From Here to Eternity

By: James Jones

Narrated by: Elijah Alexander

Diamond Head, Hawaii, 1941. Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt is a champion welterweight and a fine bugler. But when he refuses to join the company's boxing team, he gets "the treatment" that may break him or kill him. First Sgt. Milton Anthony Warden knows how to soldier better than almost anyone, yet he's risking his career to have an affair with the commanding officer's wife. Both Warden and Prewitt are bound by a common bond: the Army is their heart and blood...and, possibly, their death.

In this magnificent but brutal classic of a soldier's life, James Jones portrays the courage, violence and passions of men and women who live by unspoken codes and with unutterable despair. The most important American novel to come out of World War II, this is a masterpiece that captures as no other the honor and savagery of men.

©1998 James Jones (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Less Would Have Been More

What did you like best about From Here to Eternity? What did you like least?

In listening to this famous book, I found myself longing for a Reader's Digest condensed version. Scenes and conversations go on far too long and retrace the same path--many times I rolled my eyes and said 'for god's sake let's move on!' The writing is awkward and self-indulgent, the philosophy espoused by the characters--often at great length--is complete gibberish. The characters themselves are maddeningly self-defeating and unfathomable. It's hard to identify with Prewitt, who seems incapable of making a single correct decision. The men are all misogynistic and in the alternate reality of this book, women don't really enjoy sex, they just do it so the men will talk to them. For all that, I must admit it did conjure up old Hawaii before the war very well, and it held my interest. I guess any character you get to know is interesting, but there are better writers out there than James Jones.

Note to the actor who read this: Adjutant is not pronounced ad-JOO-tent. M/Sgt is spoken as master sergeant, not m-sergeant. Others have commented on your Hawaiian name mangling and I concur. Your funny little voices were annoying, especially that of Stark. Less is more in that regard.

What it is to be a man

The first thing that struck me, having grown so used to the movie version over the years, is how young all the characters are. Most of them are barely into their early 20s, and some of them are still in their teens. And like so many young men of that age, they are trying to understand life. It was just a smidge surprising to hear the same old college dorm room bull sessions coming out of the mouths of young enlisted men. But college kids have no reason to think they have a monopoly on that kind of philosophical speculation. Prewitt is at the heart of this conversation on what it is to be a man. His internal conflict between his own sense of self and what the Army demands of him is what drives the whole book.

Set in 1941, and written 10 years later, this book preserves an honest depiction of how a certain class of people lived and thought, while unavoidably coloring it with how Americans were changed by the war and its aftermath. Allowing for a certain amount of authorial tampering, this is a more uncensored look at normal Americans than you will get from the movies, and a whole lot more informative than you will get from history books. I applaud the visceral realism that James Jones tries to capture here.

I had no idea the movie version dealt with such a narrow slice of this book. To it's credit, the movie captures the essential core of the book as far as story and characters go. What got lost is a lot of the back story for the characters, and how the peacetime military became a refuge for young men hit hard by the Depression. In fact, the influence of the early 20th century labor movement, the Prohibition years, the Depression, and hobo subculture, all loom large as formative factors for these people. The other thing that got shorted was the internal life of these characters.

One odd thing about the novel is that there is a change in tone that takes over most of the last quarter of it. It kind of feels like that portion was written earlier, before Jones had polished his style. It feels amateurish like a young writer trying to imitate some cheap pulp fiction of the time. Jones does a good deal of damage to the authenticity of the characters he worked so hard to create. Fortunately, he manages to get back on track and ends strong.

Overall, Elijah Alexander does a great job of keeping all the characters straight and giving them appropriate accents. My one complaint is that I wish he hadn't adopted such an exaggerated drawl for Maylon Stark.

A story so strong, even the narrator can't ruin.

What made the experience of listening to From Here to Eternity the most enjoyable?
This is an atmospheric experience that I read the first time in high school. You get pulled into worlds clouded with cigarette smoke and sweet with frying bacon and eggs. Jones does such a great job you can practically smell the perfume of the girls at the New Congress Hotel. All of this makes it so hard to stomach the mispronouced names and words by the narrator. Its like being shook awake out of a pleasant dream with cold water. It wrecks concentration and is just plain distracting.

Who was your favorite character and why?
Milt Warden, G Company, First Sergeant. I have known men of quality like him. I suspect James Jones did too.

How could the performance have been better?
The narrator has a fine voice, but who ever produced it needs a pronunciation guide to 1940s Americana, to say nothing of the lexicon of the US Army and soldiers.

Incredible

This book is a masterpiece- I couldn’t let it go and enjoyed listening several times - it is a must

Awesome story - horrible reading

What made the experience of listening to From Here to Eternity the most enjoyable?

turning it off

What didn’t you like about Elijah Alexander’s performance?

His characters are absolutely horrendous. Had to turn this off after a few hours. I tried to listen, but the voices he makes make it impossible to listen.

A MILITARY OPUS

From Here to Eternity was named by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century. It earned the National Book Award for fiction in 1951.

Reading it in 2014 makes one hope American’ civilization has progressed since Jones wrote his Army opus about pre-WWII’ Hawaii. Jones writes about the months before and immediately after Pearl Harbor.

The stereotyping, misogyny, and bravado of Jones’ characters are, at times cloying, and at other times, entertaining. From Here to Eternity is a guy’s-guy’ novel that embarrasses men who think they are brave and women who are brave.

A Classic

A Beautiful story about soldiers, their struggles, and the women that love their soldiers. The novel details the lives of two soldiers and how they process their place in the Army and in life. Honest account of man attempting find his way in a confusing world amidst the backdrop of a Hawaiian paradise before the Pearl Harbor attack.

Has narrator ever been to Hawaii?

Elijah Alexander manages to mispronounce almost every Hawaiian word except for 'Honolulu.' How uninformed does one have to be to pronounce Hilo Hattie's name as high-low Hattie? Imagine what he does with 'Wahiawa' and 'Haleiwa.' The narrator's ignorance of common Hawaiian names was distracting to the story, and should be an embarrassment to him and the publisher.

Abridged not unabridged narration.

This professional narration addition to book is not completely unabridged because some parts of it are abridged, especially the language paragraphs that are sexually explicit, and words whose context referred to sexual.acts.
Maybe audible should develop some kind of maturity rating, so book that contain this type language can be unavailable to younger readers by parental controls, or described as censored for language and contents; consequently, they are abridged!

Gritty, Realistic, Depressing

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

The book is a realistic book detailing the gritty experiences of soldiers in early WWII. The focus is on non-commissioned officers and enlisted men in the army. Readers will learn how these men thought and the decisions they made. My chief criticism is that the author never provided a hopeful answer to the fatalistic world perspectives of the characters.

Would you recommend From Here to Eternity to your friends? Why or why not?

Yes. It provides a "peak" into the mindset of those who have little hope in a world that appears to not reward the poor and downtrodden.

What aspect of Elijah Alexander’s performance would you have changed?

It would have been helpful to not read word for word. Since Jones used a lot of "he said's", Jones could have merely used different voices to avoid the constant refrain of "he said's."

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Probably. The movie would be rather graphic and depressing.