THE ICE-CREAM HEADACHE

James Jones presents James Jones in some wavering paragraphs introducing this collection of stories—some published, some stillborn, most old, one brand new, nothing, we are pleased to say, borrowed wittingly, and most of them strangled blue with tremulous posturing. Manhood is a lonesome thing and mother is murder and debilitating are the daughters of castrators who can't give a man what he needs (. . . "don't they make real Women anywhere any more?" cries a muddy-booted mini-male into the woodlands). What he needs, obviously is another tour of duty in the army, where, removed from female femurs, he can open up to wind and rain and the rush of events. The army stories are far and away the best, probably because the magnitude of inhumanity gives Jones a perspective that pulse watching does not. In these stories the dialogue comes through loud and clear—static, and rasping, untidy prose sets in only when the author heads inward, or downward. The title story concerning an adolescent view of an ancestral guilt, hovering around incest, is skillfully structured, but again Jones pounds on the obvious until it hurts. A series of headaches from melting pistachio.