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Mother Night Chapter 13 Summary

The Reverend Doctor Lionel Jason David Jones, D.D.S., D.D. …

  • Biography time.
  • Campbell tells us he's indebted to the resources of the Haifa Institute in providing him the material for this bio.
  • Reverend Jones was not a war criminal, but the institute kept tabs on him nonetheless.
  • Here's what we know.
  • Jones comes from a family of dentists.
  • Jones was studying to be a dentist, too, but, umm, there was a hiccup: in all of the answers to his exam questions on teeth, he would start off fine but then go off on a crazy tangent writing things like Jews, Blacks, Catholics, Asians all have bad teeth and jaws and that means they're bad and I don't like them because I'm dumb.
  • Okay, Jones didn't write that he, himself, was dumb, but his examiners were sort of like, What even is this?
  • The examiners gave Jones second and third chances at school. Then they found guns under his bed. They said please leave, so he did. No degree awarded.
  • Jones started work for a funeral home, did well, invented some chemicals for preserving the dead, and married his boss's wife when the hubby died.
  • Jones and wife were happy. While he was married, he didn't say scary, kill-everyone things.
  • Mrs. Jones died.
  • Jones started the newspaper The White Christian Minuteman. It made no money, and he lost all his other money in the stock market crash of 1929.
  • This is not good.
  • Jones answers an ad in another newspaper: they need a new president for a school that trains funeral directors to embalm the dead.
  • Sweet.
  • Jones gets the gig and again marries the widowed wife that was left behind. Precious. Gag.
  • The school is in debt. Jones changes it to a new institution called the Western Hemisphere University of the Bible, and he sells Ph.Ds. in divinity for $80—no classes, no teachers, just fake cred. What a stand-up guy.
  • Jones gives himself a Ph.D., too. Why not?
  • Dude starts up his pet project again, but this time his newspaper looks swanky as all get-out. Surprise: Jones's got funding from Hitler and articles from all over the place.
  • Campbell thinks it's even possible that Jones published some of the propaganda Campbell had to create for Germany.
  • Jones is arrested in 1942 for being a butt. Official charge is that he's actively working against the ideals that the U.S. Armed Forces are fighting for.
  • Jones goes to jail. He gets out in seven years a very rich man because his two inventions have made bank.
  • Jones goes back to his gross newspaper.
  • Why is Campbell writing out this bio? To show 1) that Jones was nuts and dumb as a box of rocks, and 2) that Campbell—unlike Jones—is not either of those things.
  • On the other hand, Campbell's bosses were also a couple of Joneses, but Campbell followed orders anyway.