Angels

It's rather heart wrenching in this T.S. Eliot wasteland of a world that the proverbial grass isn't always greener for a young, overwhelmed mother of two ditching her abusive husband by hopping on board a Greyhound out of Oakland bound for what she couldn't have possibly envisioned when she bought her ticket would become a trip toward worse victimization, along with the loss of the children she was seeking to protect.

Her name is Jamie and she's an emotional wreck. Of Miranda Sue, her youngest child, constantly crying, she wishes (brace yourself) that "she could smother" her. Call Denis Johnson a jerk, if you must, for sinking his teeth into some dark feelings and human frailties that most of us are content keeping down however we have show more to, repressed. Which is not to say that most of us are emotionally repressed, but that most of us have some cozy mental filters in check that prevent us from admitting to the world that, in an acute crisis, we'd like to kill our kids just to make them shut up for once so we could finally have some much needed peace and bleeping quiet. But those filters are absent in Jamie.

Couldn't those nincompoop nuns sitting across from Jamie, making their catty remarks about her unkempt, "white trashy" appearance and questionable (though honest!) maternal instincts, have instead shown some appropriate Christian compassion and asked her if they could be of some assistance to her in her obvious time of need? No. Because this is Jamie of Denis Johnson's Angels the smarmy Sisters are staring at, not Whoopi Goldberg of Sister Act. So forget about ideal behavior by anybody and forget about a happy Hollywood ending too.

Of course, once the nuns disembark the bus, and Jamie accepts alcohol out of a flask from an overly-friendly man, Bill Houston (what a classy introduction) and then impulsively decides it would be a good idea to entrust both herself and her kids into this stranger's care with no strings attached (ha!), could she have honestly expected anything better than a bad outcome? But desperation, being on the run, lack of available funds and the exploited fear of homelessness have a regretfully nasty way of making prey out of the best-intentioned people and their defenseless offspring.

Need I speak of the predictable ensuing drug addiction Jamie will endure (in full view of her kids) after she's drugged almost unconscious by her future death-row "savior" for the production of back alley pornographic entertainment? Oh her savior is an angel all right! Nice dark irony there, Mr. Johnson, titling your debut novel "Angels". Good one. For there's not an angel in sight in Angels, except for maybe the darkest angel's, Bill Houston's, public defense attorney who does everything in his limited (naw, let's call it "impotent") legal "power" to keep his client from the gas chamber.

What's so miraculous for me about Angels, is how Denis Johnson believably transforms, out of the unforgivable actions of Bill Houston -- a murderer of a retired cop; a botched bank robber; a car repossession impersonator; a jack-of-all-crimes -- in essence a human demon redeemed into a humane human being, as he dries out and contemplates what put him in prison, and experiences real remorse for the unspeakably evil roads he belatedly realizes he shouldn't have taken. He examines his squandered life, and feels pain for his victims. Is it an act? Is it real? His interactions with his fellow death-row inmates and the guards would seem to indicate it's genuine, as he waits to die for a shockingly short time on death row while the revved up political machinery aims to make a swift example of the cold-blooded cop killer for all future would-be killers to witness and, presumably, to take heart, lest they too some fateful day pull that hypothetical trigger next time they're tweaking out in the oppressive heat of an Arizona desert.

"Just don't kill a cop," the sheriff's and politician's manipulation of the criminal justice system in its ridiculously speedy gas chamber cowboy justice ("yee-haw!") seemingly proclaims, "or else we'll kill you faster than a dratted rattlesnake's venom will, Pardner!"

Denis Johnson wields a style so simple and straightforward it can be confused with being simplistic. But that would be inaccurate testimony regarding this exceptional, earthy writer.

Needless to say, I was deeply touched by Angels. show less

ANGELS (1983) was Denis Johnson's first novel, but it's the fourth of his books that I've read, and, like the others, it leaves me wanting to read more from this ultra-talented writer. Like the stories in JESUS' SON, in ANGELS we are given characters who inhabit the fringes, the underbelly of society, embittered and addled by drugs and drink, abused women, neglected children, and petty criminals who stumble clumsily into major misdoings, sealing their fate. The Houston brothers, Bill Junior, James and Burris, along with Jamie Mays, a fugitive from an abusive marriage, are standard Johnson types. Jamie, fleeing cross-country from Oakland with her two small children, meets Bill Houston (ex-Navy, ex-con) on a Greyhound bus, and begins a show more sordid, and sometimes violent and brutal, odyssey through seedy hotels and bars in Pittsburgh and Chicago, finally ending up in Phoenix where a bank robbery by Bill and his brothers goes horribly wrong. Sordid? Yes, absolutely. But Johnson's talent is such that he makes you care about these tapped-out ruined lives. You begin to see them as sad, tarnished 'angels.' To paraphrase Willy Nelson, they are "angels flying WAY too close to the ground."

In trying to make comparisons, I thought of the hardboiled fiction of Jim Thompson and Charles Bukowski, but Johnson's writing is a cut above, more artful. And his doomed characters will linger a lot longer. Yes. This is indeed art. My highest recommendation.

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

"Angels" is an excellent novel. What sets this apart from a straightforward crime novel, like Johnson's "Nobody Move," are the poetic and metaphysical flourishes that accompany the character's experiences in the seedier corridors of the american experience. Johnson isn't sentimental with his realism and doesn't romanticize the trajectory of the down and out characters that populate "Angels."

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As the first novel in my attempt to reread this year, Angels was as riveting and provocative as the first time I read it. This time around, I appreciated Johnson's treatment of Jamie's psychotic break moreso than my first read. These struck me with more dread and terror the more I've deleved into reading literature on psychosis and I thought he show more had some visercal understanding of the fear and paranoia, in particular. show less

This is the kind of book Charles Bukowski wished he could write but never had the sentence-level talent to pull off. At least, that's what I thought when I was about half way through. Then this book takes a sudden turn into insanity. Which is both good and bad. In the final third of the book, Johnson conducts a frantic dismantling of his characters -- Jamie loses her mind; Bill loses his freedom. But it's done in such a way that they are parallel sufferers. In fact, I'd argue the book approaches commenting on the way men and women living on the fringe suffer. And while the conclusion is not cynical, it does seem to linger on the experience of Bill and his brothers moreso than Jamie, despite the fact that Jamie's journey is, in my view, show more the more compelling one.

Worth reading if you like reading about life on the fringe -- expect drugs, miserable sex, and the easy mistakes of violent crime. Also, Denis Johnson writes some damn fine sentences. show less

This book does down-and-out no-good characters like few authors can manage. The prose just pops off the page and sparkles with realism, depression, and loneliness in a way that's both gut-wrenching and impossible to put down. Not for the faint of heart, this book describes the lives of drugged-out characters on the edges of society in gritty detail with no happy endings to be found. Yet, somehow, I still cared about these unlikeable and basically lousy characters. An impressive first novel by this author; I'll definitely look for his other work. Copies of this book are hard to come by, but worth tracking down if you can.

This is the story of people who slip helplessly into their own worst nightmares. Jamie Mays has left her husband in a trailer park in Oakland, Calif. She's traveling with her two young daughters on a Greyhound bus when she meets Bill Houston. She is at first put off by his tattoos and silvered wraparound sunglasses. But loneliness and plain lack of energy throw them together, and they become lovers. After a terrifying time in Chicago, they head for Arizona. There they find white-hot afternoons, yards filled with junked cars, the sort of religion that simmers with demons and - most dangerous of all - Bill's family.
Angels is clearly not for everyone and I will say no more about the storyline. Some may be put off by its melodrama and show more nearly overwhelming sense of desperation. These characters can not be ignored. These are people. These are humans. And their ugly little misbegotten world is hardly the sort of thing you want to stumble into, let alone engage in, let alone be affected by, let alone be moved by. But I was affected and I was moved. show less

A stark bleak book about two people who are at the bottom of the food chain and their desperate drive to sink further. This is definitely not a cheery book, but is one incredibly well written story.