Jesus' Son [ペーパーバック]

Palahniuk's endorsement was good enough for me. Any book that someone has read more than two hundred times must be worthwhile, or at least worth taking a look at. Besides, this remarkable collection of short stories is only 160 pages long, the pages are small (I measured it and it was about 7' x 4'), and there are not many words on each page. It doesn't take long to read. If it matters, I also always knew Denis Johnson was out there, a highly regarded poet and novelist, ever since 'Fiskadoro' had been published more than a decade ago. I had to read something by him sometime.

I sat down last night and started reading 'Jesus' Son' and didn't put it down until I was finished. It didn't take me long and was worth every minute. 'Jesus' Son' contains eleven short stories, all written in the first person, all connected by the common voice of the same narrator, a young, strung-out misfit whose pathology permeates every story. The stories are grim, just like the dark, desperate life of the narrator, just like the violent, disconnected, drug-clouded lives of the people who surround him. They are stories in which the narrator seemingly transcends his life, his drug- and alcohol-induced cloud of unknowing illuminating an at times crystalline-pure vision of the world. The physical world becomes continuous with the mental world in rushes of stunning prose. Thus, in 'Car Crash While Hitchhiking,' Johnson's narrator, sitting in the back of a car: 'Under Midwestern clouds like great grey brains we left the superhighway with a drifting sensation and entered Kansas City's rush hour with a sensation of running aground.' And later, while in a hospital emergency room, his mind drifts in a kind of hallucinatory fugue: 'It was raining. Gigantic ferns leaned over us. The forest drifted down a hill. I could hear a creek rushing down rocks. And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.'

The writing is brilliant, attaining remarkable heights of intensity and clarity. At the same time, the characters and the events are dark and disturbing, the narrative interrupted and discontinuous. There is drug addiction, alcoholism, violence, torture, murder, voyeurism. There is a disturbing coldness, but also a profound clarity. It is writing from the bowels of life, writing that achieves its power through prose that is as hard, as pure, as the finest diamond. 'Jesus' Son' is not an upbeat collection of stories, but it is resplendent with a writing style and an imagination that celebrates the power of fiction written with stark feeling, written so it reflects the real lives of its desperate characters.

What this book does, better than any other book I've read, is capture the beauty and tragedy of these lost lives. Johnson is great at imagery, whether the misty, sunlit dive bar on a rickety pier, or the deserted drive-in in the snow. He's also great at writing from the inside of these characters-- their tragic worldview makes sense through their eyes. The hallucinatory beauty of these "prose-poems" goes hand-in-hand with the altered perceptions of the characters-- these people live as if in a dream state.

If you're ready to write off people on the fringes of society, then you probably won't appreciate this book. Like he did in "Angels," Johnson takes these forgotten people, and makes them live and breathe on the page. Many times, his characters seem more truly alive than those who would write them off or forget about them.