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Randall Kenan - English 206

19 March 2014 – Craft Paper

Biography

Denis Johnson is a prolific writer of novels (nine so far), poems (three collections so far), non-fiction and short stories. [MacMillan] He has been widely awarded and lauded as one of the great living authors. He has been awarded the national book award, [book flap] and been a finalist for the Pulitzer twice. [The Pulitzer] He is an American born January first, 1949 in Munich, Germany, and has lived in several other nations due to his father’s career in the state department. [Amsden, Chai] Through most of his twenties, he struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, and didn’t start writing seriously until he sobered up during the seventies. [McKinley] One only need read a single of his stories from Jesus’ Son, to see that this time in his life greatly affected his writing. He is notoriously reclusive, making finding information about his personal life difficult. He also generally shuns media, press and self-promotion. [Chai] He has gained a wide reaching following of fans that should be glad to know a new short story is imminent and a novel is due later this year. [Ulin]

Summaries

Though “Emergency” is one Johnson’s most famous short stories, not to mention my first exposure to him five years ago, I chose three others that I enjoyed more. They are “Car Crash While Hitchhiking,” “Work,” and “Beverly Home.”

“Car Crash While Hitchhiking” is about a young man who awakes in a drug-addled haze thanks to his three former rides. In the rain he then catches a fourth ride from a small and wholesome family who head-on and kill another driver on a bridge. Miraculously, an infant in the vehicle and our protagonist, unnamed, are the only passengers left uninjured. He then inexplicably removes the baby and takes it a short distance from the scene, watching a man die as he walks away. The story concludes with a seemingly unrelated scene of the man detoxing some years later while memories from his past flood back in the form of hallucinations.

“Work” involves several of the characters from Johnson’s earlier stories in the collection but, we return again to the unnamed ‘I.’ He gets in a fight with his girlfriend and wanders into the local dive that he and other neighborhood deviants frequent, a repeated setting within the collection. He encounters another early morning drunkard who talks him into salvaging the copper wiring from the man’s abandoned, flood damaged home. They see the man’s ex-wife parasailing along the river, and the narrator remarks that he “had wandered into some sort of dream that Wayne was having about his wife, and his house.” The story concludes with the pair blowing all the money they made from the wiring at the local bar.

“Beverly Home” is the final story in the collection. It is the only story to end on what one could call on upbeat note. We find, what we can only assume is, our titular “I” volunteering at a home for the disabled, senile, and mentally dispossessed. He is some time into recovery and working to put his life back together. We follow him through multiple relationships and work duties, making him more relatable. Crucially though, we also see him as he spies on a Mennonite couple through their windows and develops an obsession with them. The story concludes with the narrator observing that he had found, in his place of work, a place for “people like us.” The reader is left with the impression that this “I” may be deeply damaged and disturbed, but that there is hope for a sense of belonging if not a full recovery.

Analysis

Jesus’ Son is a mixture of blurry and confused memoir, fiction, and highly poetic prose. The stories work together and form an ironically coherent narrative following the lives of several young men or, possibly, one through the ups and downs of addiction, violence, sobriety and love. It is considered one of Johnson’s finest, if not single finest, works.

The place to start with this collection is certainly point-of-view. The omnipresent ‘I,’ and yet the huge array of circumstances, characters, and places leads the reader to question just how many ‘I’s’ may be in play, or if this is merely the dissociative ramblings of one troubled young man. The title, Jesus’ Son, recalls the novel of Cormac McCarthy, Child of God – likewise about a troubled and possibly insane young man whose foibles and preferences would lead most, if not all, to call him deeply deviant. The choice of point of view asks the reader to listen as if every story is a first person historical account. The author creates an air of unreliability with the rambling and often disconnected nature of his descriptions, but establishes trust by the beautiful and oddly poignant nature of his musings.

Though this ‘I’ is a generally mysterious figure, the reader gets a strong sense of his personality, worldviews, and way of making events mean to him. Beyond our protagonist, more aptly described as an antihero, the other players are richly characterized. The family from “Car Crash,” Wayne from “Work,” and the ensemble cast from “Beverly Home” are all described in beautiful and full detail. The reader is offered a good sense of not only who they are but also how they effect the protagonist which, given the first person perspective is ultimately the most important aspect of their characters. For example in “Work,” which is essentially Wayne’s story, ‘I’ reflects,“Usually we felt guilty and frightened, because there was something wrong with us, and we didn’t know what it was; but today we had the feeling of men who had worked.” and given the horror, dilapidation, and deviancy of many of the stories it is clear that within this story there is a turning point in the greater collection. It is no accident that this story falls very near the middle of the book. Key aspects of a secondary character’s life that could just as easily have been ignored by a lesser author become critical to the ultimate roundness of our protagonist over the course of the collection. Johnson also uses characterization to brilliant effect in “Beverly,” whereby his descriptions, he shows that our narrator is actually seeing people for more than what they are to him, but who they are as individuals that exist outside of his own perverted existence.

The use of characters in “Beverly’ helps to establish a sense of the home. But there is more to a sense of place than just a building or a community. Throughout the novel the reader follows this ‘I’ through several locales, whether it be rural Iowa, Seattle proper, or urban Phoenix – and in every instance the author makes the locations real for the reader. More than just a sense of trust, the author makes the landscape, people, and places palpable, visible, and almost real. Though the stories themselves are outlandish, by establishing a strong sense of places they are endowed with a realism that would be lost on a more universalized story.

Johnson uses dialogue to a similar effect. The dialogue in his stories is genuine and very believable. He dabbles in colloquialisms while maintaining a high degree of readability. The narrator looking back on his misadventures has a degree of separation that allows him to apply significance to events that the speaking character is unaware of, though that actor frequently speaks with a depth that betrays his more philosophical inclination. Johnson also uses dialogue to advance the plot and develop the characters. In several stories in the collection characters developed in other stories talk extensively, and dialogue actually outweighs narration. It is only through Johnson’s expert craftsmanship that these stories can stand on their own. A reader can absolutely trust that Johnson knows his character well enough to speak for and through them and their voices come out loud and clear to the reader.

The facet of Johnson’s craftsmanship that sets him above and beyond many other authors is his prose. I have a personal penchant for poetic prose and some of Johnson’s more flamboyant flourishes are truly amazing. The creativity displayed in his figurative language is second to none, and surprising, yet apt turns of phrase wait on every page. His tone syncs flawlessly with the content. The rather bleak message and feel of “car crash” is so different from the more hopeful meaning and sound of “Beverly home.” Through the use of tone and language alone the reader gets a sense of “I’s” transformation – the feel of the prose matches the content of the stories beautifully. If I read only a few snippets of Johnson’s prose it would be enough to entice me to read the rest of his collection. For this reason, I offer several examples of his command and awareness of language. In this excerpt from “Car Crash,” Johnsons tackles two of the major themes in the collection and describes something horrifically ugly in an astoundingly beautiful way:

“His blood bubbled out of his mouth with every breath. He wouldn’t be taking many more. I knew that, but he didn’t, 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.” (8)

Notice the scope he captures with his word choice. “The great pity” and “on this earth” engorge this sentence with a wider and more potent meaning than the narrator or author or reader could ever find without each other. Also note the cadence of his words. The rhythm and pacing of his sentences reads almost like poetry. The form is collapsed but the words carry the reader in the same way. Take the following excerpt from “Work,” where Johnson constructs an extended metaphor out of a fight avoided and likens it to a special post-coital feeling:

“Our naked bodies started glowing, and the air turned such a strange color I thought my life must be leaving me, and with every young fiber and cell I wanted to hold on to it for another breath. A clattering sound was tearing up my head as I staggered upright and opened the door on a vision I will never see again: Where are my women now, with their sweet wet words and ways, and the miraculous balls of hail popping in a green translucence in the yards?” (52)

Some might call Johnson’s style ostentatious, but these flourishes are rare and always used to great effect. “Tearing up my head” and “hail popping in a green translucence” are creative and beautiful turns of phrase that are not only surprising, even bracing, but also highly unique use of the words – a sort of neologism of syntax. Consider finally this excerpt from “Beverly Home,” where in a single sentence Johnson endows a number of basic simple setting details with a meaning all his own.

She didn’t move for a while, not perhaps for a full minute, which seemed like a very long time to me out side in the dark with a great loneliness and the terror of a whole life not yet lived, and the TVs and garden sprinklers making the noises of a thousand lives never to be lived, and the cars going by with the sound of passage, movement, untouchable, uncatchable.(130)

Johnsons does not use run-ons very much, but when he does, they pack a punch. This climactic moment in the voyeur story arc is action-wise essentially dull. Johnson shows the reader that this is a critical moment with his sentence structure, word choice, and recollection of motifs.

Time and time again, while reading Jesus’ Son I had to pause and breathe. The language alone is enough to take one’s breath away, but the stories pry directly at the heartstrings of anyone who has been an addict or known addiction second-hand. Over the course of the collection Johnson takes his readers on a journey that begins with a resigned indifference to hopelessness and ends with just a hint of self-acceptance and belonging. This collection was dark, moving, and extremely powerful. Johnson’s command of and obvious affection for language whisk the reader into a seedy world that has just the faintest hint of a silver lining. It is remarkable yet believable, disheartening yet empowering, and ultimately, it is horrifically beautiful.

Works Cited

1. Jesse McKinley, "A Prodigal Son Turned Novelist Turns Playwright", The New York Times, June 16, 2002.
2. Barbara Chai, "Denis Johnson: The Gregarious Recluse", The Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2012.
3. David Amsden, "Denis Johnson's Second Stage", New York, 2010.
4. David Ulin, “Denis Johnson is back, with first published story in years”,Los Angeles Times, 2014
5. Denis Johnson, “Jesus’ Son”, Picador. New York. 1992.
6. “The Pulitzer Prizes.”
7. “Good Reads.”
8. “MacMillan Publishers.”