The American Thinker

Chapter 1 establishes Thurman’s place within modern American thought, arguing that he is part of the American pragmatist tradition. Thurman inherited pragmatism from William James by way of W. E. B. Du Bois and Rufus Jones. Du Bois applied James’s ideas about people’s “blindness” to the experiences of others and the theory that social norms could evolve over time, through human agency, to better represent the needs of the democratic whole to his ideas about Black agitation and activism—a school of thinking within which Thurman was educated and nurtured. Thurman’s liberal theological component, especially his mysticism, is best understood through the James-Jones lineage. Rufus Jones drew off of James’s secular theories on mystical experience to popularize a culture of religious seeking and the pursuit of spiritual truth. Informed by his Quaker background, Jones theorized that the individual could reach points of heightened consciousness and could achieve a sense of oneness with a divine truth (James did not specify what this universal truth was, but Jones insisted that it was God). Both James and Jones favored affirmation mysticism—the idea that once a person experienced wholeness with the rest of the universe that he would be motivated and even responsible for attempting to create the same synchronicity within the society that he lived. Thurman, who had mystical leanings since childhood but could never fully articulate his insights on spirituality, felt as though he found a kindred spirit after he encountered one of Jones’s books on mysticism in 1929. The discovery led Thurman to study under Jones at Haverford that spring (with special permission from the college since Haverford did not admit Black students at that point). Thurman emerged from Haverford armed with a sophisticated grasp of affirmation mysticism that he connected seamlessly to his activist education. Through close readings of James, Du Bois, Jones, and Thurman, the chapter argues that Thurman’s pragmatist heritage both establishes him as a distinctly modern American thinker and sets the Fellowship Church—the physical expression of his ideas—as a distinctly modern American institution.

JAMES JONES AND HIS SHORT STORIES ON LIFE CHALLENGES FACED BY AMERICANS IN THE XX CENTURY

The article, dealing with the centenary anniversary of James Jones, presents her own subdivision of his creative work into periods, given that the author of the article was the first researcher in the former USSR and the USA defending her monographic work in 1981 on “Problems of War and Peace in James Jones’s creative work”. The aim of her article is to highlight the role of a short story genre in evolution of American writers, including James Jones, choosing their themes and further confirming the manner and peculiarities of their writing style in their novels. The main part of the article is devoted to the analysis of the short stories (which were only 13), published by James Jones in his collection entitled “The Ice-cream Headache” and Other Stories”. The researcher presented her interesting classification of them, showing their different grouping by themes, main characters with their psychology that affected their behavior and, naturally, the writer’s intention to show his attitude to the events described in each story.

FEATURES OF DEPICTION THE SECOND WORLD WAR EVENTS IN THE XXTH CENTURY RUSSIAN, AMERICAN AND HUNGARIAN PROSE (BASED ON THE NOVELS «LIFE AND FATE» BY VASILIY GROSSMAN, «FATELESSNESS» BY IMRE KERTÉSZ, «FROM HERE TO ETERNITY» BY JAMES JONES)

The present article deals with the comparative analysis of the methodological bases of depicting the authenticity, features, and character of ideological-thematic reflection of the Second World War events on the pages of the novel by Russian writer Vasily Grossman (1905-1964) «Life and Fate» (1960), the masterpiece by the American novelist James Jones (1921-1977) «From here to eternity» (1953) and the work by the Hungarian novelist Imre Kertész (1929-2016) «Fatelessness» (1975). The novels' authors did not need to interpret historical events by other people's memories and strive for a documentary. The original document in the novels was the life and unique memory of the writers themselves, and not only in the sense of the artistic reproduction of the true sides of the survived and seen, but also in terms of serious thoughts about the relationship of the past with the present in their moral, social, philosophical and ethical aspects. The article highlights the events and circumstances that predetermined the formation of features of the writers' worldview and led to the writing of the novels on military topics. The novels «Life and Fate», «Fatelessness», and «From here to eternity» can be considered as deeply personal works by the writers who have not declared, magnified the events of the history in context, but through the image system of the novels deeply examined, analyzed their roots. The authors of the novels have shown the history of the 20th century not on the background of exaggerated, politically agitating, heroic pictures, but from the point of view of the true significance of historical events for modern society. Keywords: documentary, historical memory, regime, literary tradition, writer’s consciousness, historical concreteness.

Jones, David (1895–1974)

David Jones, the poet, painter and engraver, was born in Brockley, Kent, in 1895. He was the youngest son of James Jones, a printer’s overseer from North Wales, and Alice Bradshaw, a former governess and talented amateur artist of Anglo-Italian descent. Although his family was English-speaking and Low Church in religious practice, from an early age Jones was drawn to the culture of his father’s Welsh ancestors, and to the rituals of the Catholic Church (he was to convert in 1921). Both influences would prove crucial to Jones’s maturity as both artist and writer. In January 1915, after several years training as an artist at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, Jones enlisted in the ‘London Welsh’ battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and served as a private until the end of the First World War. He was wounded in the leg during the assault on Mametz Wood, as part of the 1916 Somme Offensive. These experiences would serve as the narrative basis of his first major literary work, In Parenthesis (1937). Though that title was meant to convey his understanding of the war as a kind of parenthesized experience for him and his fellow amateur soldiers, he remained, artistically, unable to step outside of its brackets, and each of his major subsequent works would be shaped by his time in the trenches.