SOURCE: Solotaroff, Ted. “Semper Fi, Nietzsche.” Nation 257, no. 7 (6-13 September 1993): 254-57.

In the following review, Solotaroff offers a positive review of The Pugilist at Rest.

The hangups of the life load the opportunities of the writer. Load as with guns, and load as with dice. There are several interactive furies in the writing persona of Thom Jones, the much-vaunted new fiction writer; propelled by his talent for dramatizing them, they make this collection of stories [The Pugilist at Rest] seem like a three-car collision in the Indy 500. Lots of power and lots of wreckage pile up as each situation races along its violent or otherwise “wired” premise to its baleful destination.

Jackknifed at the front is the Vietnam experience. As told in three stories, in his own words and reflections, they center on the training, recon operations and post-combat crackup of a Marine hero, champion boxer and romantic...