Nard Jones (1904–1972) was an American writer, best known for his novels set in
Oregon
Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...
and the
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tho ...
.
Life
According to Jones' self-description in "Puget Sound Profiles",
he was born in Seattle and graduated with honors from
Whitman College
Whitman College is a private liberal arts college in Walla Walla, Washington. The school offers 53 majors and 33 minors in the liberal arts and sciences, and it has a student-to-faculty ratio of 9:1. Whitman was the first college in the Pacific ...
, beginning his career as a campus correspondent for the ''Walla Walla Daily Bulletin''. He was chief editorial writer for the ''
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'' (popularly known as the ''Seattle P-I'', the ''Post-Intelligencer'', or simply the ''P-I'') is an online newspaper and former print newspaper based in Seattle, Washington, United States.
The newspaper was f ...
''.
He lived in the city of
Weston, Oregon
Weston is a city in Umatilla County, Oregon, United States. It was originally a post office called Mitchell's Station, established in February 1867. In September 1869, T.T. Lieuallen renamed the post office after his hometown, Weston, Missouri. The ...
with his parents between 1919 and 1927. Jones described himself as an "un-reconstructed Puget Sounder -- a salmon eater, an apple knocker, a rain worshiper, a sage-brusher, a whistle punk from the big woods and a fancier of mountain peaks at sunrise".
He wrote and narrated short stories for the radio program "Puget Sound Profiles" broadcast in the early 1960s on over a dozen stations in Washington State, including
KOMO,
KTAC, and
KAGT, among others.
Jones lived and worked in several parts of the United States but focused most of his career on the Puget Sound Country. He wrote over 300 short stories for magazines and 17 books, 12 of them novels.
''Oregon Detour''
Jones' first novel, ''Oregon Detour'', was set in a fictional Oregon town of 600 inhabitants called Creston. When his novel, written according to the tenets of the
New Realism
New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created.
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz
Albums and EPs
* ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013
* ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...
literary movement (established years before by
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and ...
,
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was ...
and others), was published in 1930, many of the residents of Weston were convinced that his characters were based on local inhabitants, and considered the work a slander against the town.
While the legend that Jones was sued and run out of town for his book is not true, some residents of the town did in fact make an effort to suppress local access to the book. Copies of the novel were stolen from the local library; after the novel became the subject for a high school student's book report, his English teacher removed the book from both the reading list and the high school library. According to George Venn, local literary historian, even in the 1980s "trying to figure out or trying to remember who the 'real people' in the novel is still a local pastime."
Works
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
*
References
Oregon Detour Oregon State University Press
Oregon State University Press, or OSU Press, founded in 1961, is a university press that publishes roughly 15 titles per year and is part of Oregon State University. The only academic publisher in Oregon, the press produces works related to the Pa ...
Nard Jones (1904-1972) by Walt Curtis 1995 for ''Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission''
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Nard
Writers from Oregon
1972 deaths
1904 births