On "Happy Hour" by Denis Johnson (1590 words) ****

This short piece about drinking, scrounging by, and trying to score a certain woman expertly exhibits the kind of crazy randomness that rocks Johnson's stories. We're never sure quite where we're going to end up--perhaps popping horse meds. Read the story here at Granta.

On "Beverly Home" by Denis Johnson (5155 words) *****

The final tale in Johnson's collection of a drug-addled young man, this one focuses on his recovery. The piece examines sick people, which happens to be the job that the narrator has managed to find himself in. The deformed also happen to be the kind of people this man dates. But each night, he sneaks peeks at a seemingly normal couple, an ideal life, that he can only view through a window. What he comes to see is that we are all deformed in our own way. Read the story here at Revision 30.

On "Dundun" by Denis Johnson (1206 words) ****

It is possible that some people might be more messed up than the character at the center of Denis Johnson's stories in Jesus' Son. Here, that man, looking to be useful to others, gives a ride to a man who is on his way toward death, who has been shot, by a mutual acquaintance. But what the narrator finds is that deep beneath all this trouble, there is kindness, somewhere, inside each of us, even when it never shows. Read the story here.

On "Two Men" by Denis Johnson (3569 words) *****

Seemingly random, this story follows a set of druggies as they pick up a hitchhiker, try to get him home, realize that they do not know what they are doing, and then ends up somewhere more sinister than one could ever imagine at the start. And that's just the first man! Read the story here at the Short Story Project.

On "Emergency" by Denis Johnson (3569 words) *****

Georgie, the narrator's friends in this piece, is one of those characters that sticks in one's head. He's a drughead who seems only semiconscious of things going on around him but who somehow manages to make good repeatedly--not necessarily out of some sense of love or goodness, just out of sheer luck. He stands in contrast to the narrator, who tends to think of his life as falling apart, of himself as one who constantly messes things up for others. I was curious to know how Georgie would be portrayed in the film version, and I wasn't disappointed, though in some ways, that portrait now sticks in my head more than the one that was in my mind before. Georgie was a bit more subdued in my mind, whereas now he is always over the top. The story can be read here at Narrative Magazine.

On "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" by Denis Johnson (about 2000 words) *****

The first story in Johnson's collection Jesus' Son, this one features an unlikely set of flash forwards. It's a technique I'd never seen before, and Johnson makes it work--astoundingly. Read the story here.

On "Jesus' Son" by Denis Johnson *****

Having read this collection for the fourth or maybe sixth time but the first time in at least ten years and possibly eighteen, I am still astounded by it. It's writing that inspires--or at least, inspired. At one time, I wanted to write as well as Johnson does here, but I have come to see I never will. The collection is a work of poetry in short story form, full of beauty amid the squalor that is described.

I won't bother with a recitation of the contents, as the collection is best absorbed afresh with each reading, even if I generally remember the stories even ten years after the last reading. The book as a whole is about addiction, and it doesn't pretty up. It's a book about a misfit, a young man, coming apart and slowly getting things back together.

My first reading was while I was in graduate school. The book had come out maybe a year or two earlier. I'd seen it in the bookstores, been told how great it was. I found a remaindered copy, and I bought it. It probably took me a few months to get around to reading it. I was not pulled toward it by others' love for it. But once I started reading, it was one of those reading experiences that changes the way one sees the story. I read it again soon after. I read pieces of it separately in other collections, astounded by the individual stories.

I read it again, I know, right after the movie came out. I suspect I read it sometime since then, but I don't recall at the moment. The movie was, I thought, a good adaptation, not insofar as strictly following a book that could not be easily translated into screen but insofar as changing it smartly as necessary so that it would work on screen. A fine movie. But still a finer book.

On "Angels" by Denis Johnson ***

Johnson's Jesus' Son is one of my favorite books. How great that book is really hit me, though, when I started seeing stories from it in anthologies--"weaker" stories, stories I hadn't really paid that much attention to within the collection where some stories are so strong that they overpower others. But when the smaller stories, these ones I didn't notice within the collection amid so much other greatness, were pulled out and appreciated by themselves or in conjunction with other writer's work, which could barely match up, I was floored. What makes that collection so amazing is that each story is almost like a poem--so beautiful in its imagery and precise in its word choice--and yet also incredible in terms of great storytelling.

All that said, I've never been attracted to Johnson's longer works. I've picked up novels of his before and have never gotten past the first two or three pages. Admittedly, this isn't giving a work much of a chance, but this was in bookstores, in places where I had to decide quickly what was worth my spending a few dollars to join my reading for the next couple of months. (This was when I lived in Fort Worth--or rather, lived barely a few yards outside Fort Worth [the half of the apartment complex I lived in was outside the city limits]--and couldn't get a library card. Used books became my lifeline for a few years. I had to be careful what I purchased, had to make those books were worth it and would last a good while.) These days, with a library card in hand (so that I can actually afford to read as much as I do), I'm a bit more open to discovery and to trying new things.

Angels came to my attention--again--through Francine Prose's book How to Read like a Writer. That book was amazing in terms of making one excited about writing, making one think writing matters, and also making one excited about the books she discusses. Last year, I finally got back to Jane Austen, whose work I couldn't stand in high school and whose work I never managed to get past page 50 in. Pride and Prejudice took a while to get into, but by the time I'd gotten half way, I was singing its praises. Wonderful writing.

Prose analyzed the opening of Angels and made me want to go back and give this book a real try. And so it joined my list of reading, and now it's read. But my feelings about are pretty much the same as they were, years ago, before I read it. Fine, accomplished writing, but for whatever reason, the book didn't speak to me. Moments toward the end, I did care for the main man in it, though mostly I didn't feel much sympathy for him throughout; I never did quite understand Jamie, why she would like Bill, why she would leave her husband (boredom?), why she would be attracted to this underworld. And my lack of understanding, in turn, affects the way I feel about this work