Fiskadoro

Sixty years after nuclear war has decimated the world the only pockets of civilization appear to be in the Florida Keys and Cuba.

Key West is now called Twicetown because it was saved from bombing twice. A dud bomb sits on the outskirts of town and has become a type of shrine. Residents speak a form of Spanglish – their sole contact with the outside consists of bilingual broadcasts from Cubaradio. Living conditions are primitive. People live in shacks and wrecked Quonset huts and use old car seats for furniture.

The three main characters represent the stages of civilization. Fiskadoro, the future, is a teenage boy trying to learn Clarinet from Mr. Cheung, who is basically the last depository of knowledge from before the world ended. Mr. Cheung’s grandmother – Grandmother Wright – remembers back to when she escaped the fall of Saigon, but it’s all locked in her ancient head now. After Fiskadoro's memory is ritualistically cleansed, Mr. Cheung, recognizing that he is free from the burdens of the past, predicts that Fiskadoro will become a great leader.

Published in 1985, Fiskadoro is a highly original post-apocalyptic story that tries to imagine how the world would carry on if the unthinkable happened. ( )

This is a strange, rich dish.

Having read the whole thing afraid that I wouldn't come away with any meaningful idea of what it was about, I was pleased to find I wasn't left totally in the dark. But this is obviously a book for which re-reading or active study would prove beneficial.

Denis Johnson, no stranger to impressiveness, impresses here. Imagine a story involving life after a great apocalypse, pseudo-islander-Spanglish patois, genital self-mutilation, the phrase "You hanging you tits out now.", clarinet lessons, cancer, fishing, a sort of utilitarian neo-Islam, mud helmets, Bob Marley, marijuana, the Vietnam War, drowning, fire, eating of live two-headed snakes, potato brandy and characters called Cassius Clay Sugar Ray, Harvard Sanchez, Flying Man, A.T. Cheung, and Mrs. Castanette (who named herself, because she plays the castenets.) Now imagine somehow compressing all of that into a clear, tight narrative style. Mr. Johnson succeeds in that where no one else, I imagine, would even try.

One can't help but to suspect heavy drug use being involved in the conception of this book. But however outlandish the ideas, characters, and images, Denis Johnson, as soberly and beautifully as ever, constructs a few hundred pages of eye-widening,tightly coiled prose that stand up in every way to the standards of the rest of his work.

I don't care what you say. ( )

Fiskadoro by Denis Johnson is a jumbled, frustrating post-apocalyptic novel. Don’t expect a paint-by-numbers approach to revealing how things went wrong, nor what happened between that fateful day and the present. There is no omniscient character to provide the necessary background. There is no guide. Instead Johnson’s characters inhabit the world as it is, without the explanation that might bring clarity to the reader.

I admire what Denis Johnson is trying to do in Fiskadoro. He immerses the reader in what it might really be like to be a survivor. History is lost or, worse, is a warped collection of things heard or imagined. The connection to the past is limited, receding away until it vanishes like a sunset never to return. What remains isn’t well understood or is taken for granted as part of daily life.

Admiration and enjoyment don’t always go hand in hand.

Read my entire review on the Used Books Blog:
http://usedbooksblog.com/blog/fiskadoro-by-denis-johnson/ ( )

A story about post-nuclear war inhabitants of the Florida Keys. The author explores certain aspects of current culture as they might be remixed in such an event. In particular: the human drive for knowledge and art, religion, race, and family. ( )

Surprsingly good story of post-apocolyptic future. ( )