Jones, Brian Jay 1967-

views updated

Jones, Brian Jay 1967-

PERSONAL:

Born 1967, in Kansas City, KS; married; children: one daughter. Education: University of New Mexico, B.A. Hobbies and other interests: Comic books, jazz, blues, Charlie Chaplin films, and the Beatles.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Damascus, MD. Agent—Jonathan Lyons, Lyons Literary, 16 W. 23rd St., Ste. 500, New York, NY 10011. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, biographer, speechwriter, policy analyst, and administrator. Worked for ten years as a ghostwriter, speechwriter, and policy analyst for the United States Senate. Served as vice president of a nonprofit education agency and as the associate superintendent of education for the state of Arizona.

WRITINGS:

Washington Irving: An American Original, Arcade Publishing (New York, NY), 2008.

Also author of the Brian Jay Jones blog.

SIDELIGHTS:

Brian Jay Jones is a former speechwriter and ghostwriter in the United States Senate, where he also worked as a policy analyst specializing in education, welfare, and job training. A native of Kansas City, Kansas, Jones grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and attended the University of New Mexico. After graduating, he worked in a comic book shop and wrote fiction, according to a biography on his home page, which continues:."Realizing he could live on neither, he soon gave up comics for Capitol Hill and fiction for federal policy." During his time as a writer in the Senate, Jones worked with New Mexico Senator Pete V. Domenici and Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords. After serving as the associate state superintendent of education in Arizona, Jones returned to his former vocation as a writer and policy analyst in Washington, DC.

With his first book, Washington Irving: An American Original, Jones offers a detailed look at the life of Washington Irving, widely considered to be the first best-selling American author and the first American to achieve both wealth and international fame from his written works alone. Jones describes Irving's childhood, the tragic death of his fiancée, his law studies, and his career as a foreign diplomat. Beginning in 1815, Irving spent some seventeen years living in England and Europe, while retaining ties with his homeland and the American literary scene.

Irving is perhaps best known to modern audiences as the author of "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," two stories that first appeared in 1819 in The Sketch Book. Despite the favorable public response to his work, he was criticized by contemporaries such as James Fenimore Cooper, who thought Irving's European residence caused him to lose touch with the United States. As Jones reveals, Irving himself worried that his time abroad would erode his status back home, but he remained very popular with American reading audiences and returned to continuing fame and lifelong financial security.

"Jones' briskly written and comprehensive biography of this unjustly neglected figure is a pleasure to read," commented Foreign Affairs reviewer Walter Russell Mead. In Jones's portrayal, "a warm and patient, grieving and theatrical, generous and loving Irving takes on a distinctly human form," observed Charles C. Nash in Library Journal. A Kirkus Reviews critic remarked that Jones's "breezy approach suits his agreeable subject," resulting in a "solid introduction to an interesting life."