Jones wrote out of his obsession with the condition and fate of [the] doomed men [who made up the ranks of enlisted men in the years before the democratization of the Army]. His important works are really one long book. Jones considered it a trilogy, starting with "From Here to Eternity," going on to "The Thin Red Line" and the book he had almost completed when he died—"Whistle."… By adding his "The Pistol" I would prefer to call the work a quartet…. (pp. 3, 34)

Speaking of a work of another writer—"Golden Boy" by Clifford Odets—the director of the play, Harold Clurman, once said, "It is a play about the conflict between the fiddle and the fist," meaning, of course, the conflict between art and savagery, civilization and barbarism. In the case of Jones, we might say his work is about the conflict between the gun and...