Denis Johnson (1949–2017)

“The vine was different every day. Some of the most terrible things that had happened to me in my life had happened in here. But like the others I kept coming back.”

“That moment in the bar, after the fight was narrowly averted, was like the green silence after the hailstorm. Somebody was buying a round of drinks. The cards were scattered on the table, face up, face down, and they seemed to foretell that whatever we did to one another would be washed away by liquor or explained away by show more sad songs.”

This story collection, feels like a potent brew, cooked up by Ken Kesey, Charles Bukowski and Lou Reed. A hallucinogenic stew of barflies, addicts, mental patients and misfits, living at the bottom or on the fringes of a derelict world. There is sadness and pain in these stories but there is also a glimmer of redemption. Obviously, this not for all tastes, some readers will flee in horror, but I found Johnson's wounded prose a transcendent joy.

“All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.” show less

“And sometimes a dust storm would stand off in the desert, towering so high, it was like another city – a terrifying new era approaching, blurring our dreams.”

Denis Johnson’s stories in [Jesus’ Son] are like the desert wind. In one minute they are whip around you and scour the earth. In the next, they are a gentle, welcoming breeze on your face. They touch down in whims, unheralded and capricious. They wreak havoc in one place while leaving the sand untouched just a few feet away. show more In their wake, you feel changed. Not exactly refreshed so much as different, altered.

That Johnson first came to attention as a poet is evident in the elegant language on display throughout:

“Sometimes I went during my lunch break into a big nursery across the street, a glass building full of plants and wet earth and feeling of cool dead sex>”

“We lay down on a stretch of dusty plywood in the back of the truck with the daylight knocking against our eyelids and the fragrance of alfalfa thickening our tongues.”

“For a while the day was clear and peaceful. It was one of the moments you stay in, to hell with all the troubles before and after. The sky is blue and the dead are coming back. Later in the afternoon, with sad resignation, the county fair bares its breasts.”

But beyond the language, Johnson’s keen eye for humanity is also at work. His stories are an exhibition of the fringe, the life that exists in the periphery. In these stories about the lost, he captures us all – the longing for something more in the same mind that works against us in the scrabble. If you can’t see yourself in the unnamed narrator, you’re deluded beyond any chemical alteration. But seeing yourself there will be painful.

Bottom Line: Spare, surreal, and provocative – beautiful language describing us all, even if we don’t want to see it.

5 bones!!!!!
A favorite for the year. show less

“I note that I've lived longer in the past now, than I can expect to live in the future. I have more to remember than I have to look forward to. Memory fades, not much of the past stays, and I wouldn't mind forgetting more of it.”

“It's plain to you that at the time I write this, I'm not dead. But maybe by the time you read it.”

Denis Johnson passed away, in May of 2017. His parting gift to us, is this wonderful collection of five stories. Most of them dealing with mortality, the show more randomness of beauty and existence. It also touches on the joys and hazards of relationships and the treacherous path of addiction. These are men's stories, told in masculine prose, but just tender and whimsical enough for all readers to enjoy. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. R.I.P. show less

I have loved every Denis Johnson book I've read. TRAIN DREAMS is my sixth, and yes, I was immediately caught up in this deceptively simple story of the life of orphaned Robert Grainier in frontier Idaho. It is a story filled with loneliness, sadness, humor, tragic events, and, finally, acceptance. I was reminded of a few other books I've read in recent years - by Amanda Coplin (THE ORCHARDIST), Molly Gloss (THE JUMP-OFF CREEK and THE HEARTS OF HORSES), Shann Ray (AMERICAN COPPER) and Gil show more Adamson (THE OUTLANDER). But Johnson's unique accomplishment is that he manages to create his own magically realistic world in barely a hundred pages. An entire long life is compressed into this shining gem of frontier fiction. I can't figure out how he does it, but I'm still thinking about it. This is simply a beautiful little book. My highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less