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Jesus' Son: Stories by | 
| Author: Denis Johnson
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $12.00
Buy Used: $9.75
You Save: $2.25 (19%)
Rating:  93 reviews
Sales Rank: 41555
Media: Paperback
Pages: 176
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.6
ISBN: 0060975776
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780060975777
ASIN: 0060975776
Publication Date: December 15, 1993
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
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
Product Description
An intense collection of interconnected stories that portray life through the eyes of a young man in a small Iowa town, by the author of Already Dead: A California Gothic, Angels and Resuscitation of a Hanged Man.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 88 more reviews...
 Some of the most brilliant prose you can ever hope to find November 23, 2008
Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA)
Although Denis Johnson's JESUS' SON is often compared to Charles Bukowski, I think this is profoundly unfair to Johnson; he is a far better writer. The two writers feature similar characters in their stories, but Johnson has a gift for language that has seldom been seen. His is the art of the perfect sentence, the perfect, surprising, shocking word.
The stories are very, very loosely linked stories that could well feature the same narrator. A couple of the stories reference events in early ones, and there is nothing to forbid our seeing the same person at the center of each story. The narrative voice is consistent throughout. It is possible that Johnson has confirmed that all the stories are given us by the same character. Certainly the same kinds of problems emerge in each. These are tales of people barely getting by, hardly making a living, surviving slightly above the raw subsistence level. Broken and battered people haunt every story. Drugs, alcohol, and random, often accidental violence run through the tales.
All of this is good, but what makes the stories so thrilling for me is Johnson's mastery of language. I underline in pencil while I read. In nonfiction books I'll underline sentence after sentence, sometime entire paragraphs, later picking the book up after I have finished it to reread the passages that stood out for me at the time. I rarely underline fiction, however. One of the exceptions is JESUS' SON. Many of the sentences have the intensity of poetry. Most novel and short story writers we tend to read sentence by sentence, but Johnson you read word by word, as you would a poet.
Children of loneness April 23, 2008
Alysson Oliveira (Sao Paulo-- Brazil)
In Denis Johnson's stunning collection of short stories "Jesus' Son", there is an image that stays with you most of the time. This is the picture of loneness and desolation. In one of the best tales, called "Emergency", the main character whose name goes by FH and a friend drive through the country. They eventually find a drive-in. But the weather is awful and there is no one in there - even though there is a movie being played. Johnson's description of this place is the combination of beauty and sadness.
Since the writer has a natural ability to construct both metaphors and harrowing images the scene is depressive and, at the same time, powerful, uplifting. "Famous movie stars rode bicycles beside a river, laughing out their gigantic, lovely mouths. If anybody had come to see this show, they'd left when the weather started. Not one car remained, not even a broken-down on from last week, or one left here because it was out if gas. In a couple of minutes, in the middle of a whirling square dance, the screen turned black, the cinematic summer ended, the snow went dark, there was nothing but my breath'.
But before this, while FH was riding around this deserted part of the world, he though he saw angels - had a vision. This was just Johnson's build up for something stronger, a primal screen for the ending of loneness. The narrator is never still, he is always in motion, and no matter where he goes, he is always surrounded by depressed and depressive souls.
The collection title comes from a Lou Reed's song called "Heroin". Addiction is part of the narrator's life - an important part, it brings people close and tear them apart. While trying to recover - without putting much thought on it - readers have a glimpse of a possibility of a better life, of something less sad and depressive. It is a drop of hope in a nightmare ocean of sadness.
 I read the first couple stories... March 11, 2008
Zelie Nic (Pittsburgh)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
More than the actual stories, I think what's most impressive about Johnson's writing is his fragmented approach to time. Consider the first story, "Wreck While Hitchhiking" if you will. While some people may suspect that the prevalence of drugs is an attempt to shock, and thereby gain sales, I suspect that it has more to do with the secret growing casualness society has with narcotics.
I borrowed this book for a night. I was only able to read the first three stories (the first, concerning the wreck was my favorite)but the disorder of timestuck with me. I'd pick up another Denis Johnson book if I come accross it.
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