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Go to the Widow-Maker
A playwright vacationing in Jamaica becomes dangerously obsessed with deep-sea divingRon Grant is one of the finest playwrights of his generation, second only to Tennessee Williams in pure genius. But success does not mean he feels like a man. On vacation in Jamaica with his mistress, an ice queen who considers him her personal trophy, his thoughts are back in New York City, with a beautiful young girl he met a few days before he left town. As the stress bears down on him, the brilliant playwright goes nearly to pieces before he finds his salvation under water. On his first deep-sea dive, Grant falls in love with the haunting beauty of the reef. He returns as soon as he can, staying longer and swimming deeper until all his problems seep away. But a man can’t breathe underwater forever—and his obsession will drive him to take increasing risks that will change his life forever. This ebook features an illustrated biography of James Jones including rare photos from the author’s estate.
752 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1967
25 people are currently reading
203 people want to read
About the author
James Jones
48 books246 followersJames Jones was an American novelist best known for his explorations of World War II and its aftermath. His debut novel, From Here to Eternity (1951), won the National Book Award and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. The novel, along with The Thin Red Line (1962) and Whistle (published posthumously in 1978), formed his acclaimed war trilogy, drawing from his personal experiences in the military.
Born and raised in Robinson, Illinois, Jones enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1939 and served in the 25th Infantry Division. He was stationed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, where he witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor, and later fought in the Battle of Guadalcanal, where he was wounded. His military service deeply influenced his writing, shaping his unflinching portrayals of soldiers and war.
Following his discharge, Jones pursued writing and became involved with the Handy Writers' Colony in Illinois, a project led by his former mentor and lover, Lowney Handy. His second novel, Some Came Running (1957), was adapted into a film starring Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine. Over the years, he experimented with different literary styles but remained committed to exploring themes of war, masculinity, and the American experience.
Jones later moved to France with his wife, actress Gloria Mosolino, before settling in the United States. He also worked as a journalist covering the Vietnam War and wrote several non-fiction works, including Viet Journal (1974). His final novel, Whistle, was completed based on his notes after his death. In later years, his daughter Kaylie Jones helped revive interest in his work, including publishing an uncensored edition of From Here to Eternity.
Jones passed away from congestive heart failure in 1977, leaving behind a body of work that remains influential in American war literature.
Born and raised in Robinson, Illinois, Jones enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1939 and served in the 25th Infantry Division. He was stationed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, where he witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor, and later fought in the Battle of Guadalcanal, where he was wounded. His military service deeply influenced his writing, shaping his unflinching portrayals of soldiers and war.
Following his discharge, Jones pursued writing and became involved with the Handy Writers' Colony in Illinois, a project led by his former mentor and lover, Lowney Handy. His second novel, Some Came Running (1957), was adapted into a film starring Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine. Over the years, he experimented with different literary styles but remained committed to exploring themes of war, masculinity, and the American experience.
Jones later moved to France with his wife, actress Gloria Mosolino, before settling in the United States. He also worked as a journalist covering the Vietnam War and wrote several non-fiction works, including Viet Journal (1974). His final novel, Whistle, was completed based on his notes after his death. In later years, his daughter Kaylie Jones helped revive interest in his work, including publishing an uncensored edition of From Here to Eternity.
Jones passed away from congestive heart failure in 1977, leaving behind a body of work that remains influential in American war literature.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 5, 2008
I loved this book. Read it 3xs the 1st was in my 20s and was sailing in the Caribbean and felt like I was living the novel on some bizarre level in a different level.
June 19, 2021
My bottom line on James Jones’, Go to the Widow Maker is lifted word for word from a review I just read posted by Tom Quinn. Tom if you are reading this, Thank you. ” Somewhere beneath the bulk is a slender novel a few hundred pages shorter that makes its points quicker…” The problem is that Tom was reviewing Dostoevsky. I have read Dostoevsky. Some I have enjoyed. James Jones is not Dostoevsky. And so the philosophy is not that weighty, the parties less glittery and overall this is a frustrating read. Vast amounts of it are about having sex, although very little is graphic. The consumption of alcohol consumes so much of the book that I may need the Betty Ford clinic just to dry out my head. Warning this book may cause cirrhosis of the liver. The thing is that there is a story in here, and James Jones can write. At least enough that I cannot hate the book.
Some background. Jones was known for making heavy use of his life as part of his books. A writer is always limited to what they know so all books have to carry something of the writer’s time and life. So with Go to the Widow Maker we have a young writer (a play write) Ron Grant. Like Jones he is a WWII veteran, Ron , Navy, James Army. Both served in the Pacific and both got out early, Ron Malaria, Jones a bullet wound. Both have similar body builds, both were boxers, in the same weight division. Both attended college after the War and both achieved success very early in their writing careers.
Going deeper, both found themselves ”adopted” by a married couple. Both would find the wife a harsh taskmaster driving them to get work done and in both the real and fictional world the wife would build a writer’s colony around their adoptee.
Shifting to the Book. Ron is now a very successful play write, still young and single. He relationship with his “Step Mother/mistress” has soured and he is consumed by loneliness. While at this emotion bottom he meets, Lucky. A phenomenally beautiful woman with whom he shares sex the likes of which we are to believe not only shakes the earth but redefines and relocates the Pacific Ring of Fire. They connect on every level. Of her past what we know the most is that she has had sex with 400 men, and BTW has incredible social skills, ability to judge people and over all is pretty much everything a smart man would dream about having as the woman in his life.
Having met this life altering, soul lifting woman; he leaves her in New York City travels to the Caribbean where he is determined to learn to scuba dive and maybe shed himself of his drag anchor of a mistress. James Jones was also a scuba diver.
For several hundred pages Grant and the reader live the life of the “Chosen” for whom us groundlings make life easy and through whom we live our fantasies. Nonstop parties, consumption of massive amounts of booze, what reads like several years, but in fact is a few weeks(Months?) of the good life. Plus a variety of man-woman dramas and male bonding.
Most reviewers say the Widow Maker is about deciding what it means to be a man. There is no shortage of testosterone, just a shortage of adults. Beside Lucky there a lot of women, but mostly as back drop with the occasional something to add to the plot. Both Ron and Lucky are having to come to understand how to live once life is not what is slept through between parties, drinks and sex. The focus in on Ron and it is his rather small, Freudian conclusion that is the moral of the story. Lucky also has to decide who she is and who she will be.
Over all the men are miserable jerks in their the use, treatment and expectations about women. There is at least one drunken moment where Ron expresses himself in such a way that Lucky should have walked and ended the book. Over all the women tolerate way too much. Then again, the women are hardly that angelic. This book was written in the 1960’s and makes clear that the generation that was supposed to have been so much more moral than we are now, were horribly informed on how people should live, or want to live; talk to each other and the list goes on. I have never bought into the notion that our parents knew more and lived better and sinned less.
A final word about the ridicules length of Go to the Widow Maker. At the time James Jones was writing the intention, the goal, the Sine Qua Non for an author of popular novels was: the Blockbuster. “Blockbusters are, invariably, long. There is no such thing as a slim blockbuster.” (The Ingredients for a Blockbuster novel, Jessica Rustin, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/boo...)
The competition was Leon Uris, Irwin Shaw, James A. Michener, Alex Haley, Herman Wouk; skip a few years, Jackie Collins. Bulk mattered. In a way they paralleled an earlier generation, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope . They were writing for serial publication in installments and paid by the word . We accept that there will be filler and nearly pointless digression. So too in the blockbuster. Perhaps the motives were not exactly pay per word, but failure to choke a horse knocked you out of the league.
I get that Dostoyevsky was not and was never going to write for a reader who patience was carved to fit between commercial breaks. Jones was writing to publishers who did not wake up until page 400. The puffery was like milady’s slip, it was not supposed to show.
Go to the Widow Maker for all its shark hunting and whose is bigger contests, has too much slip showing.
Some background. Jones was known for making heavy use of his life as part of his books. A writer is always limited to what they know so all books have to carry something of the writer’s time and life. So with Go to the Widow Maker we have a young writer (a play write) Ron Grant. Like Jones he is a WWII veteran, Ron , Navy, James Army. Both served in the Pacific and both got out early, Ron Malaria, Jones a bullet wound. Both have similar body builds, both were boxers, in the same weight division. Both attended college after the War and both achieved success very early in their writing careers.
Going deeper, both found themselves ”adopted” by a married couple. Both would find the wife a harsh taskmaster driving them to get work done and in both the real and fictional world the wife would build a writer’s colony around their adoptee.
Shifting to the Book. Ron is now a very successful play write, still young and single. He relationship with his “Step Mother/mistress” has soured and he is consumed by loneliness. While at this emotion bottom he meets, Lucky. A phenomenally beautiful woman with whom he shares sex the likes of which we are to believe not only shakes the earth but redefines and relocates the Pacific Ring of Fire. They connect on every level. Of her past what we know the most is that she has had sex with 400 men, and BTW has incredible social skills, ability to judge people and over all is pretty much everything a smart man would dream about having as the woman in his life.
Having met this life altering, soul lifting woman; he leaves her in New York City travels to the Caribbean where he is determined to learn to scuba dive and maybe shed himself of his drag anchor of a mistress. James Jones was also a scuba diver.
For several hundred pages Grant and the reader live the life of the “Chosen” for whom us groundlings make life easy and through whom we live our fantasies. Nonstop parties, consumption of massive amounts of booze, what reads like several years, but in fact is a few weeks(Months?) of the good life. Plus a variety of man-woman dramas and male bonding.
Most reviewers say the Widow Maker is about deciding what it means to be a man. There is no shortage of testosterone, just a shortage of adults. Beside Lucky there a lot of women, but mostly as back drop with the occasional something to add to the plot. Both Ron and Lucky are having to come to understand how to live once life is not what is slept through between parties, drinks and sex. The focus in on Ron and it is his rather small, Freudian conclusion that is the moral of the story. Lucky also has to decide who she is and who she will be.
Over all the men are miserable jerks in their the use, treatment and expectations about women. There is at least one drunken moment where Ron expresses himself in such a way that Lucky should have walked and ended the book. Over all the women tolerate way too much. Then again, the women are hardly that angelic. This book was written in the 1960’s and makes clear that the generation that was supposed to have been so much more moral than we are now, were horribly informed on how people should live, or want to live; talk to each other and the list goes on. I have never bought into the notion that our parents knew more and lived better and sinned less.
A final word about the ridicules length of Go to the Widow Maker. At the time James Jones was writing the intention, the goal, the Sine Qua Non for an author of popular novels was: the Blockbuster. “Blockbusters are, invariably, long. There is no such thing as a slim blockbuster.” (The Ingredients for a Blockbuster novel, Jessica Rustin, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/boo...)
The competition was Leon Uris, Irwin Shaw, James A. Michener, Alex Haley, Herman Wouk; skip a few years, Jackie Collins. Bulk mattered. In a way they paralleled an earlier generation, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope . They were writing for serial publication in installments and paid by the word . We accept that there will be filler and nearly pointless digression. So too in the blockbuster. Perhaps the motives were not exactly pay per word, but failure to choke a horse knocked you out of the league.
I get that Dostoyevsky was not and was never going to write for a reader who patience was carved to fit between commercial breaks. Jones was writing to publishers who did not wake up until page 400. The puffery was like milady’s slip, it was not supposed to show.
Go to the Widow Maker for all its shark hunting and whose is bigger contests, has too much slip showing.
October 18, 2012
I've never had much luck with Jones's classic FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (158 pages seems to be the furthest into it I've ever gotten), and I recall making a half-hearted attempted at the opening pages of this novel ages ago. Lately I found myself with an impulse to try it again; it starts out slowly, but the pace - and readability - pick up. I'm now a third of the way in, and feel that I'm along for the ride.
Although I personally have absolutely no interest in scuba-diving, Jones's narrative - in which the sport figures quite prominently - manages to keep me interested. He wrote such manly, masculine, virile prose, and yet there always seems to be an underlying homo-eroticism in and between some of his male characters. There’s also the most succinct description of ‘male bonding’ I’ve yet encountered:
"They had gotten themselves into a potentially dangerous situation, and they deliberately had done it deliberately. It made Grant think of certain things that had happened to him during the war. He didn’t say it was smart, or intelligent, but he liked it. . . . not since the old days in the Navy in the war had he felt so affectionately close to any group of men. He felt, and it was shared, a real warmth of really deep affection for all three of them. And he didn’t need to be ashamed of it. It was something you could never explain to any woman and, he realized, something no woman would ever be able to understand."
It appears that his protagonist Ron Grant's affair with the older Carol Abernathy may well have been based on an actual affair in Jones's past, except that Jones and his married lover (and her husband) attempted a writer's colony rather than an amateur theater group.
10/14: Almost half-way through, and while I’m still engrossed, I’m also wearying just a bit of the various angsts of the various characters and their relationships - the novel's bloat is making itself felt.
10/16: As do many novels that are over-written and over-long, this one sags in the middle.
10/17: This novel was published in 1967, the year after Jacqueline Susann's VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and Harold Robbins's THE ADVENTURERS established a new level of frankness about sexual matters in novels. So GO TO THE WIDOW-MAKER has a great many four-letter words and a number of sex scenes, although such scenes are not particularly prolonged or described in gratuitous detail.
10/18: Finished it: the final third is an excruciating catalog of drinking, eating, more drinking, diving and sex, all of which prolonged the length of the book but added very little to the narrative itself. By the novel's end I was pretty happy to leave all of the characters behind me.
I'm honestly wondering if a reader new to Jones, and completely unacquainted with his previous novels, or that he had won the National Book Award for FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, would be inspired to seek them out after reading this one as their introduction to him.
Although I personally have absolutely no interest in scuba-diving, Jones's narrative - in which the sport figures quite prominently - manages to keep me interested. He wrote such manly, masculine, virile prose, and yet there always seems to be an underlying homo-eroticism in and between some of his male characters. There’s also the most succinct description of ‘male bonding’ I’ve yet encountered:
"They had gotten themselves into a potentially dangerous situation, and they deliberately had done it deliberately. It made Grant think of certain things that had happened to him during the war. He didn’t say it was smart, or intelligent, but he liked it. . . . not since the old days in the Navy in the war had he felt so affectionately close to any group of men. He felt, and it was shared, a real warmth of really deep affection for all three of them. And he didn’t need to be ashamed of it. It was something you could never explain to any woman and, he realized, something no woman would ever be able to understand."
It appears that his protagonist Ron Grant's affair with the older Carol Abernathy may well have been based on an actual affair in Jones's past, except that Jones and his married lover (and her husband) attempted a writer's colony rather than an amateur theater group.
10/14: Almost half-way through, and while I’m still engrossed, I’m also wearying just a bit of the various angsts of the various characters and their relationships - the novel's bloat is making itself felt.
10/16: As do many novels that are over-written and over-long, this one sags in the middle.
10/17: This novel was published in 1967, the year after Jacqueline Susann's VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and Harold Robbins's THE ADVENTURERS established a new level of frankness about sexual matters in novels. So GO TO THE WIDOW-MAKER has a great many four-letter words and a number of sex scenes, although such scenes are not particularly prolonged or described in gratuitous detail.
10/18: Finished it: the final third is an excruciating catalog of drinking, eating, more drinking, diving and sex, all of which prolonged the length of the book but added very little to the narrative itself. By the novel's end I was pretty happy to leave all of the characters behind me.
I'm honestly wondering if a reader new to Jones, and completely unacquainted with his previous novels, or that he had won the National Book Award for FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, would be inspired to seek them out after reading this one as their introduction to him.
October 23, 2017
This novel is perfect. If you don't like it -- you will hate this -- the fault is in you, not in the novel. Jones is a master. I have been told by friends I trust to read Jones and I have always demurred. Digging into this novel, I was simply put on my ear. It is vast; it is precise. It details some serious issues between men and women and sexual jealousy. The dive scenes are exquisite. Who knew such a novel existed about scuba/free diving? His scenes, his characterizations....are a master class in fiction writing. It's possible this is too near a 19th century conception of a novel for it to be read by modern readers. But come on. This is a masterpiece, a mid 20th century gem that will immerse you in the private lives of the country's best playwright and the odd diving brigade he assembles around him. Boats, sea, sharks, coral heads....and the old dance between men and women. Take your time with this novel and read it for a month or so. You will live with the characters and understand their various fates. If you don't feel for them, then you don't get a portion of life that might be just out of reach for you. How's that for a provocative, cheeky statement? He is in the tradition of Michener and Uris and even Irving Stone. (Not to mention the 19th century masters like Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dickens, Eliot, Stevenson and so forth.) Read this novel! It will take you away and give you a taste of life you didn't know you needed.
February 25, 2025
My god, James Jones was SO close to equaling FROM HERE TO ETERNITY here. SO close to throwing off the undeserved millstone of shit that he had acquired for the underrated and unreasonably impugned SOME CAME RUNNING. SO close to proving that he could write with complete and total command about a subject that was not war. But Jones blew it in the last two hundred pages. All of the bold candor, all of that close narration that so many snobs misidentified as "bad writing" (when Jones was really being authentic), all of those amazing diving scenes, all of those utterly fascinating (and unapologetically cringe) insights into what these oversexed postwar men were really thinking. Christ, I was even going to give him a fair pass for Lucky (who is "superficial" in a very specific way that is meant to deal with similar issues Jones raised in ETERNITY) and Carol Abernathy (clearly based on the real-life tyrant Lowney Handy, who gave a young Jones an assist on the writing and carnality front). But, no, he blows it at the end. Too much reliance on boning and convenient benefactors financing the Jamaica operation. I'd say that this is a BETTER novel than SOME CAME RUNNING, if only because Jones is far more in control here. But when Jones doesn't have a big Pearl Harbor finish, the dude cannot stick the landing. And it's so FRUSTRATING! Because I was rooting for Jones the entire time! There were vast sections of this massive novel which completely gripped me, which demonstrated that Jones had far more insights about human behavior than an adept con man like Norman Mailer.
I do think that you should still read the novel, if only because (much like SOME CAME RUNNING) it offers a potential way forward for 20th century literature that more writers should have noticed. I do think that Jones was one of the few postwar novelists who could successfully fuse idiosyncratic literary chops within a "blockbuster" framework. I do think that Jones was far bolder in his honesty than a lot of writers during this time. But he blew it, folks. Augh! I was prepared to deliver a massive stump speech on this book around the 400 page mark, but he blew it, gang!
I still have a few more little-read James Jones novels to get through. Knowing me, I'll read them all. Because James Jones really did have a peculiar and original talent for depicting sexual anxieties and male bravado that is still very much in play today (see incels and MAGA cultists). He came so close! But in the end he couldn't stick the landing. This is why endings are so important!
I do think that you should still read the novel, if only because (much like SOME CAME RUNNING) it offers a potential way forward for 20th century literature that more writers should have noticed. I do think that Jones was one of the few postwar novelists who could successfully fuse idiosyncratic literary chops within a "blockbuster" framework. I do think that Jones was far bolder in his honesty than a lot of writers during this time. But he blew it, folks. Augh! I was prepared to deliver a massive stump speech on this book around the 400 page mark, but he blew it, gang!
I still have a few more little-read James Jones novels to get through. Knowing me, I'll read them all. Because James Jones really did have a peculiar and original talent for depicting sexual anxieties and male bravado that is still very much in play today (see incels and MAGA cultists). He came so close! But in the end he couldn't stick the landing. This is why endings are so important!
October 19, 2011
This is great read, was my introduction to the author.
March 25, 2021
Did he have to name the fucker Jim Grointon?
December 3, 2018
The relationships between the characters are interesting in an adult way. Lots of sexual tension. It may make one wonder if people are actually like this. The bromance/hero-worship seems to be fairly spot on. The Caribbean setting with the boats, skin diving and scuba diving was the most intriguing part. Definitley recommed one read, but the length discourages one to return to it.
November 1, 2022
Patience is a virtue and you need it to read this book.... Would have been an amazing story if JJ hadn't burn too many pages in writing it.
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