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Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson
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Train Dreams: A Novella (original 2002; edition 2012)

by Denis Johnson (Author)

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1,63111310,745 (3.91)270
Presents the story of early twentieth-century day laborer Robert Grainer, who endures the harrowing loss of his family while struggling for survival in the American West against a backdrop of radical historical changes.
Member:ClashLibrary
Title:Train Dreams: A Novella
Authors:Denis Johnson (Author)
Info:Picador (2012), 116 pages
Collections:Your library
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Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (2002)

  1. 10
    Bright's Passage by Josh Ritter (zhejw)
    zhejw: Both short books are set in rural country in the early 20th century and involve a fire, a widower, and mysterious relationships with animals.
  2. 01
    The Searcher by Tana French (bookworm12)
  3. 01
    The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (bookworm12)
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» See also 270 mentions

English (107)  French (1)  Norwegian (1)  Spanish (1)  Dutch (1)  Italian (1)  All languages (112)
Showing 1-5 of 107 (next | show all)
This is a powerful novella by a master storyteller. I think his best. ( )
  ben_r47 | Feb 22, 2024 |
All I could think of while reading Denis Johnson's dense novella was that he writes some the most muscular prose I have read in years. No sentimentality. No drifting off to speculation. Just the facts, ma'am. A war between the environment and the man. And the brutality of the human condition. Men aren't good in this book. They mirror the wolves who surround them in the wilderness and in the towns. ( )
  MylesKesten | Jan 23, 2024 |
One of our reading groups discussed this novella (under 100 pages) last night. Results were mixed: some people were not sure what the author's point was, but I had no trouble with that. In fact, I read it twice. Most agreed that it presented both a time and a character poignant and occasionally funny.

An orphan is taken in by his uncle in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1800s, even taking his name, but has little memory of his origin. As he grows, a striking incident turns him from a layabout life to one of utility, if not purpose. As he goes through his adult life, he finds love and disaster, hard work and its joys; industry and culture grow around him, past the essential rural 19th century on into the machines and entertainments of a more modern era.

Highly recommended. ( )
  ffortsa | Oct 31, 2023 |
This is an interesting novella that describes the hardscrabble life of a man living out west in a time long since past. The various vignettes made me feel as if I was actually witnessing the protagonist's experiences. The author's writing style is generally straightforward, and he certainly has a skill for painting a picture of days gone by.

To me, the work teaches that most people's lives are hardly easy -the protagonist's was certainly much more difficult than most. Still, each of us must carry on when difficult times, even tragedy, strike.

My only criticisms are the book was a bit disjointed at times, and actually may have been a better as a full-length novel. Also, I found the superstitious elements unnecessary. To me, they devalued his work somewhat. ( )
  la2bkk | Aug 30, 2023 |
Beautiful prose to illuminate a life of bleak tragedy.
Episodic, but as others have said, written as epic in miniature. A whole life boiled down to a few short scenes, almost all solitary, focused on Robert Grainier.

I read this trying to recall where I had previously read something of such seemingly simple storytelling about the American wilderness. Perhaps something like Cormac McCarthy edited like Raymond Carver. I am also reminded of Sebastian Barry’s Days without End, which also combines the harsh environment of the American West with poetic language. ( )
  CarltonC | Aug 15, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 107 (next | show all)
Wie Treindromen leest, kan maar één reden bedenken - een armzalige - waarom dit boek geen prijs waardig werd geacht: de Pulitzerdames en -heren zullen het wel te dun hebben bevonden. Het beslaat inderdaad nog geen honderd pagina's. Maar in die beperkte ruimte presenteert Jonhson de rijkdom van een vuistdikke roman.
Treindromen is op een wonderlijke, knarsende manier zowel meedogenloos als vol compassie, een werk waarin Johnson zich een rauwe poëet en een meester van de suggestie betoont. Je moet wel een motherfucker zijn om zo'n boek geen Pulitzer Prize te gunnen.
added by sneuper | editde Volkskrant, Hans Bouman (Jan 26, 2013)
 
The denouement of Train Dreams is so tragic and surreal that the reader at first denies its grisly approach: yet when it comes, it is written with such credibility that it fulfils the book's theme, the collapse of the rational world for a decent man. Softly and beautifully, this novel asks a profound question of human life: is the cost of human society and so-called civilisation perhaps just too high?
The board of the Pulitzer prize for fiction failed to award it to the shortlisted Train Dreams – or to any work. Poor souls, cowering from the howls of the old American mountains.
added by sneuper | editThe Guardian, Alan Warner (Sep 13, 2012)
 
What Johnson builds from the ashes of Grainier’s life is a tender, lonesome and riveting story, an American epic writ small, in which Grainier drives a horse cart, flies in a biplane, takes part in occasionally hilarious exchanges and goes maybe 42 percent crazy.

It’s a love story, a hermit’s story and a refashioning of age-old wolf-based folklore like “Little Red Cap.” It’s also a small masterpiece. You look up from the thing dazed, slightly changed.
added by zhejw | editNew York Times, Anthony Doerr (Sep 16, 2011)
 
The visionary, miraculous element in Johnson's deceptively tough realism makes beautiful appearances in this book. The hard, declarative sentences keep their powder dry for pages at a time, and then suddenly flare into lyricism; the natural world of the American West is examined, logged, and frequently transfigured. I started reading "Train Dreams" with hoarded suspicion, and gradually gave it all away, in admiration of the story's unaffected tact and honesty.
added by zhejw | editThe New Yorker, James Wood (pay site) (Sep 5, 2011)
 
Train Dreams draws its title ostensibly from the fact that Grainier had “started his life story on a train ride he couldn’t remember, and ended up standing outside” another train, but it could just as easily stem from his early work experiences on the railroad, which “made him hungry to be around such other massive undertakings.”

By the end of the book, it seems as though this hunger has hardly been sated ― Grainier’s few celebrations are tiny and even his failures, while frequent, are never grand ― but Johnson’s accomplishment is grand, and this book, short as it is, feels like a massive monument to a deceptively simple life and the wilderness in which it was lived.
 

» Add other authors (7 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Denis Johnsonprimary authorall editionscalculated
Polman, MaartenTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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for Cindy Lee forever
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In de zomer van 1917 nam Robert Grainier deel aan een aanslag op het leven van een Chinese arbeider die betrapt was op diefstal, of daar in ieder geval van beschuldigd werd, uit het bedrijfsmagazijn van de Spokane International Railway in de noordelijkste punt van Idaho.
In the summer of 1917 Robert Grainier took part in an attempt on the life of a Chinese laborer caught, or anyway accused of, stealing from the company stories of the Spokane International Railway in the Idaho Panhandle.
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Presents the story of early twentieth-century day laborer Robert Grainer, who endures the harrowing loss of his family while struggling for survival in the American West against a backdrop of radical historical changes.

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