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.
The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly.
Inner Weather.
The Incognito Lounge.
Angels.
Stars at Noon.
The Veil: Poems.
Jesus' Son: Stories.
Fiskadoro.
“An Anarchist’s Guide to
Already Dead: A
The Name of the World.
Hellhound on My Trail.
Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond.
Resuscitation of a Hanged
Soul of a Whore:
Shoppers: Two Plays.
“Train Dreams” (Novella). The
Soul of a Whore: Act II.
Soul of a Whore: Act III.
Purvis.
Tree of Smoke.
Everything Has Been Arranged.
Nobody Move.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Modernism or Postmondernism?
I saw this in Jesus' Son, an account of an addict looking for pleasure and finding that there can be more than that in life. For the main character that meaning comes when his sobered mind is able to grasp how the fragility of life is a gift to be treasured. He comes to find, with the help of others, that life doesn't have to consist of constant pleasure seeking, instead he finds that in building relationships and sustaining them there is a pleasure that transcends the high that drugs provide.
In modernism there has often been the attempt to find meaning, and work through the chaos, unlike postmodernism which doesn't attmept to solve the issues that arise out of chaos. Postmodernism often encompasses the understanding that it is better just to exist in the chaos and not try to make meaning out of meaninglessness. Much of postmodernism revolves around subjectivity and the individual's creation of meaning, which is something I think Johnson stays away from.
Johnson has a tendency to write parables set in his understanding of the world. for him there is an inherent meaning in the world that he holds to based on his ability to escape addiction. His writing doesn't leave a lot of questions for the reader, he present everything with a hint at God's existence, such that everything happens for some reason and in the end those reasons become more apparent.
The fact that Johnson was ble to overcome his addictions reveals his own ability to see hope within the chaos. I think the same story could be told through the eyes of someone who is unwilling or unable to break their drug habit, and that story would probably not consist of religious symbolism or real meaning. Thats what makes modernism the more suitable characterization for Johnson, he doesn't present the values of hedonism, but rather the ability of the individual to progress.
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