JONES, Ben 1968-

PERSONAL:

Born 1968, in Wales; son of outdoor experiential and wilderness survival instructors; married; children: two daughters. Education: Yale University, B.A. (English), 1991.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Andover, MA. Office—Digitas, 800 Boylston St., Boston, MA 02199. Agent—Peter Steinberg, Regal Literary, 52 Warfield St., Montclair, NJ 07043. E-mail—benjones@aya.yale.edu.

CAREER:

Writer and editor. Digitas, Boston, MA, creative director for marketing; Bennington College, Bennington, VT, former dean of admissions. Has worked as a high school teacher and as an editor for Adventure Library Publishers, Pleasantville, NY.

AWARDS, HONORS:

National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship; Vermont Studio Center fellowship.

WRITINGS:

The Rope Eater (novel), Doubleday (New York, NY), 2003.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

"Le Morte d'Ina," a short story collaboration with Brian Hall, to be published on JournalNews.com.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ben Jones's novel The Rope Eater tells the story of a deserter from the Union Army named Brendan Kane who joins an expedition to the Arctic in the 1860s. The Narthex, the vessel that bears Kane to the Arctic, is commanded by Captain Griffin, who has assembled a diverse crew of misfits to take his ship into the unexplored regions of the frozen north. "Most of her crew," explained Robin Vidimos in the Denver Post, "are former prisoners who find the offer by Mr. West, the trip's benefactor, more attractive than a jail cell." Although Mr. West and Captain Griffin both have direct interests in the success of the voyage, the true motivation for the expedition is Dr. Architeuthis, a scientist in search of a fabled tropical island paradise hidden beyond the arctic ice.

As the expedition progresses further and further north, however, the ice begins to close in. Finally, the Narthex is trapped in the grip of a northern winter, and her crew must abandon the ship to find their way to safety. In the process, Kane and his crewmates are pushed to the very edges of their capacities, and some of them begin to lose the very qualities that make them human. "Descending finally into an icy abyss of starvation, cannibalism, and murder," wrote Jim Coan in Library Journal, "this story echoes the real-life adventures" of many Arctic explorers. During the ordeal, Kane comes to a better understanding of his own frailties. On his Internet home page, Jones stated that The Rope Eater "is about a man who is first a wanderer, then an explorer and in the end a pilgrim. He finds his new world, his 'isles of the blessed,' not in the vast Arctic emptiness, but rushing past him in the torrent of his days." Readers may find the "bleak, harshly beautiful story" difficult to navigate, a Publishers Weekly reviewer remarked, "but those who persevere will find the journey astonishing."

In fact, The Rope Eater is as much about people pushed beyond their limits as it is about Arctic exploration. Mr. West loses his toes and most of his feet to frostbite. Another crew member chews off his own thumb as starvation sets in. The stoker of the Narthex, Aziz, begins the voyage with a deformity (a third hand) because he comes from a village where children are regularly sold to foreigners who mutilate them for careers as circus freaks. Aziz spends the last hours of his life scratching the story of his life on the hull of the Narthex in a language no one can read. "If any physical ordeal of this nature has been explored in more shattering detail, I don't know where," declared Washington Post contributor Patrick Anderson. "The intensity, the dark poetry, of Jones's writing is stunning." "When Jones shows rather than tells," concluded Tim Wilson in the New York Times Book Review, "he soars."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 15, 2003, Joanne Wilkinson, review of The Rope Eater, p. 576.

Denver Post, December 28, 2003, Robin Vidimos, review of The Rope Eater, section F, p. 11.

Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2003, review of The Rope Eater, p. 1243.

Library Journal, December 2003, Jim Coan, review of The Rope Eater, p. 167.

New York Times Book Review, January 11, 2004, Tim Wilson, review of The Rope Eater, p. 20.

Publishers Weekly, October 13, 2003, review of The Rope Eater, p. 54.

Washington Post, December 29, 2003, Patrick Anderson, review of The Rope Eater, section C, p. 3.

ONLINE

Ben Jones Home Page,http://www.iambenjones.com (August 13, 2004).

Morning News,http://www.themorningnews.org/(August 13, 2004), Robert Birnbaum, interview with Jones.