But Jones seems a little lost when he returns from the war. “Wipeout,” the first story in the book’s second section, deals with a man who picks up women at the library, scoring in the philosophy stacks by tossing off references to Wittgenstein as an “effeminate little pansy.” The story is surprisingly thin and jokey. Jones loves to graft doctorate-level discourse onto workaday lives, but the effect can seem forced, as in “I believe the dude’s name is Raskolnikov.”
Jones’s characters-an epileptic vet, a woman dying of cancer, a boxer preparing for a fight-are seen working toward Truth by any means necessary. It’s too early to call him Champ. But there’s no doubt that he’s already a contender.
