Mary Belk: Jones' new novel offers new style

Auburn’s Madison Jones is one of the most widely acclaimed novelists writing in America today. Since the publication of his first novel, he’s had a solid literary reputation in the U.S., South America and Europe.

Jones’ admiration of Melville, Dostoyevsky and Joseph Conrad shows in his novels. In fact, his 1963 “A Buried Land” has been favorably compared to Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” and “Cry of Absence” (1971) has been likened to the writings of Sophocles, Flaubert, Faulkner, Ibsen and Thomas Hardy.

Most of his books are so literary, that Jones has been called a writer’s writer. But when you pick up his newest novel, “The Adventures of Douglas Bragg,” be prepared for a different kind of read. This coming-of-age novel is in the tradition of the old Southern humorists, Mark Twain and Erskine Caldwell.

“It isn’t serious like my other books,” Jones said. “I decided to have some fun with this one.”

You’ll laugh at the shenanigans of Douglas Bragg, but in the midst of his jokes and pranks, Jones’ simple, elegant prose will impress you almost as much as his story telling which will put you in mind of Twain and Faulkner.

In 1960, recent college graduate Douglas Bragg sets out hitchhiking, looking for “What fortune might have in store for me.” Shortly after leaving his mother who raised him almost single-handedly in Birmingham, he gets a ride with a traveling salesman. The man seems safe enough at first. But it’s clear that there’s more alcohol than nutrition in the supplement he’s selling as soon as he starts sipping on his bottles of Endural.

As his journey continues, Douglas’ story is full of tall tales, country music, drug-running morticians, hypocritical preachers, women of ill repute and tomfoolery.

Even in this just-for-fun novel, Jones throws in a hint of one of his favorite themes, the conflict between innocence and cunning. And you’ll find a skillful balance of these two opposing forces.
Bragg is no angel; he’s a rascal in the truest sense of the word. Douglas is so good at bluffing, he succeeds in fooling those who’re out to misuse him, and by repetition, becomes more and more skilled in his craftiness.

Whenever trouble hits, he resorts to a fertile mind full of guile and trickery. He figures his effortless ability at conniving was passed down from his daddy, “a wonderfully clever man, a lawyer, with a wit that could slip up on you and very likely, deliver a cut that you wouldn’t notice till a little afterwards.”

But Bragg isn’t a true scoundrel. Just when you begin to think he’s incorrigible, the young traveler proves himself virtuous and softhearted.

Read with delight the exploits of Douglas Bragg. And if you want to hear the resonant bass voice of the author reading from his latest novel, Jones will be at Ralph Brown Draughon Library Thursday at 2 p.m.

Mary Belk lives in Auburn and writes a column for the Opelika-Auburn News.