Despite Flaws, ‘Cold Snap’ Makes Fun Reading

“Cold Snap”

By Thom Jones (Little, Brown, 228 pages, $19.95)

Thom Jones is a wonderful writer, full of angst - his publishers say he “probes the outer reaches of despair” - but he’s always good for a laugh along the way.

Alas, in his second collection of short stories, all that turmoil gets to be a bit much. Practically everybody is clinically depressed, and those who aren’t have some other disease they’re wrestling with.

Three of the 10 stories were originally published in the New Yorker, where I read them at widely spaced intervals and liked them a lot better than I did when I read them one after another.

Three other stories ran first in Playboy, so Jones had to throw in a lot of sex and obscenity. By now, we’ve all learned to read over the obscenity, so that’s OK, but Jones is no good at sex. Nothing personal, of course, but does he really think people do it 10 times in one night.

It’s a relief to get to the last two stories, where people are doing something real. One of the stories is set in Vietnam, and Jones is always good on that. The other is about boxing, where he shines.

Jones is a major writer, and even when he’s not at his best, he’s head and shoulders above most of the crowd.