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Jesus’ Son
Jesus' Son, the first collection of stories by Denis Johnson, presents a unique, hallucinatory vision of contemporary American life unmatched in power and immediacy and marks a new level of achievement for this acclaimed writer. In their intensity of perception, their neon-lit evocation of a strange world brought uncomfortably close to our own, the stories in Jesus' Son offer a disturbing yet eerily beautiful portrayal of American loneliness and hope.
Contains:
Car Crash While Hitchhiking
Two Men
Out on Bail
Dundun
Work
Emergency
Dirty Wedding
The Other Man
Happy Hour
Steady Hands at Seattle General
Beverly Home'
Contains:
Car Crash While Hitchhiking
Two Men
Out on Bail
Dundun
Work
Emergency
Dirty Wedding
The Other Man
Happy Hour
Steady Hands at Seattle General
Beverly Home'
160 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
About the author
Denis Johnson
53 books2,235 followersPoet, playwright and author Denis Johnson was born in Munich, West Germany, in 1949 and was raised in Tokyo, Manila and Washington. He earned a masters' degree from the University of Iowa and received many awards for his work, including a Lannan Fellowship in Fiction (1993), a Whiting Writer's Award (1986), the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from the Paris Review for Train Dreams, and most recently, the National Book Award for Fiction (2007).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,256 reviews
August 27, 2008
I once fell in love with a man just because he recommended this book to me. He had a glass eye and fingernails with with half moons of crust lodged underneath, thick and dark as coffee grounds. He was living covertly and temporarily for about four years in one of those storage units out by the interstate, and I would sometimes go see him when I wanted to get high or feel better about my life. At some point he died when they blew up a bridge to build a dam, and he happened to be sleeping underneath it. Or maybe that was someone else. Maybe it was some kids from the high school found him sleeping under the bridge. It was late and they were drunk and had just lifted a stop sign off the road and, proud of it, they thought they might try to break it over his head. In any event, he died of some head trauma of the most religious sort, that much I know.
November 4, 2023
In the psychedelic world everything is surreal… Everything is blurred…
In the phantasmagoric surroundings even hopes and pursuits turn surreal…
Environs are certainly psychedelic but Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds seems to be flying someplace else… So far away from here…
Day in, day out… Life goes on in a trashy whirlwind… No purpose… No meaning…
The downpour raked the asphalt and gurgled in the ruts. My thoughts zoomed pitifully. The traveling salesman had fed me pills that made the linings of my veins feel scraped out. My jaw ached. I knew every raindrop by its name. I sensed everything before it happened.
In the phantasmagoric surroundings even hopes and pursuits turn surreal…
And with each step my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who’d love me. And then I would remember I had a wife at home who loved me, or later that my wife had left me and I was terrified, or again later that I had a beautiful alcoholic girlfriend who would make me happy forever.
Environs are certainly psychedelic but Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds seems to be flying someplace else… So far away from here…
…one small orange flower that looked as if it had fallen down here from Andromeda, surrounded by a part of the world cast mainly in eleven hundred shades of brown, under a sky whose blueness seemed to get lost in its own distances.
Day in, day out… Life goes on in a trashy whirlwind… No purpose… No meaning…
February 2, 2019
"I could understand how a drowning man might suddenly feel a deep thirst being quenched."
Magnificent, concise writing. A calm sort of sad, and strangely relaxing. Stories about people living in the corners of society.
It’s like I’m sitting on the porch of a shack in the middle of nowhere, listening to the saddest old man I know tell me misremembered stories about how shitty he was when he was young.
It all feels extremely real, like lives that were lived. The stories are connected, and all share a protagonist. It's an ethereal novella of sorts, each story like a chunk of truth torn from reality, with otherwise fiction filling in the cracks.
Magnificent, concise writing. A calm sort of sad, and strangely relaxing. Stories about people living in the corners of society.
It’s like I’m sitting on the porch of a shack in the middle of nowhere, listening to the saddest old man I know tell me misremembered stories about how shitty he was when he was young.
It all feels extremely real, like lives that were lived. The stories are connected, and all share a protagonist. It's an ethereal novella of sorts, each story like a chunk of truth torn from reality, with otherwise fiction filling in the cracks.
August 31, 2019
A poetic, disorienting book of short fiction about semi-criminals, heroin addicts and idlers squandering their lives on the fringes of urban northern Idaho.
The narrator is a study in contrasts: irresponsible, irrational . . . and yet gifted with moments of almost mystical clarity.
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May 4, 2022
FUOCO DENTRO
In copertina una foto del 1978 di Mimmo Jodice: Bruciatura.
Stavo all’Holiday Inn da tre giorni, sotto falso nome, in compagnia della mia ragazza, sinceramente la donna più bella che avessi mai conosciuto, a farmi di eroina. Facevamo l’amore a letto, mangiavamo bistecche al ristorante, ci bucavamo al cesso, vomitavamo, piangevamo, ci accusavamo, ci imploravamo, perdonavamo, promettevamo e ci portavamo in paradiso a vicenda.
Fortunata chiusura delle letture di quest’anno con questo librino smilzo assolutamente magistrale di un autore mai sentito prima che per la qualità e potenza dei suoi racconti in molti affiancano a Hemingway e Carver - del quale fu allievo all’Iowa Writers’ Workshop, da molti considerata la migliore scuola di scrittura creativa del mondo.
Qui ci sono undici racconti in novantatre pagine. Il protagonista è sempre lo stesso, lo stesso io narrante, “ubriaco di una tristezza che non gli bastava mai”, il nome di battesimo non viene mai fuori, il soprannome è Fuckhead, che nella traduzione italiana diventa Testadicazzo.
Ma oltre che una raccolta di racconti, è un romanzo breve, una novella: undici episodi, undici momenti della vita di Testadicazzo.
Padri e figli: un’altra foto di Mimmo Jodice.
L’epigrafe sono due versi di Heroin, la canzone dei Velvet Underground scritta da Lou Reed:
When I’m rushing on my run // And I feel just like Jesus’ son…
che si possono tradurre in:
Quando mi sto godendo la mia pera // e mi sento come il figlio di Gesù…
Fuckhead/Testadicazzo racconta quello che gli succede, e un po’ anche quello che invece non succede: racconto che è come “una trasmissione radio con frequenze disturbate, interferenze che schizzano sulla scena alimentando un corto-circuito temporale”.
Ha un’esistenza geograficamente movimentata come nella migliore tradizione a stelle-e-strisce: si racconta a Seattle, nell’Iowa, a Phoenix in Arizona, Missouri, Texas, altrove. Ogni luogo sembra un’interminabile periferia: così come periferiche, marginali, delocalizzate sembrano la sua e le vite che incrocia.
Più che vivere, Fuckhead/Testadicazzo sembra esserci, esistere, riempire il tempo tra una sbronza e un altro tipo di sballo, con un po’ di sesso negli intervalli e momenti di un assurdità esilarante.
Per descrivere Fuckhead/Testadicazzo, un giovane uomo che vive il giorno in attesa della notte e della perdita di coscienza di sé, non trovo parole più appropriate di quelle che Johnson riserva alla coppia mennonita nell’ultimo racconto-vignetta: “fuori al buio con una grande solitudine e il terrore di un’intera vita non ancora vissuta”.
Ancora una foto di Mimmo Jodice.
L’umanità che s’incontra in queste pagine oscilla tra i disgraziati, i ladruncoli, gli strafatti, gli alcolizzati, i feriti a morte, i paralitici e i paralizzati, gli amputati, gli storpi nel corpo e/o nell’anima, i vigliacchi e gli eroinomani, i traditori, i bestemmiatori.
Non esiste luce e non esiste gloria in nessuna delle storie dei personaggi che qui s’incontrano, soltanto cuori squarciati e infelici che procedono per inerzia e perché non c’è alternativa.
Il Dio in cui voglio credere ha la voce e il senso dell’umorismo di Denis Johnson. Parole di Jonathan Franzen.
Indimenticabile l’episodio del film proiettato nel drive in deserto perché è in arrivo una tormenta. Si ride e contemporaneamente si prova un senso di solitudine così forte che schiaccia i polmoni, il cuore e tutto il resto
Il film, del 1999, è una commedia bittersweet indie che prende tutte le singole storie, le cuce insieme, realizza una narrazione più compatta che nelle pagine: ma rispetto alla potenza della scrittura non può far nulla, né sceneggiatori né regista sono all’altezza pur se il risultato complessivo è dignitoso.
Azzeccatissimo il protagonista, Billy Crudup, attore che trovo oltremodo sottovalutato (senza la sua presenza, come avrei fatto ad arrivare in fondo all’orrida seconda stagione di The Morning Show?), e gli cuce intorno un cast davvero interessante: Samantha Morton, Michael Shannon, Jack Black, Dennis Hopper, Will Patton, Miranda July, Holly Hunter, lo stesso Denis Johnson in un divertente cammeo
Al Vine ce n’erano tanti di momenti come quello, in cui ti capitava di pensare che oggi fosse ieri, e ieri fosse domani, e così via. perché eravamo tutti convinti della nostra tragicità, e bevevamo. Provavamo un senso di impotenza, di predestinazione. Saremmo morti con le manette ai polsi. Avremmo fatto una brutta fine, e non per colpa nostra. Così immaginavamo. Eppure venivamo sempre giudicati innocenti per motivi assurdi.
Jack Black con un paziente del pronto soccorso interpretato dallo stesso Denis Johnson.
In copertina una foto del 1978 di Mimmo Jodice: Bruciatura.
Stavo all’Holiday Inn da tre giorni, sotto falso nome, in compagnia della mia ragazza, sinceramente la donna più bella che avessi mai conosciuto, a farmi di eroina. Facevamo l’amore a letto, mangiavamo bistecche al ristorante, ci bucavamo al cesso, vomitavamo, piangevamo, ci accusavamo, ci imploravamo, perdonavamo, promettevamo e ci portavamo in paradiso a vicenda.
Fortunata chiusura delle letture di quest’anno con questo librino smilzo assolutamente magistrale di un autore mai sentito prima che per la qualità e potenza dei suoi racconti in molti affiancano a Hemingway e Carver - del quale fu allievo all’Iowa Writers’ Workshop, da molti considerata la migliore scuola di scrittura creativa del mondo.
Qui ci sono undici racconti in novantatre pagine. Il protagonista è sempre lo stesso, lo stesso io narrante, “ubriaco di una tristezza che non gli bastava mai”, il nome di battesimo non viene mai fuori, il soprannome è Fuckhead, che nella traduzione italiana diventa Testadicazzo.
Ma oltre che una raccolta di racconti, è un romanzo breve, una novella: undici episodi, undici momenti della vita di Testadicazzo.
Padri e figli: un’altra foto di Mimmo Jodice.
L’epigrafe sono due versi di Heroin, la canzone dei Velvet Underground scritta da Lou Reed:
When I’m rushing on my run // And I feel just like Jesus’ son…
che si possono tradurre in:
Quando mi sto godendo la mia pera // e mi sento come il figlio di Gesù…
Fuckhead/Testadicazzo racconta quello che gli succede, e un po’ anche quello che invece non succede: racconto che è come “una trasmissione radio con frequenze disturbate, interferenze che schizzano sulla scena alimentando un corto-circuito temporale”.
Ha un’esistenza geograficamente movimentata come nella migliore tradizione a stelle-e-strisce: si racconta a Seattle, nell’Iowa, a Phoenix in Arizona, Missouri, Texas, altrove. Ogni luogo sembra un’interminabile periferia: così come periferiche, marginali, delocalizzate sembrano la sua e le vite che incrocia.
Più che vivere, Fuckhead/Testadicazzo sembra esserci, esistere, riempire il tempo tra una sbronza e un altro tipo di sballo, con un po’ di sesso negli intervalli e momenti di un assurdità esilarante.
Per descrivere Fuckhead/Testadicazzo, un giovane uomo che vive il giorno in attesa della notte e della perdita di coscienza di sé, non trovo parole più appropriate di quelle che Johnson riserva alla coppia mennonita nell’ultimo racconto-vignetta: “fuori al buio con una grande solitudine e il terrore di un’intera vita non ancora vissuta”.
Ancora una foto di Mimmo Jodice.
L’umanità che s’incontra in queste pagine oscilla tra i disgraziati, i ladruncoli, gli strafatti, gli alcolizzati, i feriti a morte, i paralitici e i paralizzati, gli amputati, gli storpi nel corpo e/o nell’anima, i vigliacchi e gli eroinomani, i traditori, i bestemmiatori.
Non esiste luce e non esiste gloria in nessuna delle storie dei personaggi che qui s’incontrano, soltanto cuori squarciati e infelici che procedono per inerzia e perché non c’è alternativa.
Il Dio in cui voglio credere ha la voce e il senso dell’umorismo di Denis Johnson. Parole di Jonathan Franzen.
Indimenticabile l’episodio del film proiettato nel drive in deserto perché è in arrivo una tormenta. Si ride e contemporaneamente si prova un senso di solitudine così forte che schiaccia i polmoni, il cuore e tutto il resto
Il film, del 1999, è una commedia bittersweet indie che prende tutte le singole storie, le cuce insieme, realizza una narrazione più compatta che nelle pagine: ma rispetto alla potenza della scrittura non può far nulla, né sceneggiatori né regista sono all’altezza pur se il risultato complessivo è dignitoso.
Azzeccatissimo il protagonista, Billy Crudup, attore che trovo oltremodo sottovalutato (senza la sua presenza, come avrei fatto ad arrivare in fondo all’orrida seconda stagione di The Morning Show?), e gli cuce intorno un cast davvero interessante: Samantha Morton, Michael Shannon, Jack Black, Dennis Hopper, Will Patton, Miranda July, Holly Hunter, lo stesso Denis Johnson in un divertente cammeo
Al Vine ce n’erano tanti di momenti come quello, in cui ti capitava di pensare che oggi fosse ieri, e ieri fosse domani, e così via. perché eravamo tutti convinti della nostra tragicità, e bevevamo. Provavamo un senso di impotenza, di predestinazione. Saremmo morti con le manette ai polsi. Avremmo fatto una brutta fine, e non per colpa nostra. Così immaginavamo. Eppure venivamo sempre giudicati innocenti per motivi assurdi.
Jack Black con un paziente del pronto soccorso interpretato dallo stesso Denis Johnson.
July 26, 2020
Jesus walks here, among the degenerates, the drunks, the addicts, the living dead that populate the pages of this collection of very short, connected stories. You'll see him in beautiful moments, outstretched hands seeking redemption, the presence of an unlikely trinity of down and outers.
Yes, Jesus. Even though the title refers to lyrics in Lou Reed's song, "Heroin". Jesus and heroin are mixed here. A potent, jarring combination.
The same character who spends his sober evenings as a peeping tom and having twisted fantasies also spends his days working in the hospitals, touching the hopeless and downtrodden with a hand to the shoulder, a reassuring squeeze. The same couple who are drunken strangers in a bar (the woman newly married just a few days) have a connection that one could only describe as divine:
First I put my lips to her upper lip, then to the bottom of her pout, and then I kissed her fully, my mouth on her open mouth, and we met inside.
It was there. It was. The long walk down the hall. The door opening. The beautiful stranger. The torn moon mended. Our fingers touching away the tears. It was there.
Characters here are so close to death, it's not surprising they find Jesus close by. Jesus never had a problem with slumming. He's there on the subway, by the fire in the metal trash can, in the abortion clinic, at the scene of the car crash, in the ER.
Denis Johnson is an exquisite, poetic writer. It makes sense that he was taught by Raymond Carver at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Both writers accomplish much in few words, have a beautiful spareness that cuts to the quick. I would say I had a more emotional reaction to his final collection, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, but the power and truth contained in Jesus' Son just can't be denied.
It was raining. Gigantic ferns leaned over us. The forest drifted down a hill. I could hear a creek rushing down among the rocks. And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.
Yes, Jesus. Even though the title refers to lyrics in Lou Reed's song, "Heroin". Jesus and heroin are mixed here. A potent, jarring combination.
The same character who spends his sober evenings as a peeping tom and having twisted fantasies also spends his days working in the hospitals, touching the hopeless and downtrodden with a hand to the shoulder, a reassuring squeeze. The same couple who are drunken strangers in a bar (the woman newly married just a few days) have a connection that one could only describe as divine:
First I put my lips to her upper lip, then to the bottom of her pout, and then I kissed her fully, my mouth on her open mouth, and we met inside.
It was there. It was. The long walk down the hall. The door opening. The beautiful stranger. The torn moon mended. Our fingers touching away the tears. It was there.
Characters here are so close to death, it's not surprising they find Jesus close by. Jesus never had a problem with slumming. He's there on the subway, by the fire in the metal trash can, in the abortion clinic, at the scene of the car crash, in the ER.
Denis Johnson is an exquisite, poetic writer. It makes sense that he was taught by Raymond Carver at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Both writers accomplish much in few words, have a beautiful spareness that cuts to the quick. I would say I had a more emotional reaction to his final collection, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, but the power and truth contained in Jesus' Son just can't be denied.
It was raining. Gigantic ferns leaned over us. The forest drifted down a hill. I could hear a creek rushing down among the rocks. And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.
April 3, 2023
"I'd been staying at the holiday Inn with my girl-
friend, honestly the most beautiful woman I'd
ever known, for three days under a phoney name,
shooting heroin. We made love in the bed, ate
steaks at the restaurant, shot up in the john,
puked, cried, accused one another, begged one
another, forgave, promised, and carried one an-
other to heaven."
These highly additive tales are as masterly controlled as their muzzy-headed characters are chaotic.
Johnson's world in governed by addiction, malevolence, faith and uncertainty. It is a place where attempts at salvation remain radically provisional, and where a teetering narrative architecture uncannily expresses both Christlike and pathological traits of thought. The sincere narrative voices come just as much from the guts as they do the mind, and like an assemblance of lostprophets, there is an undercurrent of religiousness about them. If the first story about a hitchhiking addict and a car crash during a biblical downfall was anything to go by, then I knew I'd likely end up with these burned into my memory - and I was right. One big theme running through a lot of Johnson's work is the consciousness of mortality, and he compounds this here more than others.
Unsettling and heartbreakingly beautiful, simply told yet deep enough to plummet into one's soul, my second reading of this was just as good as the first if not better.
March 14, 2016
Posted at Shelf Inflicted
I wasn’t sure if I would like this collection of loosely connected stories about a young guy who is addicted to drugs, sometimes homeless, sometimes employed, and occasionally steals. He’s not an especially likable character, but I enjoyed being a part of his thoughts, his views, and his haphazard journey through life. Maybe it's because I have empathy for addicts and others who live on the edge.
This powerful and gripping collection of stories was troubling, intense, and humane. I was overwhelmed by its beautiful language and poignant passages.
One of my favorite stories in this collection is Dirty Wedding, a sad and unsettling little story about abortion, loneliness, heroin addiction, and death.
Beverly Home was sad, a little humorous, and very hopeful. The young narrator finds a part-time job in a nursing home, spies on a Mennonite couple in their bedroom, and begins a life of sobriety.
I wasn’t sure if I would like this collection of loosely connected stories about a young guy who is addicted to drugs, sometimes homeless, sometimes employed, and occasionally steals. He’s not an especially likable character, but I enjoyed being a part of his thoughts, his views, and his haphazard journey through life. Maybe it's because I have empathy for addicts and others who live on the edge.
This powerful and gripping collection of stories was troubling, intense, and humane. I was overwhelmed by its beautiful language and poignant passages.
One of my favorite stories in this collection is Dirty Wedding, a sad and unsettling little story about abortion, loneliness, heroin addiction, and death.
“The wheels screamed, and all I saw suddenly was everybody’s big ugly shoes. The sound stopped. We passed solitary, wrenching scenes. Through the neighborhoods and past the platforms, I felt the cancelled life dreaming after me. Yes, a ghost. A vestige. Something remaining.”
Beverly Home was sad, a little humorous, and very hopeful. The young narrator finds a part-time job in a nursing home, spies on a Mennonite couple in their bedroom, and begins a life of sobriety.
“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.”
October 22, 2017
I kind of sort of liked this woozy teensy bouquet of junkie memories but it was just too oh what’s the word even though the very sky above me was heavy with the five stars sluiced over this book by all previous readers in all the seven realms of readerdom.
I got a mean and unworthy thought – that you could take sentences from almost anywhere in any of these stories and put them next to other randomly selected sentences and they would make as much sense, so I took something from page 20, 40, 80, 100 and 120 and proved it as follows:
In the room behind her the man we’d brought stood like a bad sculpture, posing unnaturally, with his shoulders wilting, as if he couldn’t lug his gigantic hands any further. He had a bad case of hepatitis that often gave him a lot of pain. “Do you want the police?” He thought about it and finally said “Not unless I die.” I turned away because my throat was closing up. And then I left. The motor traffic was relentless, the sidewalks were crowded, the people preoccupied and mean because Happy Hour was also Rush Hour. My bus went by, bus 24 – it didn’t even slow down
It goes on like this and then it stops. Often a random person dies or maybe somebody doesn't die. There are large vague profound statements every so often. Reading this one felt like I was a first responder continually shouting in the author’s face “What is your name? What have you taken? Do you live here? Is there anyone I can call?”
I got a mean and unworthy thought – that you could take sentences from almost anywhere in any of these stories and put them next to other randomly selected sentences and they would make as much sense, so I took something from page 20, 40, 80, 100 and 120 and proved it as follows:
In the room behind her the man we’d brought stood like a bad sculpture, posing unnaturally, with his shoulders wilting, as if he couldn’t lug his gigantic hands any further. He had a bad case of hepatitis that often gave him a lot of pain. “Do you want the police?” He thought about it and finally said “Not unless I die.” I turned away because my throat was closing up. And then I left. The motor traffic was relentless, the sidewalks were crowded, the people preoccupied and mean because Happy Hour was also Rush Hour. My bus went by, bus 24 – it didn’t even slow down
It goes on like this and then it stops. Often a random person dies or maybe somebody doesn't die. There are large vague profound statements every so often. Reading this one felt like I was a first responder continually shouting in the author’s face “What is your name? What have you taken? Do you live here? Is there anyone I can call?”
December 1, 2024
Saints standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the fire, perne in a gyre
And be the singing masters of my soul.
W.B. Yeats
This book ROCKS - but too much sex ‘n drugs ‘n Rock ‘n Roll can give you Brain Sin Cavities - if you’re not already aware of that fact.
I guess near the end of his sadly-lamented, too-short life, Johnson’s headspace was all one great Grand Canyon. And when your brain’s a total gap, your life is zapped.
Johnson flushed his in the process. He was on fire inside, you see.
But say, why do we insist at looking down our long noses at the poor depraved souls of Johnson’s inscapes as if they are NOT of our precious world? Our privilege is every bit as stained by the Originary Depravity as is the soul-poverty of Johnson’s more apparent lapses.
I know, Sigmund Freud famously inferred in Civilization and its Discontents that a normal child’s brain picks up the knack of self-installing filters around its more primitive inner voices. To paraphrase Descartes, we’re told we’re good - therefore we are.
That’s the way we’re fitted into these subtle little boxes we live in!
Subtle little bribes of praise.
Just so, we teach kids civics, good hygiene and nice manners. We become perfect. Ya think? Think again.
You’ve gotta be refined in Johnson’s fire first! Cause burning up your phony soul takes time.
Call it purgatorial if, like me, you’re Catholic. But Johnson’s brain in its near-OD’ing psychedelic trips unwittingly added AMPLIFIERS to his more honest blaring purgatorial perceptions. So we get William Burroughs on jet fuel.
That's why I bought this book. I could relate.
You see, as a veteran of chronic bipolar disease (now safely recessive), the severe containment of my meds irrationally from time to time had urged me, as Thomas Pynchon in the great super-Johnsonian novel V., to tear the sky apart with my screams.
Wow, those times were tough: though of course I never actually did it! Because fortunately, eventually I saw my own erroneous egotistic assumptions. And that insight came because I WANTED to be good.
So now, in my Seventies, I take the evening news in bullet-sized snippets. In a word, I’ve become a wimp: but a healthy wimp, now that I’ve finally stayed the long course with my meds. Now they’re my nourishing bread and butter.
I’m no longer curious to hear the news through Denis Johnson’s AMPLIFIERS.
I think we've all been there with him and done that. But, now for me, long ago and far away.
May you find rest, Maestro Johnson - in whatever weird fiery worlds you now find yourself.
Et In semper, frater -
Hail and farewell, dear friend!
And may the Higher Power you always sought grant you final PEACE.
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the fire, perne in a gyre
And be the singing masters of my soul.
W.B. Yeats
This book ROCKS - but too much sex ‘n drugs ‘n Rock ‘n Roll can give you Brain Sin Cavities - if you’re not already aware of that fact.
I guess near the end of his sadly-lamented, too-short life, Johnson’s headspace was all one great Grand Canyon. And when your brain’s a total gap, your life is zapped.
Johnson flushed his in the process. He was on fire inside, you see.
But say, why do we insist at looking down our long noses at the poor depraved souls of Johnson’s inscapes as if they are NOT of our precious world? Our privilege is every bit as stained by the Originary Depravity as is the soul-poverty of Johnson’s more apparent lapses.
I know, Sigmund Freud famously inferred in Civilization and its Discontents that a normal child’s brain picks up the knack of self-installing filters around its more primitive inner voices. To paraphrase Descartes, we’re told we’re good - therefore we are.
That’s the way we’re fitted into these subtle little boxes we live in!
Subtle little bribes of praise.
Just so, we teach kids civics, good hygiene and nice manners. We become perfect. Ya think? Think again.
You’ve gotta be refined in Johnson’s fire first! Cause burning up your phony soul takes time.
Call it purgatorial if, like me, you’re Catholic. But Johnson’s brain in its near-OD’ing psychedelic trips unwittingly added AMPLIFIERS to his more honest blaring purgatorial perceptions. So we get William Burroughs on jet fuel.
That's why I bought this book. I could relate.
You see, as a veteran of chronic bipolar disease (now safely recessive), the severe containment of my meds irrationally from time to time had urged me, as Thomas Pynchon in the great super-Johnsonian novel V., to tear the sky apart with my screams.
Wow, those times were tough: though of course I never actually did it! Because fortunately, eventually I saw my own erroneous egotistic assumptions. And that insight came because I WANTED to be good.
So now, in my Seventies, I take the evening news in bullet-sized snippets. In a word, I’ve become a wimp: but a healthy wimp, now that I’ve finally stayed the long course with my meds. Now they’re my nourishing bread and butter.
I’m no longer curious to hear the news through Denis Johnson’s AMPLIFIERS.
I think we've all been there with him and done that. But, now for me, long ago and far away.
May you find rest, Maestro Johnson - in whatever weird fiery worlds you now find yourself.
Et In semper, frater -
Hail and farewell, dear friend!
And may the Higher Power you always sought grant you final PEACE.
November 12, 2019
*I'm heartbroken to hear of Denis Johnson's recent passing. The man was a personal hero and great literary influence of mine. I'm floating this review of his quintessential masterpiece as a tip of the hat to an exceptional author who brought us some of the finest prose.
Without a doubt, this is one of my favorite works of all time. Denis Johnson is a major influence of mine, and Jesus' Son had a profound effect on me.
This was the book that showed me how far you could stretch your prose and still have it sound dynamite. A drug-addled mix of loosely interconnected stories, reading it is like navigating a string of dreams, both blissful and bad. The spectrum of themes is considerably wide, and the narrative draws you into worlds where you can feel as uncomfortable and out of place as the characters themselves. This is a book that actually makes you feel 'high' in some spots. The shifting line between chemical-fueled fantasy and uneasy reality isn't just blurred, it's burned down to almost nothing.
Jesus' Son features everyday kind of people who have slipped down notch or two into the gutter and lost their grip on normality. Much of the time they have nothing to do, nothing to be, and little to live for. It's bleak and beautiful at the same time, a trip through the entangled emotions of folks living simple lives complicated by poor choices.
Everything from love and loss to happiness and sheer horror is covered in this book. One moment the writing is slick as oil, the next it is jagged as broken glass. It’s downright chaotic in places where the mental states of the storytellers are in question. You know the main characters in this book are all unreliable narrators, but you still believe every word they say, because the stories Johnson tells are just that convincing. He's a master writer, balancing poetic passages with crisp, visual prose. This book is nothing short of a masterpiece.
If you haven't read it yet, read is ASAP.
*This book was one of my selections for my '5 Books That Made Me A Better Writer' piece. See which others I picked:
http://jkentmessum.com/the-5-books-th...
On a side note.... if you have a chance to get the audiobook version, definitely do so. Actor Will Patton narrates the stories, and does an incredible job of bringing Johnson's prose to perfection.
Without a doubt, this is one of my favorite works of all time. Denis Johnson is a major influence of mine, and Jesus' Son had a profound effect on me.
This was the book that showed me how far you could stretch your prose and still have it sound dynamite. A drug-addled mix of loosely interconnected stories, reading it is like navigating a string of dreams, both blissful and bad. The spectrum of themes is considerably wide, and the narrative draws you into worlds where you can feel as uncomfortable and out of place as the characters themselves. This is a book that actually makes you feel 'high' in some spots. The shifting line between chemical-fueled fantasy and uneasy reality isn't just blurred, it's burned down to almost nothing.
Jesus' Son features everyday kind of people who have slipped down notch or two into the gutter and lost their grip on normality. Much of the time they have nothing to do, nothing to be, and little to live for. It's bleak and beautiful at the same time, a trip through the entangled emotions of folks living simple lives complicated by poor choices.
Everything from love and loss to happiness and sheer horror is covered in this book. One moment the writing is slick as oil, the next it is jagged as broken glass. It’s downright chaotic in places where the mental states of the storytellers are in question. You know the main characters in this book are all unreliable narrators, but you still believe every word they say, because the stories Johnson tells are just that convincing. He's a master writer, balancing poetic passages with crisp, visual prose. This book is nothing short of a masterpiece.
If you haven't read it yet, read is ASAP.
*This book was one of my selections for my '5 Books That Made Me A Better Writer' piece. See which others I picked:
http://jkentmessum.com/the-5-books-th...
On a side note.... if you have a chance to get the audiobook version, definitely do so. Actor Will Patton narrates the stories, and does an incredible job of bringing Johnson's prose to perfection.
June 16, 2013
I stayed in the library, crushed breathless by the smoldering power of all those words—many of them unfathomable.
Sometimes I judge and consequently love a book based upon the following points:
- A single, beautiful line I longed to read or hear in the words of some person other than me.
- A completely related character.
- A completely unrelated character.
- The way it makes me laugh.
- The way it makes me cry.
- The way it makes me feel extremely good about the life I’m leading.
- The way it makes me feel rich. (metaphor intended)
- The way it makes me feel poor. (----ditto-----)
- When a life is described without much fuss and the death is described without much glory.
- When love is described without much purity and hate is described with a remarkable honesty.
- When a few pages are enough to savor the taste of several slices of fucked up lives.
- When few pages are actually not enough.
- When a writer writes as if it’s the easiest and the most difficult thing to do at the same time.
- When it’s so easy to love a book.
Jesus’ Son met most of the aforementioned criteria and deserved a much better review but I hope you all got my point that I really enjoyed this book. A few hours reading, 11 really short stories basking in the glow of their respective singularities, some connections were made, some were left in isolation but all in all, a book worthy of my time and literary love.
No more pretending for him! He was completely and openly a mess. Meanwhile the rest of us go on trying to fool each other.
December 20, 2020
These stories are not for devoutly religious readers...
The book takes its title from the Velvet Underground song, “Heroin”.
The setting is in America... Iowa, Chicago, Arizona, California, Seattle...
There are several addicts, a hitchhiker, bus riding, train riding, rush hour and commuters, nurses
and people running around in an emergency room, a mute man, beautiful women, phony women, puking women, a belly dancer, making love in hotels, eating steak in restaurants, a black-eyed, slit-eyed guy, a Jamaican woman, little children in the home of a cocaine dealer, girlfriends, boyfriends, strangers, lovers, Happy Hour, a visit to a laundromat, men drugged out and knocked out, a Greek nightclub, a fake brother, college girls, a writer, foreigners, drug use, upset crying women, Twaiwanese pot, psychedelic mushrooms, petty crime, rape, murder, every kind of smoking, a peeking Tom/ lurker,
souls who were brought together who had wronged each other, old men, gray-haired men, young men, muscular men, shirtless men, yucky-men, a man with a congenital bone ailment that had turned him into a seven-foot-tall monster, a man with multiple sclerosis, an amputee above both knees, Mennonites, a bible college near by, a local alcoholic center nearby, AA meetings in an Episcopal church’s basement, a woman with a paralyzed arm,
brain foggy people, unfortunate lonely, dreary, loss, sad people.
In one story a rapist met its victim. The child meets its mother.
We are weird people: God’s children...
We meet life—as it actually is—all around us—when we step outside our immediate bubble—
in our face realism...
people like you and me.
Eleven stories: (loosely linked together), riveting, raunchy, gritty, grimy, jolting....
insanely-brilliantly written deadpan prose.
The book takes its title from the Velvet Underground song, “Heroin”.
The setting is in America... Iowa, Chicago, Arizona, California, Seattle...
There are several addicts, a hitchhiker, bus riding, train riding, rush hour and commuters, nurses
and people running around in an emergency room, a mute man, beautiful women, phony women, puking women, a belly dancer, making love in hotels, eating steak in restaurants, a black-eyed, slit-eyed guy, a Jamaican woman, little children in the home of a cocaine dealer, girlfriends, boyfriends, strangers, lovers, Happy Hour, a visit to a laundromat, men drugged out and knocked out, a Greek nightclub, a fake brother, college girls, a writer, foreigners, drug use, upset crying women, Twaiwanese pot, psychedelic mushrooms, petty crime, rape, murder, every kind of smoking, a peeking Tom/ lurker,
souls who were brought together who had wronged each other, old men, gray-haired men, young men, muscular men, shirtless men, yucky-men, a man with a congenital bone ailment that had turned him into a seven-foot-tall monster, a man with multiple sclerosis, an amputee above both knees, Mennonites, a bible college near by, a local alcoholic center nearby, AA meetings in an Episcopal church’s basement, a woman with a paralyzed arm,
brain foggy people, unfortunate lonely, dreary, loss, sad people.
In one story a rapist met its victim. The child meets its mother.
We are weird people: God’s children...
We meet life—as it actually is—all around us—when we step outside our immediate bubble—
in our face realism...
people like you and me.
Eleven stories: (loosely linked together), riveting, raunchy, gritty, grimy, jolting....
insanely-brilliantly written deadpan prose.
April 23, 2021
Junk-sick, Broke and Completely Alone, in a Land of Bad Intentions
I've gone through three copies of ‘Jesus’ Son’, reading it like a prayer-book, though it’s nothing of the kind. There's a sadness living in every sentence, and it doesn't really have any suggestions for better living, beyond a painfully obvious cautionary tale. Heroin is bad.
The cautionary tale, however, is one interpreted by the reader. It's the best kind of dangerous, like a manual for poetic self-immolation, on burning yourself down to the foundation-stones and finding one beautiful thing in the ashes. Even if it's something cheap and common, it assumes a spiritual density simply by escaping the flames, and a malleability that allows it to be shaped and worked into something vaguely redemptive.
The power of Denis Johnson's prose is inestimable, with sentences & imagery that will orbit the readers consciousness for decades. It's that kind of book: one that moves into your head and makes itself comfortable. His writing has the hard-eyed toughness of Chandler, but with a kind of unabashed sensitivity that Chandler would never expose... imagine Dashiell Hammett writing poetry, and imagine yourself liking it. It's Bogart in drag, or a concert pianist with the broken hands of a boxer.
See? That sort of thing. In case you're not familiar with The Velvet Underground, the title comes from one of Lou Reed's lines in 'Heroin'.
Denis Johnson’s skills as a short story writer, poet, and novelist all coalesce with ‘Jesus’ Son’, to produce a sad, funny and frightening little masterpiece. It’s not really even a novella; more of a collection of short stories that add up to something related to a novella, but with the existential weight of a Russian epic. Loosely inspired by Johnson's own experiences, the main character – Fuckhead - introduces himself with a story of hitch-hiking in the rain. He’s feeling burnt out and edgy after taking mystery pills from a travelling salesman, which is never a good idea, but his name is Fuckhead. He doesn’t do anything the right way... or even the easy way. He parts ways with the salesman, and ends up stuck on a gravel shoulder, hitchhiking again, this time in the midst of a torrential downpour. When a family is nice enough to stop and let a drenched stranger into their car, he knows that it's going to end in tragedy & death & screaming so loud that it's too much for even the thundering storm-clouds to swallow, but he gets in anyway.
'They said they'd take me all the way.'
Fuckhead's wanderings through the USA of the 1970's are always told from the anamorphic perspectives of a compromised mind, pleasantly poisoned with all manner of chemical. Junkies finding love in motel rooms. Drug-dealers half-heartedly murdering each other in a Midwestern farmhouse. A hospital clerk and orderly way too high for anything that comes through the Emergency Room doors. Rehab. Johnson presents skewed characters and situations that seem to operate according to the inscrutable mechanisms of dream and nightmare. Like Dundun, for instance, about whom I'll let the narrator say a few words, because narrators do that sort of thing best:
Yeah, that's Dundun. That's perfect casting.
Alison Maclean's adaptation of 'Jesus' Son' is one of the best novel-to-film translations I've seen, along with 'No Country For Old Men' and the big screen incarnations of the aforementioned Chandler and Hammett. The performances are thoroughly fucking brilliant, but Michael Shannon's portrayal of Dundun is unforgettable.
Other writers could work a decade, write a thousand pages, and not create a fraction of the intensity and emotional nuance or dissonance that Johnson scribbles into being. And his characters... they crawl off the page and into your cranium, to bury themselves in the soft grey folds of your brain; like actual memories, actual people... experiences you've bought and paid for, living them like a dream is lived, & absolutely worth the paper they're printed on.
I've gone through three copies of ‘Jesus’ Son’, reading it like a prayer-book, though it’s nothing of the kind. There's a sadness living in every sentence, and it doesn't really have any suggestions for better living, beyond a painfully obvious cautionary tale. Heroin is bad.
The cautionary tale, however, is one interpreted by the reader. It's the best kind of dangerous, like a manual for poetic self-immolation, on burning yourself down to the foundation-stones and finding one beautiful thing in the ashes. Even if it's something cheap and common, it assumes a spiritual density simply by escaping the flames, and a malleability that allows it to be shaped and worked into something vaguely redemptive.
The power of Denis Johnson's prose is inestimable, with sentences & imagery that will orbit the readers consciousness for decades. It's that kind of book: one that moves into your head and makes itself comfortable. His writing has the hard-eyed toughness of Chandler, but with a kind of unabashed sensitivity that Chandler would never expose... imagine Dashiell Hammett writing poetry, and imagine yourself liking it. It's Bogart in drag, or a concert pianist with the broken hands of a boxer.
“And therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person’s life on this earth. I don’t mean that we all end up dead, that’s not the great pity. I mean that he couldn’t tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn’t tell him what was real.”
See? That sort of thing. In case you're not familiar with The Velvet Underground, the title comes from one of Lou Reed's lines in 'Heroin'.
Denis Johnson’s skills as a short story writer, poet, and novelist all coalesce with ‘Jesus’ Son’, to produce a sad, funny and frightening little masterpiece. It’s not really even a novella; more of a collection of short stories that add up to something related to a novella, but with the existential weight of a Russian epic. Loosely inspired by Johnson's own experiences, the main character – Fuckhead - introduces himself with a story of hitch-hiking in the rain. He’s feeling burnt out and edgy after taking mystery pills from a travelling salesman, which is never a good idea, but his name is Fuckhead. He doesn’t do anything the right way... or even the easy way. He parts ways with the salesman, and ends up stuck on a gravel shoulder, hitchhiking again, this time in the midst of a torrential downpour. When a family is nice enough to stop and let a drenched stranger into their car, he knows that it's going to end in tragedy & death & screaming so loud that it's too much for even the thundering storm-clouds to swallow, but he gets in anyway.
'They said they'd take me all the way.'
Fuckhead's wanderings through the USA of the 1970's are always told from the anamorphic perspectives of a compromised mind, pleasantly poisoned with all manner of chemical. Junkies finding love in motel rooms. Drug-dealers half-heartedly murdering each other in a Midwestern farmhouse. A hospital clerk and orderly way too high for anything that comes through the Emergency Room doors. Rehab. Johnson presents skewed characters and situations that seem to operate according to the inscrutable mechanisms of dream and nightmare. Like Dundun, for instance, about whom I'll let the narrator say a few words, because narrators do that sort of thing best:
“Will you believe me when I tell you there was kindness in his heart? His left hand didn't know what his right hand was doing. It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.”
Yeah, that's Dundun. That's perfect casting.
Alison Maclean's adaptation of 'Jesus' Son' is one of the best novel-to-film translations I've seen, along with 'No Country For Old Men' and the big screen incarnations of the aforementioned Chandler and Hammett. The performances are thoroughly fucking brilliant, but Michael Shannon's portrayal of Dundun is unforgettable.
Other writers could work a decade, write a thousand pages, and not create a fraction of the intensity and emotional nuance or dissonance that Johnson scribbles into being. And his characters... they crawl off the page and into your cranium, to bury themselves in the soft grey folds of your brain; like actual memories, actual people... experiences you've bought and paid for, living them like a dream is lived, & absolutely worth the paper they're printed on.
“Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I'm fine.”
― Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son
September 13, 2013
Denis Johnson took the fringe sensibilities of The Beats, added his own raw poetic touches, nicked a line from Lou Reed for the title, and ended up with an intensely unsettling collection of stories that prefigured to a T the drug classic Trainspotting. You may wonder at first if the unnamed narrator of these accounts could really be such an uncaring cad. Well, as a bottom line, maybe so. But the thoughts of murder, the thieving, and the ultra-callous disregard for fellow man were in large part a function of the skag, the booze, and the stolen pharmaceuticals. This does not excuse the insensitivity and messed up behavior so much as it explains the eeriness, fragmentation, and reflexive anger. But amidst the distortions, bits of clarity stand out. And in contrast to the alienation in dull shades of gray, a kindness of any tint will catch the eye.
Has it ever been proposed as an exercise in creative writing to imagine being (if not actually being) high as a kite? What am I saying? Of course it has. And abstract, luminous words have come from such otherworldly mindsets, I’m sure. In fact, I would argue that this short book set in the psychedelic 70’s is a prime case in point. It figures, with Johnson also being a poet, that the writing would be taut and expressive. He captures the sentiments of the down-and-out so well, too. For example, he describes how the “tears of false fellowship dripped on the bar” and how a gunshot victim should be happy he’s getting “Haldol pumped by the quart.” The drug scene is the backdrop, but the fallout is the real focus.
My favorite parts were when little hints of what it means to be human snuck into the stories. It didn’t always put the narrator in a favorable light, but usually pointed to something redeemable within him. He appreciated co-worker and co-addict Georgie for telling a friend of a friend who was seriously AWOL that he’d help get him to Canada. Georgie also wanted to save the baby rabbits of the mother he ran over with his car. Another story described the narrator’s best day ever, one where he and a friend made $28 each from honest labors stripping copper wire out of the friend’s abandoned house and then celebrating with their favorite bartender pouring them double shots but charging them only for singles.
The last story was set at Beverly Home, a place for senile, disabled, and disfigured adults where the narrator was given a part-time job as the newsletter writer and a point of human contact for those rarely touched. He was off drugs and sober at this point, and regaining his health. His straight and narrow path was still a little skewed, though, when he discovered a Mennonite woman who happened to time her shower every day as he passed by her place after work. As immoral as his actions were, though, there was a sense that he’d turned the corner
A book like this is an eye-opener. It’s a hard look at addiction, it’s an artistic peek at altered perceptions, and it’s a clever way to highlight humanity when set against the stuporous default settings. Oh, and since it matters, the writing was really good, too.
Has it ever been proposed as an exercise in creative writing to imagine being (if not actually being) high as a kite? What am I saying? Of course it has. And abstract, luminous words have come from such otherworldly mindsets, I’m sure. In fact, I would argue that this short book set in the psychedelic 70’s is a prime case in point. It figures, with Johnson also being a poet, that the writing would be taut and expressive. He captures the sentiments of the down-and-out so well, too. For example, he describes how the “tears of false fellowship dripped on the bar” and how a gunshot victim should be happy he’s getting “Haldol pumped by the quart.” The drug scene is the backdrop, but the fallout is the real focus.
” I'd been staying at the Holiday Inn with my with my girlfriend, honestly the most beautiful woman I'd ever known, for three days under a phony name, shooting heroin. We made love in the bed, ate steaks in the restaurant, shot up in the john, puked, cried, accused one another, begged of one another, forgave, promised, and carried one another to heaven.”
My favorite parts were when little hints of what it means to be human snuck into the stories. It didn’t always put the narrator in a favorable light, but usually pointed to something redeemable within him. He appreciated co-worker and co-addict Georgie for telling a friend of a friend who was seriously AWOL that he’d help get him to Canada. Georgie also wanted to save the baby rabbits of the mother he ran over with his car. Another story described the narrator’s best day ever, one where he and a friend made $28 each from honest labors stripping copper wire out of the friend’s abandoned house and then celebrating with their favorite bartender pouring them double shots but charging them only for singles.
The last story was set at Beverly Home, a place for senile, disabled, and disfigured adults where the narrator was given a part-time job as the newsletter writer and a point of human contact for those rarely touched. He was off drugs and sober at this point, and regaining his health. His straight and narrow path was still a little skewed, though, when he discovered a Mennonite woman who happened to time her shower every day as he passed by her place after work. As immoral as his actions were, though, there was a sense that he’d turned the corner
A book like this is an eye-opener. It’s a hard look at addiction, it’s an artistic peek at altered perceptions, and it’s a clever way to highlight humanity when set against the stuporous default settings. Oh, and since it matters, the writing was really good, too.
May 20, 2023
کتاب پسر عیسا از دنیس جانسون(با ترجمه پیمان خاکسار) شامل 11 مجموعه داستان بهم پیوسته ست. راوی داستان که همان نویسنده هست، خاطرات و گذشته خودش رو در قالب این 11 داستان تعریف میکنه.
اکثر داستان ها با مواد مخدر و قتل و جنایت همراه میشه و راوی ما هم یک فرد معتاد و بدبخت هست که در گذر زمان فرسوده شده به همین خاطر بعضی از داستان ها فاقد منطق و انسجام هستند.
این کتاب به دلیل اینکه جامعه و فرهنگ و زندگی روزمره مردم آمریکا رو توصیف میکنه برای مخاطب ایرانی میتونه خسته کننده باشه. بعضی از داستان ها صرفاً بیان روزمرگی های راوی و تاثیر مواد مخدر و قانون آزادی حمل سلاح بر جامعه هستند و پیچیدگی داستانی و کشش آنچنانی ندارند.
در کل فرم ساختاری کتاب و راوی داستان من رو جذب خودش کرد و از دیگر نکات مثبت کتاب میتونم به توصیفات اندازه و سورئالیستی از نگاه یک فرد معتاد اشاره کنم.
اکثر داستان ها با مواد مخدر و قتل و جنایت همراه میشه و راوی ما هم یک فرد معتاد و بدبخت هست که در گذر زمان فرسوده شده به همین خاطر بعضی از داستان ها فاقد منطق و انسجام هستند.
این کتاب به دلیل اینکه جامعه و فرهنگ و زندگی روزمره مردم آمریکا رو توصیف میکنه برای مخاطب ایرانی میتونه خسته کننده باشه. بعضی از داستان ها صرفاً بیان روزمرگی های راوی و تاثیر مواد مخدر و قانون آزادی حمل سلاح بر جامعه هستند و پیچیدگی داستانی و کشش آنچنانی ندارند.
در کل فرم ساختاری کتاب و راوی داستان من رو جذب خودش کرد و از دیگر نکات مثبت کتاب میتونم به توصیفات اندازه و سورئالیستی از نگاه یک فرد معتاد اشاره کنم.
August 12, 2019
Excellent prose & a roaming plot to boot. These short stories together describe the grit inherent in modern America. We meet drunks & druggies, victims of crime and a vicious environment. America is rarely portrayed like this-- with so much beauty & ugliness combined. Books like these make me feel bad for hating on The Poets. This is poetic &, despite its brevity, confoundingly major. You want to read more of the narrator's misadventures: it is as addictive to the voracious reader as the drugs and the booze.
March 7, 2016
“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.”
― Denis Johnson, 'Jesus' Son'
Sometimes while reading this I thought I was reading Burroughs (just not so dark), other times J.G. Ballard (just not so cold), sometimes even Palahniuk (but with more of a poet's heart). It was madness, a fever dream, tied together with beauty. It was fragments of insanity stitched together with the stars. And sometimes the night of this novel was so dark, I couldn't see the stars, and the blood all looked black.
I didn't personally like it as much as Train Dreams, but that was just personal preference. I can see how some readers would absolutely adore it. It felt like a painting of blood or a beautiful photograph of a corpse. You are both attracted to and repelled by the art and the vision.
― Denis Johnson, 'Jesus' Son'
Sometimes while reading this I thought I was reading Burroughs (just not so dark), other times J.G. Ballard (just not so cold), sometimes even Palahniuk (but with more of a poet's heart). It was madness, a fever dream, tied together with beauty. It was fragments of insanity stitched together with the stars. And sometimes the night of this novel was so dark, I couldn't see the stars, and the blood all looked black.
I didn't personally like it as much as Train Dreams, but that was just personal preference. I can see how some readers would absolutely adore it. It felt like a painting of blood or a beautiful photograph of a corpse. You are both attracted to and repelled by the art and the vision.
December 20, 2020
All narrated by a recovering heroin addict these interrelated stories are vignettes of a world where normality as we know it has been completely expunged. In one story he obsessively spies on a married woman in the shower; in another he works as a porter in a hospital and meets a man with a knife impaled in his eyeball; in another he helps dump the dead body of someone his friend has accidentally shot. Johnson comes up with lots of fabulous images for this surreal underworld he has created. One that I especially loved was when the narrator on a night bus sees everything through the dark window as resembling symbols on a slot machine, as if for him a slot machine has come to represent the height of opportunity. Another very edifying read. 4+ stars.
August 27, 2007
Look, I don't know how else to put this. I recognize what Johnson's accomplished here, I acknowledge that he has a gift for phrase-level shine, and I concede that these semi-linked stories evince a remarkably coherent and vividly-depicted worldview that I might call "hopelessly optimistic," or maybe "tending to carry on when there's clearly no good reason to do so," or else, more succinctly, "Conradian" . . . but, I'm sorry, what I couldn't help but think/feel, wading through one after another of these stories was, Yeah, I know:
I understand that the human elevator has no bottom floor, that a man can keep on falling til he's ready to pull the emergency brake and haul himself out onto some sublevel way below the bright clean fenestrated floors traversed by shiny people too stupid and lucky (so far) to know how shaky their footing is, how frightened they ought to be, and that the fallen subterraneans tend never to make it all the way back up to the light, but that this doesn't prevent them (us) from continuing to wriggle around through murky sub-basement muck, and that this perverse expression of the irrepressible will to move and breathe, to go on, no matter how shitty the environs or rancid the air, is what makes the condition of being human so simultaneously stupid and beautiful –
sure, I get this, but it's something I feel like I'd already got, i.e., I didn't need Denis Johnson to tell me, and if I did need to be informed that this is the way things are, I'm not at all convinced this book would have done it for me. Sorry.
Hope this doesn't get me kicked out of the writing program; I gather most of my fellows here sort of revere the man. As I say: he can clearly write. Let the angry response-posts commence.
I understand that the human elevator has no bottom floor, that a man can keep on falling til he's ready to pull the emergency brake and haul himself out onto some sublevel way below the bright clean fenestrated floors traversed by shiny people too stupid and lucky (so far) to know how shaky their footing is, how frightened they ought to be, and that the fallen subterraneans tend never to make it all the way back up to the light, but that this doesn't prevent them (us) from continuing to wriggle around through murky sub-basement muck, and that this perverse expression of the irrepressible will to move and breathe, to go on, no matter how shitty the environs or rancid the air, is what makes the condition of being human so simultaneously stupid and beautiful –
sure, I get this, but it's something I feel like I'd already got, i.e., I didn't need Denis Johnson to tell me, and if I did need to be informed that this is the way things are, I'm not at all convinced this book would have done it for me. Sorry.
Hope this doesn't get me kicked out of the writing program; I gather most of my fellows here sort of revere the man. As I say: he can clearly write. Let the angry response-posts commence.
February 9, 2019
دنیس جانسون در این کتاب، دنیا رو از زوایایی دیده بود که برام تازگی داشتن. با اینکه همیشه با کمّی کردن کیفیات مخالفت اکید دارم، به این کتاب پنج ستاره میدم. دوست دارم چندبار دیگه هم بخونمش. تلخ بود اما گیرا بود.
نویسنده های زیادی دوست دارن چنین کتاب موجز اما تأثیرگذاری بنویسن اما اکثرشون مجموعهی هنرمندای ناکامی ان که زندگیشون یه خطّ صافه، درست مثل خط دستگاه ضربان قلبِ بعد از مرگِ آدمیزاد. کسایی با افکار بسیار محدود و صد البته افرادی ترسو، کسایی که جرأت ��دارن حتا با یه خانم دست بدن یا از ترس بهخطر افتادن سلامتی یا حرفِ مردم سیگار هم نمیکشن. کسایی که اگه بخوای زندگیشون رو رُمان کنی، توی همون چند خط اول، خوابت میبره. آخه کسی که شب از بی پولی توی خیابون نخوابیده باشه چطور می تونه از دربهدری داستان بنویسه؟
اما دنیس جانسون با همهشون فرق داره.
اون تا آخر خط رفته و برگشته و نشسته و پسر عیسا رو نوشته.
نویسنده های زیادی دوست دارن چنین کتاب موجز اما تأثیرگذاری بنویسن اما اکثرشون مجموعهی هنرمندای ناکامی ان که زندگیشون یه خطّ صافه، درست مثل خط دستگاه ضربان قلبِ بعد از مرگِ آدمیزاد. کسایی با افکار بسیار محدود و صد البته افرادی ترسو، کسایی که جرأت ��دارن حتا با یه خانم دست بدن یا از ترس بهخطر افتادن سلامتی یا حرفِ مردم سیگار هم نمیکشن. کسایی که اگه بخوای زندگیشون رو رُمان کنی، توی همون چند خط اول، خوابت میبره. آخه کسی که شب از بی پولی توی خیابون نخوابیده باشه چطور می تونه از دربهدری داستان بنویسه؟
اما دنیس جانسون با همهشون فرق داره.
اون تا آخر خط رفته و برگشته و نشسته و پسر عیسا رو نوشته.
January 12, 2025
2011 Review:
Reading this was like a mind-explosion. I literally felt my brain sizzling trying to make sense of each wonderful yet muddled vignette that this collection presented. However, each of the harrowing stories in this book work fine, like clockwork in exploring the minds of drug-addicted souls. And haunting too.
2021 Review:
I inhaled rereading this exquisite little collection of vignettes. Jesus' Son became one of my "read again's" after ten years of having discovered the genius that was the late great, Denis Johnson; and this time, I felt so dizzy having experienced what Fuck Head has gone through simply because I felt I was alive with him, in every situation, every adventure, and every relationship gone wrong.
Sad sack characters can be tedious, and over indulgent, but FH is one of the most humane I've read in literature. Aside from possible undiagnosed schizophrenia, obvious heroin addiction, and disturbing and abusive behavior towards women, especially the "love" of his life, Michelle; all these combinations could have given FH a redemptive arc.
However, Johnson, like drug addiction, doesn't let us come off the hook that easy, "we had that helpless, destined feeling" (Johnson 39).
"Two Men" is a harrowing story of a home invasion gone wrong, FH is unaware it might have been Michelle's place he violates. "Out on Bail" is about the beautiful man, Jack Hotel whom FH gets into a stupor with; "Work" is about another misadventure, this time a robbery that goes wrong and Michelle can't cope with FH's erratic behavior, "with each step, my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who'd love me" (Johnson 37). But we see how much these two lovers are codependent, and it’s what makes the stories all the more heartbreaking.
We also meet other addicts, Dundun, and McInnes who gives FH his name, "then you were dead, what would you care? How would you know the difference?" (Johnson 98).
The collection makes for a trippy odyssey in the American landscape- from Arizona, Idaho, to British Columbia, and Missouri, where sparse and lonely images permeate through Johnson's text with such a realistic, uneasy feeling of being an outsider, of lost souls wandering around waiting for their next fix.
There's even a suggestion that FH could have been or was a writer, as mentioned as he works as a newsletter writer for the Beverly Home.
Beverly Home, one of the final vignettes finds FH in a relationship with two different women, one who turns out to be a married Mennonite, and the other a dwarf with whom he takes out kinky fetishes with.
Though he finds sexual gratification in fucking these women, the book remains an episodic saga of a fragmented mind looking for love, what he is missing, continuously returning to stupors again and again to find what he's lost.
FH is a soulful character looking for his lost soul, and it is his idea of love that keeps him going.
Reading this was like a mind-explosion. I literally felt my brain sizzling trying to make sense of each wonderful yet muddled vignette that this collection presented. However, each of the harrowing stories in this book work fine, like clockwork in exploring the minds of drug-addicted souls. And haunting too.
2021 Review:
I inhaled rereading this exquisite little collection of vignettes. Jesus' Son became one of my "read again's" after ten years of having discovered the genius that was the late great, Denis Johnson; and this time, I felt so dizzy having experienced what Fuck Head has gone through simply because I felt I was alive with him, in every situation, every adventure, and every relationship gone wrong.
Sad sack characters can be tedious, and over indulgent, but FH is one of the most humane I've read in literature. Aside from possible undiagnosed schizophrenia, obvious heroin addiction, and disturbing and abusive behavior towards women, especially the "love" of his life, Michelle; all these combinations could have given FH a redemptive arc.
However, Johnson, like drug addiction, doesn't let us come off the hook that easy, "we had that helpless, destined feeling" (Johnson 39).
"Two Men" is a harrowing story of a home invasion gone wrong, FH is unaware it might have been Michelle's place he violates. "Out on Bail" is about the beautiful man, Jack Hotel whom FH gets into a stupor with; "Work" is about another misadventure, this time a robbery that goes wrong and Michelle can't cope with FH's erratic behavior, "with each step, my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who'd love me" (Johnson 37). But we see how much these two lovers are codependent, and it’s what makes the stories all the more heartbreaking.
We also meet other addicts, Dundun, and McInnes who gives FH his name, "then you were dead, what would you care? How would you know the difference?" (Johnson 98).
The collection makes for a trippy odyssey in the American landscape- from Arizona, Idaho, to British Columbia, and Missouri, where sparse and lonely images permeate through Johnson's text with such a realistic, uneasy feeling of being an outsider, of lost souls wandering around waiting for their next fix.
There's even a suggestion that FH could have been or was a writer, as mentioned as he works as a newsletter writer for the Beverly Home.
Beverly Home, one of the final vignettes finds FH in a relationship with two different women, one who turns out to be a married Mennonite, and the other a dwarf with whom he takes out kinky fetishes with.
Though he finds sexual gratification in fucking these women, the book remains an episodic saga of a fragmented mind looking for love, what he is missing, continuously returning to stupors again and again to find what he's lost.
FH is a soulful character looking for his lost soul, and it is his idea of love that keeps him going.
June 2, 2023
Ridere delle proprie fragilità? Si può, eccome se si può e Johnson ci riesce.
Ci tiene perfettamente in equilibrio sull'orlo dell'abisso.
Personaggi sull'orlo del fallimento, dipendenti da qualunque genere di droga e alcol.
Riesce a distillare umanità, compassione e umorismo in così poche pagine. Storie di dolore, dove la sofferenza è la routine. Quella stessa sofferenza che ti mostra la bellezza del mondo.
"Ma ogni cosa che tocchi si trasforma in merda?"
Direi di si, ma con questa collezione di racconti si è trasformata in oro.
Ci tiene perfettamente in equilibrio sull'orlo dell'abisso.
Personaggi sull'orlo del fallimento, dipendenti da qualunque genere di droga e alcol.
Riesce a distillare umanità, compassione e umorismo in così poche pagine. Storie di dolore, dove la sofferenza è la routine. Quella stessa sofferenza che ti mostra la bellezza del mondo.
"Ma ogni cosa che tocchi si trasforma in merda?"
Direi di si, ma con questa collezione di racconti si è trasformata in oro.
January 16, 2021
Viena iš tų knygų, kur - labai gera, bet ne mano. Ir išties labai gera - narkomanai ir gyvenimo paraštės kaip iš Bukowskio / Welsho, bet liūdesys ir literatūriškumas - kaip iš kokio nors McCarthy. Ir neįtikėtinas žodžio, pasakojimo taupumas. Šiaip būčiau davus 4*, bet tas trumpumas, kad kiekvienas apsakymas yra kažkaip tobulai išbaigtas, nors ir nesmūgiškai, - tiesiog puiku, nesvarbu, artima ta knyga tau ar ne.
Rinkinį sudaro 11 apsakymų, jungčių tarp jų daug: ir pasakotojas, kuris tai apsivartojęs blaškosi per vietas, draugus ir moteris, tai dirba ligoninėj ir užrašinėja nutikimus, ir skirtingi personažai, ir labai laisva, bet vis dėlto numanoma tų pasakojimų chronologinė seka. Visokių patirčių, tik susijusių, mozaika truputį priminė Namų tvarkytojos vadovą, tačiau ten visko buvo labai tiršta ir daug, tikros džiunglės, o pas Johnsoną - labiau kaip gėlių parduotuvė, maždaug tokia "Gėlės ir gvazdikai" - ne per daug, gražu, yra kas brangiau, yra ką pražiūri. Visur - paribių žmonės ir paribių patirtys, ar tai būtų nepažįstamų žmonių sekimas per langą ir vaizdavimasis, kas jie, kaip gyvena, ar pasakotojo merginos su skirtingomis fizinėmis negaliomis, ar apsinarkašinęs slaugytojas Džordžis, geriausiems chirurgams tariantis, kaip ištraukti peilį, pacientui pavojingai įsmeigtą į akį, jį paprasčiausiai nukniaukęs.
Atskira padėka Burokui už vertimą ir grubią kalbą, įskaitant chuinia ❤
Rinkinį sudaro 11 apsakymų, jungčių tarp jų daug: ir pasakotojas, kuris tai apsivartojęs blaškosi per vietas, draugus ir moteris, tai dirba ligoninėj ir užrašinėja nutikimus, ir skirtingi personažai, ir labai laisva, bet vis dėlto numanoma tų pasakojimų chronologinė seka. Visokių patirčių, tik susijusių, mozaika truputį priminė Namų tvarkytojos vadovą, tačiau ten visko buvo labai tiršta ir daug, tikros džiunglės, o pas Johnsoną - labiau kaip gėlių parduotuvė, maždaug tokia "Gėlės ir gvazdikai" - ne per daug, gražu, yra kas brangiau, yra ką pražiūri. Visur - paribių žmonės ir paribių patirtys, ar tai būtų nepažįstamų žmonių sekimas per langą ir vaizdavimasis, kas jie, kaip gyvena, ar pasakotojo merginos su skirtingomis fizinėmis negaliomis, ar apsinarkašinęs slaugytojas Džordžis, geriausiems chirurgams tariantis, kaip ištraukti peilį, pacientui pavojingai įsmeigtą į akį, jį paprasčiausiai nukniaukęs.
Atskira padėka Burokui už vertimą ir grubią kalbą, įskaitant chuinia ❤
Ak, tas anų dienų pasaulis! Dabar jo nebeliko, jį ištrynė, suvyniojo kaip ritinį ir kažkur nukišo. Taip, aš galiu jį paliesti savo pirštais. Bet kur jis?
Po kurio laiko Hardis paklausė Džordžio:
- O tu kuo užsiimi?
Ir Džordžis atsakė:
- Gelbsčiu gyvybes.
(p. 70)
March 15, 2008
This book ruined my reading bone for a long time. I wanted every story I read, every story by every other author, to be just like the stories in Jesus' Son. But of course they weren't and aren't and they stand alone in my mind, even now. Perhaps it's the whiskey talking, but I'd go so far as to call this little book one of the greatest of my generation. Not that such superlatives carry any weight anymore. I just can't get over this book. It was my first true love.
April 26, 2021
Fantastiška knyga, maloniai nustebino. Tie, kas patyrė ar matė gatvinį dugną, turėtų pajusti, kad autorius supranta, apie ką rašo.
Tai –trumpų istorijų rinkinys, pasakojantis apie gyvenimą Amerikos gatvėse, baruose, narkotikus, alkoholizmą, nusikaltimus. Tačiau Bukowskio nesitikėkite.
Johnsono sukurtus personažus judėti verčia instinktai. Jie – priešingai nei Bukowskio personažai – nesimėgauja savo gyvenimo būdu, ir girtuoklystė jiems nėra nepriklausomybės išraiška. Man atrodo, kad Johnsono personažai išvis nemąsto tokiomis kategorijomis, jie tiesiog daro tai, kas konkrečią akimirką padeda išlikti ilgiau.
O ir pats rašymo stilius labai patiko. Vienas iš tų atvejų, kai knygą skaičiau sulėtintai, kad nesibaigtų.
Tai –trumpų istorijų rinkinys, pasakojantis apie gyvenimą Amerikos gatvėse, baruose, narkotikus, alkoholizmą, nusikaltimus. Tačiau Bukowskio nesitikėkite.
Johnsono sukurtus personažus judėti verčia instinktai. Jie – priešingai nei Bukowskio personažai – nesimėgauja savo gyvenimo būdu, ir girtuoklystė jiems nėra nepriklausomybės išraiška. Man atrodo, kad Johnsono personažai išvis nemąsto tokiomis kategorijomis, jie tiesiog daro tai, kas konkrečią akimirką padeda išlikti ilgiau.
O ir pats rašymo stilius labai patiko. Vienas iš tų atvejų, kai knygą skaičiau sulėtintai, kad nesibaigtų.
October 12, 2024
These stories hold each other up like a house of cards. An excellent example of a composite novel. One of these stories has joined my list of all-time favorites.
January 17, 2021
I love a no-skip story collection. This was excellent!
September 14, 2020
God I loved this. A perfect collection of short stories. Fuckhead is in his early twenties and he's a drug addict and alcoholic. And no, a series of stories about drug-fuelled craziness narrated by this kind of man, wouldn't normally interest me, either. But the free-wheeling mind-altered narratives are so fresh and scary, and sometimes even funny. Don't be put off by the subject matter, just read it.
November 11, 2019
Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
And when it comes to fiction a bigly chunk of “my” people are drug addicts . . . .
Jesus’ Son has been on my TBR for an age due to the fact that it is considered a modern classic and has appeared on list after list of must reads that I can’t ever stop myself from looking at, despite having 11,000,000,000,000 books already waiting for me to get to them. I can’t guarantee everyone will love this one – due to the aforementioned drug addict narrator along with a supporting cast of the same ilk – not to mention the fact that a lot of these shorts are real Debbie Downers. Buuuuuuuuuuut, the writing is pretty brilliant and my library copy literally fit in the palm of my hand (it is a miracle I did not lose it – I did, however, receive a past due notice because it’s so small I forgot I stuck it in my car console for safekeeping), so it’s not like it’s going to take much of your time.
Go read J. Kent Messum’s review review for more details. He’s a writer by trade so he actually uses words rather than pictures to get his point across and he also talks about the audio, which is apparently read by the best reader of all time . . . .
And when it comes to fiction a bigly chunk of “my” people are drug addicts . . . .
Jesus’ Son has been on my TBR for an age due to the fact that it is considered a modern classic and has appeared on list after list of must reads that I can’t ever stop myself from looking at, despite having 11,000,000,000,000 books already waiting for me to get to them. I can’t guarantee everyone will love this one – due to the aforementioned drug addict narrator along with a supporting cast of the same ilk – not to mention the fact that a lot of these shorts are real Debbie Downers. Buuuuuuuuuuut, the writing is pretty brilliant and my library copy literally fit in the palm of my hand (it is a miracle I did not lose it – I did, however, receive a past due notice because it’s so small I forgot I stuck it in my car console for safekeeping), so it’s not like it’s going to take much of your time.
Go read J. Kent Messum’s review review for more details. He’s a writer by trade so he actually uses words rather than pictures to get his point across and he also talks about the audio, which is apparently read by the best reader of all time . . . .
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