Thom Jones, the revered short story writer, died on Friday, October 14 at his home in Olympia, Washington. The cause was complications due to diabetes. He was seventy-one.

The Pugilist at Rest, his first collection, was published in 1993 and was a finalist for the National Book Award. The title story was originally published in The New Yorker and went on to win an O. Henry Award for best short story. He published two more collections, Cold Snap (1995) and Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine (1999).

Jones graduated from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1973 and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994.

Sam Roberts, writing for The New York Times, relates a story of Jones’s work in copywriting: “He was fired as an advertising copywriter because, he was told, a client would not countenance his proposed slogan for the Jolly Green Giant—which was more or less, with an expletive inserted, ‘These are the best peas I ever ate.’”

In her review of Cold Snap, Joyce Carol Oates wrote, “Reading Thom Jones’s fiction is like speeding in an open car: The landscape blurs, the momentum becomes intoxicating — and then the brakes are applied, with no warning.”

In a 1999 interview with The Guardian, he said of writing, “I think fiction is a way of approaching the truth. A good fiction writer is the hardest thing to be. You can go to medical school and learn neurosurgery, but anybody can do that who’s got the IQ. When you create something out of thin air you have to know the human heart. Look at Shakespeare. He probably understood human beings more than anyone. He’s the best.”

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