Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Johnson, Denis - John Sutherland (review date 2 July 1993)

Johnson, Denis - John Sutherland (review date 2 July 1993)

John Sutherland (review date 2 July 1993)

SOURCE: Sutherland, John. “Holy Drunkalogs.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4709 (2 July 1993): 23.

[In the following review, Sutherland traces the theme of substance abuse in Jesus' Son, asserting that “Johnson comes across as a fourth-generation Beat.”]

Denis Johnson's title is taken from Lou Reed's song “Heroin”—“When I'm rushing on my run / And I feel just like Jesus' Son.” What follows is a bundle of short stories all of which revolve obsessively around drugs and booze. Stylistically, Johnson comes across as fourth-generation Beat, following the substance-abuse line that descends from Kerouac, through Burroughs and Charles Bukowski to the films of Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho). The eleven stories in Jesus' Son are narrated by a nameless young addict who drifts from Chicago, to Iowa, to Seattle (where he seems happiest) to Arizona....

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