Thursday nights I usually went to an AA meeting in an Episcopal church’s basement. We sat around collapsible tables looking very much like people stuck in a swamp—slapping at invisible things, shifting, squirming, scratching, rubbing the flesh of our arms and our necks.
When Denis Johnson received the Library of Congress Prize for American fiction two months before his death in 2017, he was lauded as a writer for our times whose prose fused grace with grit. (Watch the dedication here.) Johnson himself described his works as pressure cookers of language, a great image for its evocation of boiled dinners commingling whatever’s in the fridge. His linked short stories about drug-addled drifters and disabused dreamers paint the duality of humanity from perspectives rarely voiced with sympathy. Here the need for self-preservation sabotages the wish for love; a care-giver can be a hero by day and a peeping Tom by night; and where a girl with virginal sadness can also be a torn-up trollop.
To sample Johnson’s blend of surreal disquietude and unexpected humor, watch this clip, “A Stabbing Headache”, from the 1999 film starring Billy Crudup and Jack Black , a film that appears, from the online excerpts, to veer closer to the Nineties stoner-vibe than to the timeless desperation of the book whose characters walk a fine line between damnation and hope.
Combining the candid punch of Colum McCann with the descriptive power of Wallace Stegner, this tiny gem of a novel (at 133 pocket-sized pages in the Picador Modern Classics edition) promises a trip as unforgettable as his “Biggest pill I’ve ever seen”. Also available on Audible.com paired with Train Dreams (5 ½ hours), and perfectly narrated by Will Patton.