The Farming Game
Copyright © 1995
by Bryan L Jones
U of Nebraska P
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A former high school teacher turned Nebraska farmer himself, Jones has drawn on his . . .
experience to write a lively, practical guide to success or, more often, failure in small farming.
What distinguishes The Farming Game from a mere how-to book is the author’s sharp eye
for the absurd detail in his portraits of people and his descriptions of the lending policies of banks,
the government price controls and the production methods of agribusiness that make it difficult for
the independent farmer to compete. — New York Times Book Review
Bryan Jones is that rare
thing, a real farmer who also writes. The Farming Game is the one book I’ve seen . . . that I would
give to someone who was thinking of moving to the country and actually supporting himself or herself
off the land. . . . Anyone who picks it up [won’t be able to] stop laughing. First at the dozen portraits
of different types of farmers. . . .Then at various barbed asides in the three long essays on how farmers
can and do make money. . . . Jones has a wicked wit. [And his] book is remarkably educative. Mixed
with the humor is a mass of information and analysis. . . . The reality of farming is here as other people
very seldom see it. — Noel Perrin, Smithsonian
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Mark Twain Made Me Do It
Copyright © 1997
by Bryan L Jones
U of Nebraska P
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Mark Twain Made Me Do It and Other Plains Adventures is a collection
of humorous essays portraying western Nebraska life and culture of the
1950s. Anecdotes on small-town baseball and the polio epidemic of 1952
provide a historic backdrop to the story of a wide-eyed boy exploring the
limits of his universe. The adventures of a Twain-inspired raft trip down the
South Platte and Sputnik-inspired homemade rockets mirror a society of
seemingly settled lifestyles and frenzied technological advances. Family
travels, holidays with Grandpa and Grandma, and marvelous creations like
his sister's stories of Susabelle and the magic Band-Aids weave a splendid
tale. But Jones's world is not one of sentimental nostalgia; running battles
with town bullies, sobering encounters with religious buffoons, and an
impressive collection of pedagogues specializing in violent corporal
punishment capture the earthy essence of a world now largely
disappeared. — from the jacket
I flat admire Mark Twain Made Me Do It
— not only because it dramatizes a truckload of boyhood epiphanies, but also
because it does the dramatizing with a flair and attitude worthy of
Twain himself. — William Kloefkorn
Jones mixes humor characteristic of the plains society with a dash of wisdom, a pinch of the
history of farming (of which most modern folks are woefully ignorant), and hefty insight into,
and charity toward, human nature. — Linda Hasselstrom
Jones succeeds in making Nebraska in the 1950s seem exotic, even fascinating, definitely
worth hearing about. — Noel Perrin
These are the fond reminiscences of a boyhood in small-town Nebraska in the early 1950s.
It is a rambunctious life, la Tom and Huck, with Jones, the son of a Methodist minister,
bolstering the stereotype of the preacher's kid as hell-raiser. Jones's charm lies in his
ability to recount events from the perspective of a child with the droll humor of an adult.
— Library Journal
In recent years the premature memoir of the young or floundering writer has established
itself as a fledgling genre. While many of these hasty autobiographies seem of scant
interest to anyone except the most dedicated literary groupie, Jones (The Farming Game)
offers a collection of essays that recalls the youthful credulity of America in the '50s
as much as it does his often hilarious, Huckleberry Finn-inspired misadventures. ...
Jones's prose remains clear and
energetic throughout. He's careful, as well, not to fall victim to cheap nostalgia.
— Publishers Weekly
In this collection of "adventures," Bryan L Jones recounts his boyhood
in the 1950s in
small town western Nebraska. Though the title suggests a
work of fiction, these
adventures are apparently true. All are roughly life-shaped,
but Jones combines his keen memory with a gift of dramatization and a wry
wit to keep the narrative level well
above that of the family vacation slide show.
The narrator ages from about eight to thirteen through this
collection (luckily breaking
off about the time testosterone really kicks in), and his voice alternates
between that of an
eight-year-old and that of a forty-eight-year-old. In one story, a classmate
"produced so
much mucus his folks should have installed two hoses from his nostrils
directly into the
nearest wastebasket." Another story is unabashedly nostalgic:
after relating a friend's glorious victory in a track meet, Jones says,
"He's out there somewhere, old and fat and bald,
like the rest of us. But for me he'll always be pounding up to that finish
line...The whole world was gold at that moment..."
The "young" voice is predominant, and it does not describe much of a
Golden Age. The
adventures are more a picturesque traipse through the carnival of
isolated rural life; the
50s are Commie-haunted and polio-plagued. Religious instruction is
dispensed with
medieval earnestness; pedagogy involves more corporal than mental discipline.
Freaks
break the surface of these narratives like the snapping turtles in a barrel of
buttermilk in
one story. The characters are generally drawn as a boy sees them, as weird
and alien
examples of adult malformity. (Jones's father, a Methodist minister, seems
the only truly
good heart.) But the characters are drawn well; and whatever voice is
used, whatever
genre it belongs to, this is an engaging and good read. —
Brian S Hook, Nebraska Life
Ultimately, kindness and sympathy prevail over shame and intolerance —
largely due to the powerful forces of family and place in Mark Twain
Made Me Do It and Other Plains Adventures. And the power of love
for what Jones calls the "clan" and affection for the place called
Nebraska and the people he shared it with. If warm nostalgia and the
resulting affectionate wisdom can occasionally become the witty
overwriting of ironic detachment, little damage is done to the memories
themselves. When we both love and lament the plain adventures of our
long-ago lives, whether in reading or writing them, perhaps we see more
truly how those endless "green afternoons" of our youth so pleasingly
evoked here prepared us for the gray evenings of adulthood. And maybe
even for the dark nights that will surely follow. —
Bill Cosgrove, Nebraska Territory
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