Great - clichés and posing. From a seventeen year old, perhaps ok stuff. From a fiftysomething (which he was at the time)- oy vey!

Excelsior! Tarantula, Mouses, and A Midnight Clear are all too long, and deal with things of little consequence — unless the spider-killing in Tarantula turns you on. Or, perhaps Mouses’ hunchbacked engineer with a God Complex, who tortures mice after getting fired? Here is what passes for insight in this tale: ‘Apparently, ‘Don’t shit where you eat’ isn’t in the rodent codebook. Hygiene is not a big concern with them.’ Daddy’s Girl is only slightly better because its last sentence is a good and evocative one - perhaps the best in the book, as it follows the reflections of a ninetysomething woman on her life. Here is what passes for reflection in this tale: ‘You have to believe like a little child. Believe it because it’s impossible.’

Then we come to a tale that could have been written by a bad sportswriter who could never latch on to do a Sports Illustrated feature story. My Heroic Mythic Journey is as bad as it Joseph Campbellian title, and follows a boxer’s descent from World Champion to terribly clichéd loser that spouts even worse clichés. It is a terrible exhibition of bad writing that should have never seen print.

Even worse is I Love You, Sophie Western, which ends with possibly the most ridiculously bad story end ever published — a straight teen guy who is a drug addict getting dickslapped, skull-fucked, and told to ‘swallow’ by a pedophile! This shows that Jones is not afraid to show his feminine side, I guess. The seventy-five page novella You Cheated, You Lied is about — BINGO! Exactly what it seems to be about — a bad relationship — save it includes insane asylums and Hawaii. It’s, at best, a passable five-page story.

Some critics have called Jones’ prose style ‘zippo prose’, meaning nothing more than the basics. These same critics also feel there’s something significant to the fact that modern boxing matches go twelve rounds and there are a dozen tales, too. Wow! That’s like- symbolism, dude? I’d say the zippo portion accurately reflects the fact that there is nothing offered in the tales.

I do not know whether Jones’ prose is part of his pugilist act or not. If it is, he should drop it, as he’s a sexagenarian now. He’s old, and so is his schtick — even though magazines like the New Yorker and Gentleman’s Quarterly inexplicably think this crap is publishable. Jones simply lacks range, insight, and most of all — the ability to write engaging sentences.