The Stuff of Excess : If Thom Jones is the current short-story god, what’s the form coming to? : COLD SNAP: Stories, <i> By Thom Jones (Little, Brown: $19.95; 228 pp.)</i>

One thing I’m certain of is that I’ve got to be totally wrong about my difficulties with Thom Jones. He’s one of the most popular story writers in the country right now, not for doing anything new (if contemporary fiction ain’t broke, why fix it?), but for reviving an all-American genre, macho fiction. Tough-guy stories with a twist. The secret: Give all the ruffians or their partners some type of disorder. That makes ‘em vulnerable. Like the ailing triceratops in “Jurassic Park,” there’s nothing more moving than a weepy incapacitated brute. It’s our only way to get close to them, and gosh darn it, monsters need love too. Jones’ gallery of black sheep includes a diabetic, an epileptic, a malaria sufferer, a manic depressive Jesus freak on lithium, and literature’s favorite, a selection of drunks. Is that a great formula or what? Yes, it must be great, the world knows better than I do.

Taking major, lonely exception to a story collection that’s been raved about in print and among your smartest reading friends is the kind of thing that makes you feel not only wrong but insane. What’s my problem? It’s not that Jones takes advantage of these poor souls, his characters. They want to be taken advantage of, badly, they’re greased and ready. It’s just that they often end up sounding so false that when and if one drops dead of a heart attack it’s about as disturbing as a drink of water.

He’s very good at ending stories. In fact you could say he’s a conclusion expert. Each narrator vacates his mental tract by expelling an epiphany, getting a tad ironic and giddy, and then adios . The parting words, the best lines in his work, are the right touch. At the end of “Pickpocket”: “The spider, what it wants more than hamburger is that I should light a cigarette and blow smoke at her so she can suck it in through her spiracles and get some nicotine on her brain. Gets this look like, ‘Come on, baby, drive me crazy!’ It’s just a tiny spider brain. Say, ‘Jes’ a little puff would do it, mah man.’ But I look at the spider and say, ‘Suffer, darlin?! It’s for ya own good. Take it from a man who knows.’ ” The socko endings are the definition of what an O’Henry award-winner should sound like. Spin you around at the end, kick you in the pants, drop something, maybe even throw in a kiss. Jones won the award in 1993.

Most of Jones’ characters are all big on living and self-medicating. He’s an expert on the effects of many types of pain killers and antidepressants; gets to show off pharmacologic knowledge, and it’s genuinely interesting, as well as his tonnage of detail about Africa, cars and boxing. He’s got that all down. I do believe that Thom Jones is an honest writer who throws himself completely into every story. His heart is very much in his work.

Jones’ stories are often described as having a brutal, terrifying vision of the world, but none of them are nearly as devastating as the local news. Jones might be high-impact but that has more to do with the pitch of his voices. His characters’ veins are popping out to make it clear who they are, but they all have a similar, speedy, used car salesman bravado. Another key ingredient is energy. It’s a page performance, but there’s too much exertion going on. He’s going for the vivid realistic person but he seems committed to making self-conscious charmers.

The stories in Jones’ first book, “The Pugilist at Rest,” are much more contemplative than the tales in “Cold Snap.” They’re not trying so hard to win you over. “Pugilist’s” narrators are grounded and thoughtful, the stories far more inventively structured. “Cold Snap” is frenetic, the game plan appearing to be: Blurt out whatever crosses your mind. Free form and free fall, it’s supposedly real-people-speak. The hyperactive characters that incessantly blab their stories out are very articulate about their particular world, it’s just that the sentences are not surprising and that’s odd for how volatile the characters speaking are. Nor are the sentences especially beautiful. You never look back to see how Jones did something language-wise, unless it’s because confusion has set in.

In being down with his people, Jones goes for the speech patterns of characters who are black, Latino, Mississippi Southern, and a one-fourth aboriginal girl. In this way “Cold Snap” is like a bad party. A windbag corners you and won’t stop talking. As you hear him out he’s either putting you to sleep or alarming you with strange remarks. Here’s how a Latino talks: “Here come Juan, look at heem go, mon.” Or a Southern man named Mississippi with three teeth who pronounces boy boah , get gait , and soda sar’dah. Or the aborigine woman with an intense Australian accent. You try another story and the same thing happens. Instead of a cerebral oddity you get a standard hysterical thought, characters saying pretty much what you’d expect.

In “Potshack” an intelligent Marine is amused by all the swear words his fellow barbarians spew. If the narrator-Marine were one of those foul-mouthed types Jones wouldn’t be where he is today, reputation and accolade-wise. He’s rewarded for digging into the mire, but more importantly for being above it and its inhabitants.

Jones’ troops are constantly comparing themselves or other characters to famous people, real and invented. This occurs in every story, 40 times in all, by my count. “She wasn’t Stephen Hawking yet, or like that guy with the left foot, Christy Brown, but close.” “Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland were lightweights compared to this.” “She was no Helen Keller.” “You’re just in one of your Fyodor Dostoevsky moods--do yourself a favor and forget it!” It’s funny, to a degree, but it happens so often that no matter who’s telling what story it rings odd, gets old.

Thom Jones is interested in the things men say to each other and there’s something partly true he manages to capture about man talk, but it often doesn’t completely work. The Jones dude is jiving, freewheeling, and that stands in for authenticity. He’s a real guy, yakking on like real men do. It feels like the narrators are auditioning for the readers, trying to win them over and prove their authenticity. The stories seem to be not so much about the characters, but author behind them.

The denizens of these stories must be applauded for being old-fashioned. “Dynamite Hands” begins like a combination sandwich, a cliche we’ve swallowed a million times from the ringsiders stool: “Juan flew Johnny Pulse coach class up to Washington to fight Seattle’s light heavyweight, a white kid got him a record of 20-0 called Irish Tommy Wilde. The word was out: This guy is so bad he eats glass for breakfast.” Greased lightning, a real smoker. Is this Ring Lardner for the ‘90s? Hammering dames with “marvelous breasts” (marvelous?), punching out 200-pound lugs who need to be taught a lesson, and in “Ooh Baby Baby” some brazen talk by a plastic surgeon about his very own penis and balls.

The narrator speaks to it directly, and to bonk the cliche right on the head, his penis, of course, has a name. Fritz. Jones doesn’t flip the cliche over or re-present it in any way. He just sends it back out to hungry readers in standard-issue garb. He doesn’t want you to re-think it, he just pushes the same obvious stuff you’ve heard before back in your face. Those moves strike me as things that ruin stories.

Excess is a tricky thing. It can be what makes an odd character appealing, someone you can’t deny. Jones might believe in that. Every story is character excess, a monologue bomb. You never have that wonder about what’s bubbling underneath because they’ve spewed everything for you.

In “Quicksand” a female doctor begs the drugged-out narrator, Ad Magic, (she calls him Derek), a returning character from the “Pugilist” collection, to stop talking. She can’t stand another second of listening to him. “Derek, please! If you don’t shut up, I’ll die! I just . . . can’t . . . take . . . any more. Please. Please. Please!” A page later, “Please! I’m begging you. Stop!” “You’re cute when you beg. Did anyone ever tell you that?” Oh please. I begged Jones at times, myself. But I’m sure that I’m wrong, I’ve got to be.