an urgent request for ann - re: denis johnson.

all of it.

why do i like denis johnson?

when he is on form he can capture the ennui of modern living of people who are saddled with problems which i see as recognisable: junkies, trash, grief, etc. like in jesus' son ,angel and name of the world.

other times he veers into the experimental which can succeed and fail with 'hangman' and 'already dead' - though i personally enjoyed the surreal black comedy of 'already dead' - people who read it on my recommendation mention what you've had - problem areas with johnson - re: total abandonment of structure mid-way through, no development and lack of editing.

but i think that is the failure of hangman and at times - jesus' son. i really enjoyed 'already dead' - it had this strange amped up/buster keaton sense of comedy running through it like a cocained quasi tragedy.

but then again maybe that is why i enjoy the johnson writing - he is, at times, able to capture america, as it is and as it wants to be. does that make sense?

so

I am supremely bummed that I slacked on each part of this theater trilogy over the past three years since they all opened in San Francisco.

Train Dreams, which I just finished ten minutes ago, is wild and beautiful and unlike anything I've ever read.

In spite of its compelling and strange wildness and beauty It's still possible to take a step back and wonder "how is this being done?" In 116 widely spaced pages, how is it even possible that I can know Robert Grainier inside out and know the lives of people he came into contact with and think about geography and civilisation and progress and how to strip a tree and build a railway and bury a man and touch the unknowable spiritual darknesses of all of the many people in the novel. It's truly incredible. It has the strangest most exact ending. I'm so happy that I read this!

just heard "emergency" on the new yorker short story podcast. read by tobias wolf. kind of incredible, i know one or two other stories but i will be reading more denis johnson now.

checked this guy out due to Jed's post above and yeah Train Dreams is really good

I just finished Tree of Smoke and thought it was pretty fantastic

http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/stories-week-2014-2015/emergency-denis-johnson

RIP :(

ahh, shit - really liked this guy's writing

one of my favourites, poetry and his short fiction. jesus' son is a book you can keep coming back to.

Good stories of taking a workshop with him:

I was lucky to be in Denis Johnson's workshop at the Michener Center two years ago. He was an unorthodox and beloved teacher. Some memories:

— Kelly Luce (@lucekel) May 26, 2017

friend posted his poem a monk's insomnia on fb, and the "but it's terror..." lines had me breathless:

The monastery is quiet. Seconal
drifts down upon it from the moon.
I can see the lights
of the city I came from,
can remember how a boy sets out
like something thrown from the furnace
of a star. In the conflagration of memory
my people sit on green benches in the park,
terrified, evil, broken by love—
to sit with them inside that invisible fire
of hours day after day while the shadow of the milk
billboard crawled across the street
seemed impossible, but how
was it different from here,
where they have one day they play over
and over as if they think
it is our favorite, and we stay
for our natural lives,
a phrase that conjures up the sun’s
dark ash adrift after ten billion years
of unconsolable burning? Brother Thomas’
schoolgirl obsession with the cheap
doings of TV starlets breaks
everybody’s heart, and the yellow sap
of one particular race of cactus grows
tragic for the fascination in which
it imprisons Brother Toby—I can’t witness
his slavering and relating how it can be changed
into some unprecedented kind of plastic—
and the monastery refuses
to say where it is taking us. At night
we hear the trainers from the base
down there, and see them blotting out the stars,
and I stand on the hill and listen, bone-white with desire.
It was love that sent me on the journey,
love that called me home. But it’s terror
of being just one person—one chance, one set of days—
that keeps me absolutely still and makes me listen
intently to those young men above us
flying in their airplanes in the dark.

ty for posting ^
a great poet

is TOS worth the read?

i haven't ever read the whole thing but everything i know's great-

Surreptitious Kissing

I want to say that
forgiveness keeps on

dividing, that hope
gives issue to hope,

and more, but of course I
am saying what is

said when in this dark
hallway one encounters

you, and paws and
assaults you—love

affairs, fast lies—and you
say it back and we

blunder deeper, as would
any pair of loosed

marionettess, any couple
of cadavers cut lately

from the scaffold,
in the secluded hallways

of whatever is
holding us up now.

that's beautiful, thx

I like Tree of Smoke a lot. It isn't a particularly arduous read, so yeah I'd say it was worth it. RIP.

https://www.92y.org/event/a-memorial-for-denis-johnson
october 2 - With Arthur Bradford, Kevin Corrigan, Billy Crudup, Michael Cunningham, Michael Cryer, Michael Dickman, Neal Huff, Emily McDonnell, Sam Messer, Deirdre O’Connell, Will Patton, Michael Shannon, J. Ryan Stradal and others

got a bunch of his short novels out from the library, looking forward to em (if i ever get a chance to read this semester)

the rehab story in "Largesse Of The Sea Maiden" has totally destroyed me. amazing.

Bought Train Dreams, just started.

Train Dreams is great.

i really enjoyed 'already dead' - it had this strange amped up/buster keaton sense of comedy running through it like a cocained quasi tragedy.

I just finished this and would really like to talk about it w/ other readers? basically a black comedy about literal demonic possession...

this is the only Denis Johnson thread, wtf

I'm reading The Largesse of the Sea Maiden!

the rehab story in that is so, so good

Denis Johnson was my friend's mother's boyfriend when he was young. I gave him a ride to the airport once--he was pretty chill.

read and loved train dreams earlier this year, struggling hard with jesus's son. idk if that is what i need now lol. is there another place i should go instead? tree of smoke?

I'd say Largesse Of The Sea Maiden maybe?

^^^ or The Name of the World, or Angels. Tree of Smoke has stuck with me a lot less over the years, though if Jesus's Son is not working for you. . . Tree of Smoke might

seconding Largesse.

jesus' son is pretty sure, i might power through.

I am maybe the only hardcore stan for Already Dead on this board, but I am a hardcore stan for it. Marijuana, psychosis, the California coast

yeah I like that one, the longest one I've read I think

I loved Tree of Smoke but it is a bit of a commitment, especially since it doesn’t really blossom until 2/3 in, but when it does it really comes together nicely. Really liked Largesse too.

oh man that's funny y'all i did not enjoy Already Dead at all but i will not be yucking your yum.

If you don't like Jesus's Son I wouldn't recommend Largesse Of The Sea Maiden. It's literally if loosely a sequel to that. Seems sad anyone wouldn't like Jesus's Son tho.

His poetry is pretty cool, worth checking out.

i love jesus son, perfect book

already dead is good too but doesnt have the same attention to detail

I am maybe the only hardcore stan for Already Dead on this board, but I am a hardcore stan for it. Marijuana, psychosis, the California coast

― a tv star not a dirty computer man (the table is the table), Tuesday, October 14, 2025 6:52 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

tc boyles budding prospects takes place in that same milieu, pretty good book imho

TC Boyle’s schtick kinda wore on me— seems like his last five novels have been about the excesses of hippiedom in some way or another. Just a little staid.

I love “World’s End,” tho, his novel about colonial era New York. Great book

i’ve settled into jesus’ son a bit more, enjoyed the chapters about wayne and georgie and the guy with the knife in his eye.

the first couple stories just struck me as gruesome for gruesomeness sake, but now they feels like a necessary immersion into the world fuckhead lives in.

The writing is just so beautiful at times. I was recommending it to someone recently and it can feel a bit like a cheesy recommendation, "oh this book from the nineties about a drug addict is so great", but the strange religious feeling to it and how effortlessly sad and sometimes profound it feels is unique.

I vibed with Resuscitation of a Hanged Man recently. One of his most hapless protagonists.

Haven't read Johnson yet but the film of Train Dreams out in a few weeks is beautiful. Appreciate the soundtrack by Bryce from the National, and a theme song by Nick Cave might not be to all tastes, and at times it's a comes on like a longform, transcendentalist Grizzly Adams, but the film feels oddly like a prequel to Nickel Boys in its imagistic rapture.