Misfire

THE PISTOL (158 pp.)--James Jones --Scribner ($3).

No one, not even the author, is so uncritically impressed by a commercially successful book as the lucky publisher. But James Jones's publisher must have done some hard thinking about The Pistol, a "novel" which almost certainly would never have reached type if it had not come from the man who wrote From Here to Eternity. Following as it does last year's Some Came Running, it raises the most horrendous publisher's question of all: Is the fellow really a one-book man?

Neither novel nor novella nor long short story, The Pistol tells about an infantry private first class named Richard Mast, who happens to be on guard duty in Hawaii the day Pearl Harbor is attacked. Part of his equipment is a pistol, and it gives him a nice soldierly feeling to wear it. Normally, after his 24-hour tour of duty, Private Mast would have turned in his pistol, since it was not his issue weapon; his issue piece was a rifle. But in the confusion caused by the Japanese attack, when Mast is sent out with his outfit to man the beaches against a possible Japanese landing, he takes the pistol along. It becomes an obsession.

In his mind's eye he sees himself about to be split by a Japanese saber and only the pistol saves him. Other soldiers try to buy it from him, steal it from him, fight him for it. But Mast manages to hold on to it, for to him it somehow gets to mean "Salvation! Salvation!" In some dim way Author Jones must have intended the pistol to be a symbol of personality in an Army that breeds impersonality, a badge that gives stature in a world that measures men by rank. If so. The Pistol simply misfires, and Jones's simple-minded writing and lack of imagination leave his failure sadly exposed.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.