- Audio CD
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio; Unabridged edition (Oct 13 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 142720571X
- ISBN-13: 978-1427205711
- Product Dimensions: 15.2 x 13 x 1.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 113 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,521,487 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
The unnamed narrator in Jesus' Son lives through a car wreck and a heroin overdose. Is he blessed? He cheats, lies, steals--but possesses a child's (or a mystic's) uncanny way of expressing the bare essence of things around him. In its own strange and luminous way, this linked collection of short fiction does the same. The stories follow characters who are seemingly marginalized beyond hope, drifting through a narcotic haze of ennui, failed relationships, and petty crime. In "Dundun" the narrator decides to take a shooting victim to the hospital, though not for the usual reasons: "I wanted to be the one who saw it through and got McInnes to the doctor without a wreck. People would talk about it, and I hoped I would be liked." Later he takes his own pathetic stab at violence in "The Other Man," attempting to avenge a drug rip-off but succeeding only at terrorizing an innocent family. Each meandering story--some utterly lacking in the usual elements of plot, including a beginning and an end--nonetheless demands compulsive reading, with Denis Johnson's first calling as a poet apparent in the off-kilter beauty of his prose. Open to any page and gems spill forth: "I knew every raindrop by its name. I sensed everything before it happened. I knew a certain Oldsmobile would stop for me even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside that we'd have an accident in the storm."
The most successful stories in the collection offer moments of startling clarity. In "Car Crash While Hitchhiking," for instance, the narrator feels most alive while in the presence of another's loss: "Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead.... What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere." In "Work," while "salvaging" copper wire from a flooded house to fund their habits, the narrator and an acquaintance stop to watch the nearly unfathomable sight of a beautiful, naked woman paragliding up the river. Later the narrator learns that the house once belonged to his down-and-out accomplice and that the woman is his estranged wife. "As nearly as I could tell, I'd wandered into some sort of dream that Wayne was having about his wife, and his house," he reasons. Such is the experience for the reader. More Genet than Bukowski, Denis Johnson lures us into a misfit soul's dream from which he can't awake. --Langdon Cook --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Taking its title from a line in Lou Reed's notorious song "Heroin," this story collection by with-it novelist Johnson focuses on the familiar themes of addiction and recovery. In his novels ( Angels ; Resuscitation of a Hanged Man ) Johnson has shown his ability to transform the commonplace into the extraordinary, but this volume of 11 stories is no better than, and often seems inferior to, the self-destruction/spiritual rehab books currently crowding bookstore shelves. All of the tales, set in the Midwest and West, are told by a single narrator, and while this should provide unity and depth, instead it makes the stories fragmentary and monotonous. Some disturbing moments do recall Johnson at his inventive best, as when a peeping Tom catches sight of a Mennonite man washing his wife's feet after a marital spat in "Beverly Home," or when the narrator 'fesses up to his fright in a confrontation with the boyfriend--"a mean, skinny, intelligent man who I happened to feel inferior to"--of a woman he's fondling in "Two Men." But for the most part the stories are neurasthenic, as though Johnson hopes the shock value of characters fatally overdosing in the presence of lovers and friends will substitute for creativity and hard work from him. Even the dialogue for the most part lacks Johnson's usual energy.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
A salesman who shared his liquor and steered while sleeping... A Cherokee filled with bourbon... A VW no more than a bubble of hashish fumes, captained by a college student... Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
A salesman who shared his liquor and steered while sleeping... A Cherokee filled with bourbon... A VW no more than a bubble of hashish fumes, captained by a college student... Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Lost in A Drug-like World,
By
This review is from: Jesus' Son: Stories by (Paperback)
This was seen on a recommended list by a somewhat famous author. I was sadly disappointed. The book had a number of short stories of which NONE inspired me. One of the stories mentions how one can't just sit on the bus as 'you've got to have a destination'. It's too bad the author of this book had no true destination. I was simply lost in nonsense. Don't give this your time--it's a waste of time. I felt the same way the author did on the last page of the book when he wrote 'Sometimes I heard voices muttering in my head, and a lot of the time the world seemed to smolder around its edges'. That's for sure...what a shame.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heroin, beutiful,
By
This review is from: Jesus' Son: Stories by (Paperback)
Absolutely entrancing book. I'm already halfway done my second reading of the book this week. Johnson's prose is electric and hard hitting. As with most of the best writers, what he doesn't say is as enticing as what he says.Lucid, clear, yet muffled and hallucinatory. A truly fantastic and beautiful book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Worth You Time!,
By Robert Salas (Clemson, SC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Jesus' Son: Stories by (Paperback)
Jesus' Son: stories / by Denis Johnson is a collection of short stories by Denis Johnson. The stories center around the meanderings of a heroin junkie--a dude named F'head (Apostrophes signal omissions, okay?)--who never really knows where he is, or what's going on. Like the protagonist in the movie Trainspotting, which is very similar to Jesus' Son, F'head realizes his life is going nowhere, but he finds himself trapped in a cycle of hopelessness and addiction and fantasy. And I quote: "I'm not ready to go into all that," I said. A yellow bird fluttered close to my face, and my muscles grabbed. Now I was flopping like a fish. When I squeezed shut my eyes, tears exploded from the sockets. When I opened them, I was on my stomach." p.12. F'head's friends, Tom, Richard, Jack Hotel, hang out at a shady bar called The Vine and get involved in junkie intrigue: shootings, pill-poppings, and meetings to hatch petty heists. Much of the miserableness starts there. Later (earlier?), F'head works as an orderly in a hospital and a nursing home. As a narrator, F'head is incredibly unreliable, sprinkling hallucinations into his stories, telling stories that he later realizes never happened, and often going "unstuck" in time, Vonnegut-style, throwing any sense of continuity right out the window. Knock, knock. Who's there? A surrealist. A surrealist who? Banana. Like that, just smarter and silly-less. Denis Johnson's prose is magnificent. Look: "...this afternoon was the best of those times. We had money. We were grimy and tired. 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." p. 65. Jesus' Son's F'head is probably the most sympathetic anti-hero you'll find. You'll laugh at the dead-on dialogue, smile at F'head's innocence, sympathize with his loneliness, wonder at the wonderfulness of the writing, and act out any other verb that can be associated with a butt-busting good read. Warning: Jesus' Son contains lots of profanity and random violence -- just like in real life. If that is the kind of stuff that bothers you, then you should definitely stay away from this great book. If not, definitely check it out! Another Amazon pick I need to mention, lighter and funnier in tone, is The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition by Richard Perez, a fun novel I've already read twice this one week.
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