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With the Ahab-like ardor of Croft ascending Mt. Anaka, the social and linguistic cataloging of social types and vernaculars in Time Machine and Chow Line segments, and the epic qualities of the book’s framing and charting, and detailed depiction of the Anopopei campaign and its combat actions; and the fundamental novelistic interactions among the principals, each with members of his immediate sphere—Cummings, Hearn, and Croft, each with his circle of underlings—''The Naked and the Dead'' fits the template of the 'modern epic' quite well.
With the Ahab-like ardor of Croft ascending Mt. Anaka, the social and linguistic cataloging of social types and vernaculars in Time Machine and Chow Line segments, and the epic qualities of the book’s framing and charting, and detailed depiction of the Anopopei campaign and its combat actions; and the fundamental novelistic interactions among the principals, each with members of his immediate sphere—Cummings, Hearn, and Croft, each with his circle of underlings—''The Naked and the Dead'' fits the template of the 'modern epic' quite well.


Although ''Naked'' has no individual hero—Croft is arguably an antihero— the action of the Army on Anopopei might be considered heroic. For example, the book begins with a statement about the invading force—the memorable “Nobody could sleep . . . all over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to{{pg|324|325}} be dead”—and it ends with a description of the “mop up” or “successful” campaign{{sfn|Meyer|2005|p=3}}{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=715}}.
Although ''Naked'' has no individual hero—Croft is arguably an antihero— the action of the Army on Anopopei might be considered heroic. For example, the book begins with a statement about the invading force—the memorable “Nobody could sleep . . . all over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to{{pg|324|325}} be dead”—and it ends with a description of the “mop up” or “successful” campaign.{{sfn|Meyer|2005|p=3}}{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=715}}


Further, ''Naked ’s'' use of its Time Machine segments reaches out toward the “expression” of the “total world of a nation and epoch” {{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}}. These devices democratically apply the model of Dos Passos’s elite biographic profiles of great Americans in the ''U.S.A.'' to the description of the American “every man.”
Further, ''Naked ’s'' use of its Time Machine segments reaches out toward the “expression” of the “total world of a nation and epoch”. {{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}} These devices democratically apply the model of Dos Passos’s elite biographic profiles of great Americans in the ''U.S.A.'' to the description of the American ‘every man’.


In place of ''U.S.A.’s''  Jack Reed and TR, aviators like the Wright Brothers, lovers like Rudolph Valentino, financiers like Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan, we get Hispanic Texans like Julio Martinez; Texan and Virgin- ian rednecks Sam Croft and Woodrow Wilson; Montana miner and hobo Red Velsen; working-class Bostonian Irishman Will Gallagher and working-class Jewish Brooklynite Joey Goldstein; small-town Northeastern/Midwestern middleclass William Brown; Northeastern/Midwestern, upper-class, Harvard-educated Left intellectual Robert Hearn; and Northeastern/Midwestern, upper-class, West Point-educated Far Right intellectual General Cummings.
In place of ''U.S.A.’s''  Jack Reed and TR, aviators like the Wright Brothers, lovers like Rudolph Valentino, financiers like Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan, we get Hispanic Texans like Julio Martinez; Texan and Virgin- ian rednecks Sam Croft and Woodrow Wilson; Montana miner and hobo Red Velsen; working-class Bostonian Irishman Will Gallagher and working-class Jewish Brooklynite Joey Goldstein; small-town Northeastern/Midwestern middleclass William Brown; Northeastern/Midwestern, upper-class, Harvard-educated Left intellectual Robert Hearn; and Northeastern/Midwestern, upper-class, West Point-educated Far Right intellectual General Cummings.
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Indeed, ''Naked’s'' use of its Time Machine segments extends the ''U.S.A.’s'' encyclopedia of American social types and speech during the second and third decades of the twentieth century to the third and early fourth decades of the century, for the Time Machine profiles deal with the biographies that highlight the preponderantly 1930s and early 1940s adolescence and youth of ''Naked’s'' cast on its principal 1944-ish stage.
Indeed, ''Naked’s'' use of its Time Machine segments extends the ''U.S.A.’s'' encyclopedia of American social types and speech during the second and third decades of the twentieth century to the third and early fourth decades of the century, for the Time Machine profiles deal with the biographies that highlight the preponderantly 1930s and early 1940s adolescence and youth of ''Naked’s'' cast on its principal 1944-ish stage.


Naked’s allegorical structure also contributes to the book’s “expression” of a “total world of a nation and epoch”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}}. As an allegory, The Naked and the Dead is dystopian. It is, in part, a dystopia of fascistic foreboding expressed both in terms of General Cumming’s highbrow aspirations of a domestic- cally authoritarian and internationally imperialistic United States and in terms of Sergeant Croft’s thuggish service for Cummings (i.e., his role in the elimination of the annoying Lieutenant Hearn for Cummings).
Naked’s allegorical structure also contributes to the book’s “expression” of a “total world of a nation and epoch”.{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=11}} As an allegory, The Naked and the Dead is dystopian. It is, in part, a dystopia of fascistic foreboding expressed both in terms of General Cumming’s highbrow aspirations of a domestic- cally authoritarian and internationally imperialistic United States and in terms of Sergeant Croft’s thuggish service for Cummings (i.e., his role in the elimination of the annoying Lieutenant Hearn for Cummings).




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{{pg|325|326}}
{{pg|325|326}}
Instead, he leaves us with Major Dalleson captivated by the USO poster and PR charm of the emerging, somewhat demilitarized managerial age, thinking with more innocence than is imaginable for Cummings, “He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co-ordinate grid system laid over it”{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=646}}.
Instead, he leaves us with Major Dalleson captivated by the USO poster and PR charm of the emerging, somewhat demilitarized managerial age, thinking with more innocence than is imaginable for Cummings, “He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co-ordinate grid system laid over it”.{{sfn|Moretti|1996|p=646}}


==Style, Construction, and Assessment==
==Style, Construction, and Assessment==




'''''From Here to Eternity''''' Jones has been criticized for bad writing. The main site of this criticism and defenses against it is in writing on ''Some Came Running''. However, as we shall see, these criticisms had precursors in responses to ''From Here to Eternity''{{sfn|Garrett|1984|p=100}}. Writing on ''Some Came Running'', Edmund Fuller wrote, "[I]f you like bad grammar...shoddy and befuddled philosophy, ''Some Came Running'' is your book," and Time that "Choctaw rather than English would appear to be [Jones's] first language"{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=38}}. And, J. Donald Adams attributed Jones with having a "fatuous pride in being illiterate"{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=38}}.
'''''From Here to Eternity''''' Jones has been criticized for bad writing. The main site of this criticism and defenses against it is in writing on ''Some Came Running''. However, as we shall see, these criticisms had precursors in responses to ''From Here to Eternity''.{{sfn|Garrett|1984|p=100}} Writing on ''Some Came Running'', Edmund Fuller wrote, "[I]f you like bad grammar...shoddy and befuddled philosophy, ''Some Came Running'' is your book," and Time that "Choctaw rather than English would appear to be [Jones's] first language".{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=38}} And, J. Donald Adams attributed Jones with having a "fatuous pride in being illiterate".{{sfn|Carter|1998|p=38}}


On ''Eternity's'' literary quality, Burgess wrote the following in ''The Caine Mutiny'' section of his 99 Novels: "[Mutiny] stands somewhere between Mailer's ''The Naked and the Dead'' . . . and James Jones's ''From Here to Eternity''. It has some literary distinction, far more than Jones's, much less than Mailer's" {{sfn|Carter|1998|p=56}}.
On ''Eternity's'' literary quality, Burgess wrote the following in ''The Caine Mutiny'' section of his 99 Novels: "[Mutiny] stands somewhere between Mailer's ''The Naked and the Dead'' . . . and James Jones's ''From Here to Eternity''. It has some literary distinction, far more than Jones's, much less than Mailer's". {{sfn|Carter|1998|p=56}}


Similarly, I recall a 1960s episode of ''The David Susskind Show'' in which Gore Vidal dismissed Jones's book for bad writing after praising Fred Zin-Neumann's film  Eternity. Although I am both a Jones and a Bloom fan, I was not surprised when I realized that Jones was entirely unmentioned in the extensive critical works of the stylistically finicky Harold Bloom.
Similarly, I recall a 1960s episode of ''The David Susskind Show'' in which Gore Vidal dismissed Jones's book for bad writing after praising Fred Zin-Neumann's film  Eternity. Although I am both a Jones and a Bloom fan, I was not surprised when I realized that Jones was entirely unmentioned in the extensive critical works of the stylistically finicky Harold Bloom.


Defenders of Jones’s style cast light on its positive and negative criticism. For example, Tom Carson writes, “[A]t its crowded, vernacular best [the prose] does just what he wanted to do, involve you in the events, and put you inside the characters’ heads with striking veracity and conviction” {{sfn|Carson|1984|p=19}}. George Garrett writes that “Jones, as he wrote ''Running'', was involved in an experiment with language, a kind of discovery . . . he calls it working with ‘colloquial forms’ by which he means not merely the free and easy use of the living, spoken American language on dialogue or first-person narration but an attempt to carry it into the narrative itself, into third-person narration”{{sfn|Carson|1984|p=116}}. These defenses focus on that aspect of Jones’s writing that his critics seem to stress as his weakest attribute: his writing style.
Defenders of Jones’s style cast light on its positive and negative criticism. For example, Tom Carson writes, “[A]t its crowded, vernacular best [the prose] does just what he wanted to do, involve you in the events, and put you inside the characters’ heads with striking veracity and conviction”. {{sfn|Carson|1984|p=19}} George Garrett writes that “Jones, as he wrote ''Running'', was involved in an experiment with language, a kind of discovery . . . he calls it working with ‘colloquial forms’ by which he means not merely the free and easy use of the living, spoken American language on dialogue or first-person narration but an attempt to carry it into the narrative itself, into third-person narration”.{{sfn|Carson|1984|p=116}} These defenses focus on that aspect of Jones’s writing that his critics seem to stress as his weakest attribute: his writing style.
{{pg|326|327}}
{{pg|326|327}}
One concentration of stylistic criticism seems to focus on Jones’s attempts to put readers “inside the characters’ heads” {{sfn|Carson|1984|p=19}}. This mainly consists of the use of the first-person indirect and free indirect, in which movement between a third-person mimicry of a character’s consciousness approaching stream of consciousness and authorial comment on characters’ consciousness or simple third person occurs, for Jones seldom lapses into the first person in “third person” fictions like ''Eternity'' and ''Running''. This second paragraph of the book’s first page, already quoted above, illustrates the sort of writing:
One concentration of stylistic criticism seems to focus on Jones’s attempts to put readers “inside the characters’ heads” {{sfn|Carson|1984|p=19}}. This mainly consists of the use of the first-person indirect and free indirect, in which movement between a third-person mimicry of a character’s consciousness approaching stream of consciousness and authorial comment on characters’ consciousness or simple third person occurs, for Jones seldom lapses into the first person in “third person” fictions like ''Eternity'' and ''Running''. This second paragraph of the book’s first page, already quoted above, illustrates the sort of writing:
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