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Title: Jesus' Son: Stories by Denis Johnson ISBN: 0-06-097577-6 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 December, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.63 (60 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: depressing and hopeless despite Johnson's apparent genius.
Comment: Jesus' Son is a terribly depressing and hopeless work. Mr. Johnson shows us a vision of America through the eyes of a (sadly) postmodern character: burnt out, a criminal and an adict.
Despite the hopelessness, I remained enthralled by what I suppose to be Mr. Johnson's skillfull turning of English and his seeming struggle to evince meaning from a meaningless world.
The final story I thought ALMOST made the entire reading worthwhile. Mr. Johnson presents his junkie protagonist fighting to escape the quagmire of depravity, convinced of the reality of (at least) beauty, and in the midst of rehab. Through his peeping-tom-ish final escapade, Mr. Johnson, through his character, gives the reader a refreshing and unique picture of the Universal Man and His creature, if as Aquinas says, it is disquised as the creature's longing for joy.
In the end, I don't feel myself better off for having read this book. I don't deny Mr. Johnson's genius (he is one of the best writers I have read in a while), but most of these stories are depressingly depraved and hopeless. It is, sadly, a marvelous depiction of the end result of postmodern American culture.
My recomendation: pick up the book and read the first and (particularly) last stories. It will save you a week or so of suicidal tendancies.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great, original stories; Quick to read
Comment: Jesus' Son is a loosely-tied collection of short stories about the underside of the Mid- and Southwest. In most of them, the narrator is a strung-out twenty-something hospital worker who is either always looking for drugs, or hanging out with people who already found them.
Johnson does a great job intermingling beautiful language with tales of drug-addled losers who constantly fail themselves at every turn. His narrator's voice (always first-person) is genuine and engaging, never condescending. Where other authors struggle with matching less-educated narrators with their own writing skills, Johnson thrives, allowing his narrator to use subtly profound images without seeming authorially over-bearing.
Perhaps the book's greatest asset is its originality. No one else is writing about these people, and Johnson writes with the perspective of someone who has lived (grown?) among them. His portraits of hospital orderlies and back-country heroin addicts are windows on a world most readers will never approach, and that is exactly what books like this are for.
You can't really ask for much more in a short story collection -- interesting characters, original plots and settings, and varied explorations of a few themes, all drawn with subtly careful language.
In taking some settings that we all have unquestioned stereotypes about -- the midwest and hospitals, for example -- and scratching the surface, Johnson provides us with stories that almost *have* to be interesting. What happens when you follow someone home on the subway? What happens when you hide in some bushes, and watch a married couple eat dinner, every night? Johnson imagines some great answers to these questions.
In this way, he seems to have something in common with AM Homes, who writes about similar situations involving well-to-do suburbanites. But Johnson trades the soccer moms for people who escape easy type-casting, and thus, are mostly forgotten and ignored.
The book is an incredibly fast read -- you can probably get through the whole thing in about 2 1/2 hours, maybe less.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Compelling Classic
Comment: I'm not usually a reader 'high literature' and yet I found myself completely sucked into this collection of short stories about a perpetual screw up. The writing is minimalist, so every word counts. There were times when I thought a story was underwritten, but overall I found myself holding on to this book after I read it. I won't even lend it out! It's definitely a book I will read again. Also check out The Losers' Club by Richard Perez, [email protected] (a medicated memoir) by Tom Grimes (which Denis Johnson recommends, too).
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Title: Reasons to Live: Stories by Amy Hempel ISBN: 0060976721 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.50 |
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Title: The Contortionist's Handbook by Craig Clevenger ISBN: 1931561486 Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.50 |
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Title: TUMBLE HOME: A NOVELLA AND SHORT STORIES by Amy Hempel ISBN: 0684838877 Publisher: Scribner Book Company Pub. Date: 01 May, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title:Jesus' Son ASIN: B00009MEBE Publisher: Lions Gate Home Ente Pub. Date: 22 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $13.48 |
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Title: Fiskadoro by Denis Johnson ISBN: 0060976098 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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