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Robert M. Dowling
Jones, Edward P. (1951– )
Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and short fiction
writer Edward P. Jones was born in Washington,
D.C. His illiterate mother, Jeanette S. M. Jones, a
native of North Carolina, supported the family,
Jones, his sister, and his disabled brother, by wash-
ing dishes and scrubbing floors. Although Jones
earned an English degree at Holy Cross College,
a Jesuit school in Massachusetts, he was briefly
homeless after he graduated. In 1979, at the invita-
tion of John Casey and JAMES ALAN MCPHERSON,
Jones attended the University of Virginia, where he
received his M.F.A. in 1981. For the next two de-
cades, he worked with Tax Notes, a financial maga-
zine, and wrote fiction at night. He has taught
fiction at Princeton University, George Mason
University, the University of Maryland, and Uni-
versity of Virginia.
Although Jones admits he is addicted to watch-
ing television, thinking, and writing, he also ac-
knowledges that reading has honed his craft. He
states:I always loved reading. When I started reading
black writers, I discovered two books that had
a great impact on me: Ethel Waters’s His Eye Is
on the Sparrow and RICHARD WRIGHT’s NATIVE
SON. I felt as if they were talking to me, since
both books had people in them that I knew in
my own life. I was shocked to learn black people
could write such things. A memorable moment
for me occurred when I finished Ellison’s INVIS-
IBLE MAN, turned it over and saw the picture of
the author. I was amazed that a black man had
written something like this. (Fleming 254)Jones was influenced by a number of favorite
writers, including ANN PETRY, PAU L LAURENCE DUN-
BAR, GWENDOLYN BROOKS, William Faulkner, and
Anton Chekhov; however, he confesses that James
Joyce’s Dubliners is the primary inspiration for his
collection of stories Lost in the City (1992). Win-
ner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and finalist for
the National Book Award. The 14 stories are set in
the poverty-ridden neighborhoods of Washington,
D.C., in the 1960s and 1970s. Jones, in this collec-
tion, juxtaposes a variety of themes through a wide
range of characters, young and old, who struggle
daily for spiritual survival in a cold, cruel world. In
such stories as “The Girl Who Raised Pigeons,” “The
Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed,” “The Store,”
“His Mother’s House,” “Gospel,” “A New Man,” and
“Marie.” Jones brilliantly captures the heartbeat of
the “lost city” and depicts how it is still possible for
people to preserve fragile bonds of family and com-
munity in the midst of endless adversity.Jones, Edward P. 285