Denis Johnson: Jesus' Son

The Man and Author

Born in Munich, West Germany, in 1949, Denis Johnson is an acclaimed short story writer, novelist, poet, and playwright. Despite not being born in the U.S., he has been a U.S. citizen since birth. The majority of his childhood was spent in Tokyo, Manila, and ultimately Washington, D.C.

While his father’s work with the U.S. State Department stationed the family in the Philippines, Johnson began experimenting with alcohol. He was only fourteen at the time, but without drinking age regulation he quickly became more than partial to rum. Eventually Johnson’s alcohol use intensified and turned into full blown abuse over the coming years. Despite the dependency he did make his way to college.

He earned his Masters' of Fine Arts degree at the University of Iowa, which has one of the strongest writing programs in the U.S. During his time spent at Iowa Johnson spent a good deal of time drinking with his alcoholic professor, Raymond Carver, the famous short story writer. During this time at Idaho Johnson was briefly hospitalized for his alcoholism.

Johnson was hospitalized for his alcoholism two more times after graduating, but he was always able to rationalize his behavior with the idea that sobering up would adversely affect his creativity. He turned out to be wrong about this, and in 1983, he published his first novel, Angels, which was also his first work of sobriety. Success followed, and he received the Whiting Writer’s Award in 1986, as well as the. Lannan Fellowship in Fiction in 1993. In 2002 Johnson awarded the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from The Paris Review.

In 2006 Johnson was named theMitte Chair in creative writing at Texas State University during his year as a visiting writer, and in the following year his most renowned novel, Tree of Smoke, was published, won a National Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Johnson has two kids, whom he has homeschooled, and he is in his third marriage. He lives in Idaho or Arizona depending on the time of the year, and he still frequents addiction support groups. In an interview with New York Times Magazine, he says, "I was addicted to everything. Now I just drink a lot of coffee."

Chronological Bibliography

Johnson, Denis. The Man Among the Seals. Iowa City: Stone Wall Press, 1969. Print.

The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly. New York: HarperCollins, 1969. Print.

Inner Weather. Los Angeles: Graywolf Press, 1976. Print.

The Incognito Lounge. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon, 1982. Print.

Angels. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983. Print.

Stars at Noon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986. Print.

The Veil: Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987. Print.

Jesus' Son: Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992. Print.

Fiskadoro. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Print.

“An Anarchist’s Guide to Somalia” (story). Open City 4 (1996): 89-116. Print.

Already Dead: A California Gothic. New York: HarperCollins, 1998. Print

The Name of the World. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. Print.

Hellhound on My Trail. San Francisco: McSweeney's Quarterly, 2000. Print.

Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Print.

Resuscitation of a Hanged Man. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Print.

Soul of a Whore: Act I. San Francisco: McSweeney's Quarterly, 2002. Print.

Shoppers: Two Plays. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Print.

“Train Dreams” (Novella). The Paris Review 162 (2002). Print.

Soul of a Whore: Act II. San Francisco: McSweeney's Quarterly, 2003. Print.

Soul of a Whore: Act III. San Francisco: McSweeney's Quarterly, 2004. Print.

Purvis. San Francisco: Intersection for the Arts, 2006.

Tree of Smoke. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print.

Des Moines. San Francisco: Intersection for the Arts, 2007. Script.

Everything Has Been Arranged. San Francisco: Intersection for the Arts, 2007. Script.

Nobody Move. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. Print.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Jesus' Son

Jesus’ Son is an episodic journey into a substance abused existence. The main Character, Fuckhead, is an alcoholic, heroin-addicted drifter. The novel is composed of eleven stories, of which ten involve the mischief that comes along with drug use. The eleventh story acts as a resolution, Fuckhead seems to have found some peace in welcoming the positive side effects of sobriety.

One of the strong points of Johnson’s writing is that he pulls the reader into that world of addiction. Drugs aren’t romanticized, and altered states don’t represent any sort escape from the real world. Because the story focuses on the addict from the addict’s perspective there is no real interaction with what one might consider an ordinary person. Instead the addict is ordinary, and there is nothing beyond the world of drugs and alcohol. Only at the end does the concept of ordinary really play any part of the story. While attending an addiction meeting a member asks, “did you ever think: Behind those curtains, people are leading normal, happy lives?”(p. 151). The entirety of the episode involves Fuckhead actually visiting a house and spying into the windows trying to absorb what normal life is like. While he started by simply watching the wife come out of the shower, he later found that just watching the people interact was far more gratifying.

Most of the episodes involve the casual deaths random addicts who overdose, or take an accidental bullet in the gut. Fuckhead’s narration leads the reader to understand death as that necessary next step; the inevitable drug-induced demise. Johnson doesn’t treat any death as a serious matter however; he gives it little more than passing mention. At one point Fuckhead is driving his injured friend to the hospital because he is the only one in the group not to have taken too many drugs. The friend dies a few minutes after departing, and Fuckhead simply says, “Throw him out of the car…I’m not taking him anywhere now.”(p. 50).

One of the themes in the novel is question of what an addict is—criminal, sinner, both? Johnson’s use of the ordinary couple that Fuckhead spies on as they interact behind their curtains, brings about the revelation at the end of the story—that ordinary people don’t really exist. What Johnson shows is that addicts live in one type of world, but everyone really lives in a different type of world as well. The couple being spied on have their own issues and eccentricities, and for them life is still a struggle. The difference with addicts is they trick themselves into giving up a greater percentage of their freedom than other types of people. Early in the novel Fuckhead admits what he sees as his metaphorical destiny: “We would die with handcuffs on.” (p. 39).

Besides being a semi-autobiographical parable about the dangers of substance abuse, the novel also provides another more general theme. An amoral participation in life appears to be treated as the most hazardous type of existence, but there is hope as long as there is still life. Fuckhead spends the majority of the novel diminishing spirituality and seemingly divine cues. Ultimately he is lucky enough to recognize that life can be worth living, and at that point he gains a reverence for the intrinsic value in life. At that point he is able to lament the death of his fellows, and reveal his humanity: “I was full of sweet pity for them…sad that they would never live again, drunk with sadness.” (p. 159).

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Scholarship on Denis Johnson

Hoffman, Alice. “Slumps and Tailspins.” The New York Times. (2 Oct. 1983). 6 June 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/02/books/slumps-and-tailspins.

Hoffman calls Angels “a dazzling and savage first novel.” It’s the story of an outsider who descends into madness, she says. Hoffman describes the book as terrifying, highly melodramatic. Her highest acclaim for the novel is what she describes as Johnson’s ability to portray desperation in its most extreme state.

Lewis, Jim. “The Revelator.” The New York Times. (2 Sept. 2007). 6 June 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/books/review/Lewis3.

Lewis comments on Johnson’s National Book Award-winning novel, Tree of Smoke, which is the prehistory to Johnson’s first novel, Angels. Lewis feels that the novel escalates Johnson to the level of “true American artist.” Despite the length of the novel, and it’s much written about theme—The Vietnam War—it is still a worthy read. Lewis says that the presentation of grief is almost unrivaled in American literature. Lewis does say that it is not a perfect book; he could have done without so much Rock’n’roll rhetoric and militaristic technicality

Miller, Michael. “Nobody Move.” Time Out New York 708 (2009). NewYork.TimeOut. 5 June 2009. http://newyork.timeout.com/

Miller discusses Johnson’s most recent novel, Nobody Move. He says that the plot involves a “gambling addict and all-around shady guy” who ends up shooting a thug, and teaming up with a “lush” thief amid the perils of escape. Miller notes that the story lacks the “creepy drug euphoria” or religious undertones that are so prevalent in his other works, which he feels is too great of an aberration to appeal to longtime Johnson fans.

Smith, Robert Mcclure. “Addiction and Recovery in Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son.” Critique 42 (2001). Questia. 5 June 2009. http://www.questia.com/

Smith talks about one of Johnson’s most recognizable works, Jesus’ Son, which is a collection of fictional tales that involve drug-addicts. Smith notes the accuracy and extent to which Johnson is able to portray the characters in the story. He also discusses a certain quality about the work that simulates a “narcotic affect” for the reader as they enter into “dislocations of perception.” Smith also points out that the narrator often has the inability to keep facts about his own life organized, which is an accurately produced trait that accompanies addicts’ dysfunctional behaviors.

Reception

Overall Johnson’s work has been received well. Hoffman, Smith, and Lewis all had a lot of good things to say about his ability to bring readers into a perspective that one might not ordinarily understand. The critics were slightly disappointed by his transition from the extremities of addictive and hallucinogenic perspective to what has become the more mild form of the addictive personality perspective. The most recent novel, Nobody Move, was given the least praise, however Johnson has been experimenting more as a playwright and this could be part of the mediocrity of this novel. Johnson began his career as a poet and transitioned to the short story, then the novel, and only time will tell whether or not he will fully move away from the novel and embrace theater.

Denis Johnson