friends with Mitchell and liked Manges, using him later as his private attorney.
Scribner’s had an initial advertising budget of $10,000 for Eternity, placed advertisements in important journals, and sent galleys to American writers and to important newspapers end magazines. The initial reviews were mostly filled with praise. Mailer called Eternity “one of the best of the ‘war novels’ and in certain facets perhaps the best.”
The novel was published on February 25, 1951,
and had phenomenal sales. By May it had sold 163,000 copies and was selling at the rate of 4,000 a week. Later, the paperback edition had even larger sales, and the popular movie of Eternity also increased sales. The novel soon appeared in English-speaking countries, and translations into many languages were forthcoming.
The reading public did not know about the changes made in the text of From Here to Eternity. This edition, based on the manuscript in the Rare Book and Special Collections Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and on Jones’s letters of protest, restores the text to its original state, with changes agreed to by Jones.
Jones wrote Mitchell on March 18, 1950, “I would like you to remember . . . that the things we change in this book for propriety’s sake will, in five years, or ten years, come in someone else’s book anyway . . . and then we will kick ourselves for not having done it . . .” Jones properly argued that there was nothing salacious in the book. He rightly observed that in the future “we will wonder why we thought we couldn’t do it. Writing has to keep evolving, into deeper honesty, like everything else, and you cannot stand on past precedent or theory, and still evolve. You remember that.”
Establishing the Text
The manuscript of From Here to Eternity in the Rare Book and Special Collection Library was photocopied for my use. Just over 170 pages have changes and deletions. The editorial deletions were made by pencil marks, and the original word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, or entire page are legible.
Jones often wrote in the margin of the manuscript pages his objections to deletions: “I hate to lose this,” and “only for profanity.” When he made such objections, I have restored that passage. “One way, two way, and three way girls” was attacked by the editors but survived in the text.
Jones wanted such words as “fuck,” “fucking,” “cocksucker,” “asshole,” and “cunt” left in the text, and I have restored them wherever they were omitted. The huge penis is once again rampant.
I have restored the discussion about art between Warden and Mazzioli, the wet dream episode, and the extended pages on “cunt-pictures.” Deletions in the queer passages are returned to the places where they belonged. Sections of the quarrels between Warden and Karen have been returned to the text.
If Jones revised a section, I have allowed that revision to stand.
James Jones wrote a better novel than the one published by Scribner’s in 1951. Burroughs Mitchell and Horace Manges were too afraid of a book filled with the language of soldiers to publish From Here to Eternity as it was written. It is now restored to its original state plus a few revisions made by Jones himself.
George Hendrick
Afterword Notes
The letter Jones wrote Perkins proposing a novel about the peacetime army is printed in George Hendrick, editor, To Reach Eternity: The Letters of James Jones. New York: Random House, 1989, pp. 55–59.
Perkins’s reasons for rejecting They Shall Inherit the Laughter are discussed in Hendrick, ed., To Reach Eternity, p. 60.
The text of Perkins’s telegram to Jones is in George Garrett, James Jones. New York: Harcourt Brace, Jovanovich, 1984, p. 88.
Jones’s telegram to Perkins is in Garrett, James Jones, p. 88.
Jones’s belief that he could write From Here to Eternity in six months is from Hendrick, ed., To Reach Eternity, p. 58.
The quotations about “stumbling along in the dark” and the problems of writing the second novel are from Garrett, James Jones, p. 89.
Biographical information about Burroughs Mitchell is from his The Education of an Editor. Garden City: Doubleday, 1980. See also Editor to Author: The Letters of Maxwell E. Perkins, ed. by John Hall Wheelock. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950, and A. Scott Berg, Maxwell Perkins: Editor of Genius, New York: Dutton, 1978.
Lowney’s letter to Jones about Tolstoy is from the Handy Writers’ Collection in Archives/Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield.
Jones to Harry Handy about the killing of his character Prewett is from Hendrick, ed., To Reach Eternity, p. 152.
Jones to Mitchell, February 27, 1950, about completing Eternity is from Hendrick, ed., To Reach Eternity, pp. 107–108. On the novel as a memorial to Perkins, p. 157.
Jones’s long list of objections to the changes in the Eternity manuscript is in his letter to Mitchell, March 29, 1950, in Hendrick, ed., To Reach Eternity, pp. 160–164.
Jones on making changes in the text to keep Eternity from being a Henry Miller “limited edition” is from Hendrick, ed., To Reach Eternity, p. 167.
The “score sheet” is discussed in Hendrick, ed., To Reach Eternity, pp. 173–174.
Helen Howe appears in the documentary James Jones: Reveille to Taps, produced by J. Michael Lennon and Jeffrey Van Davis. The text of her remarks is found in “Glimpses: James Jones, 1921–1977.” Paris Review, vol. 29, #103. 1987, p. 212.
Jones horsetrading with Manges is from Hendrick, ed., To Reach Eternity, p. 174.
The advertising budget for Eternity is from Frank MacShane, Into Eternity: The Life of James Jones, American Writer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985, p. l04; the sales figures for May, 1951, are on p. 107.
Mailer’s comment on Eternity is from MacShane, Into Eternity, p. 105.
Jones’s letter to Mitchell, March 18, 1950, about censorship is in Hendrick, ed., To Reach Eternity, pp. 156–159.
Acknowledgments from George Hendrick
I am indebted to the following for assistance in preparing this volume:
Ray Elliott
Chatham Ewing, Rare Book and Special Collections Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Helen Howe
Kaylie Jones
Librarians at the Urbana Free Library, Urbana, Illinois
The staff of Publication Services, Champaign, Illinois
Donald Sackrider
Thomas J. Wood, Archives and Special Collections, University of Illinois at Springfield
A Biography of James Jones
James Jones (1921—1977) was one of the preeminent American writers of the twentieth century. With a series of three novels written in the decades following World War II, he established himself as one of the foremost chroniclers of the modern soldier’s life.
Born in Illinois, Jones came of age during the Depression in a family that experienced poverty suddenly and brutally. He learned to box in high school, competing as a welterweight in several Golden Gloves tournaments. After graduation he had planned to go to college, but a lack of funds led him to enlist in the army instead.
Before war began he served in Hawaii, where he found himself in regular conflict with superior officers who rewarded Jones’s natural combativeness with latrine duty and time in the guardhouse. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, which Jones witnessed, he was sent to Guadalcanal, site of some of the deadliest jungle fighting of the Pacific Theater. He distinguished himself in battle, at one point killing an enemy soldier barehanded, and was awarded a bronze star for his bravery. He was shipped home in 1943 because of torn ligaments in his ankle, an old injury that was made much worse in the war. After a period of convalescence in Memphis, Jones requested a limited duty assignment and a short leave. When these were denied, he went AWOL.
His stretch away from the army was brief but crucial, as it was then that he met Lowney Handy, the novelist who would later become Jones’s mentor. Jones spent a few months getting to know Lowney and her husband, Harry, then returned to the army, spending a year as a “buck-ass private” (a term which Jones coined) before winning promotion to sergeant. In the summer of 1944, showing signs of severe post-traumatic stress—then called “combat fatigue—he was honorably discharged.
He enrolled at New York University and, inspired by Lowney Handy, began work on his first novel, To the End of the War (originally titled They Shall Inherit the Laughter). Drawing on his own past, Jones wove a story of soldiers just returned from war, presenting a vision of soldiering that was neither romantic nor heroic. He subm
itted the 788-page manuscript to Charles Scribner’s Sons, where it was read by Maxwell Perkins, the legendary editor of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe. Perkins rejected it, but saw promise in the weighty work, and encouraged Jones to write a new novel.
Jones began writing From Here to Eternity, a story of the war’s beginning. After six years of work, Jones showed it to Perkins, who was fully impressed and acquired the novel. After Perkins’s death, the succeeding editor cut large pieces from the manuscript, including scenes with homosexuality, politics, and graphic language that would have been flagged by the censor of that era, and published the novel in 1951. The story of a soldier at Pearl Harbor who becomes an outcast for refusing to box for the company team, it is an unflinching look at the United States pre-WWII peacetime army, a last refuge for the destitute, the homeless, and the desperate. The book was instrumental in changing unjust army practices, which created a public outcry when it was published. It sold 90,000 copies in its first month of publication and captured the National Book Award, beating out The Catcher in the Rye. In 1953 the film version, starring Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift, won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and made Jones internationally famous.
He returned to Illinois to help the Handys establish a writers’ colony. While living there he wrote his second novel, Some Came Running, which he finished in 1957. An experimental retelling of his Midwestern childhood, it stretched to nearly 1,000 pages and drew little acclaim.
In 1958, newly married to Gloria Mosolino, Jones moved to Paris, where he lived for most of the rest of his life, spending time with his old friend Norman Mailer and contributing regularly to the Paris Review. There he wrote The Thin Red Line (1962), his second World War II epic, which follows a company of green recruits as they join the fighting in Guadalcanal; and The Merry Month of May (1970), an account of the 1968 Paris student riots. The Thin Red Line would be brought to the screen by director Terrence Malick in 1998.
