Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Johnson, Denis - Kirkus Reviews (review date 15 May 2000)

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Kirkus Reviews (review date 15 May 2000)

SOURCE: Review of The Name of the World, by Denis Johnson. Kirkus Reviews 68, no. 10 (15 May 2000): 655.

[In the following review, the anonymous critic offers a favorable assessment of The Name of the World.]

A traumatized widower is painfully and gradually recalled to life in this deceptively simple—and surprisingly absorbing—short novel [The Name of the World] by the well-known poet and author (Already Dead, 1997, etc.).

Narrator Michael Reed is a freelance writer and teacher of history who's attempting to lose himself in work—and various degrees of intimacy with colleagues (at a nameless Midwestern college where he had recently put down roots) and random acquaintances—after his young wife and small daughter are killed in an automobile accident. Johnson precisely delineates how Michael experiences and absorbs “little” everyday manifestations of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Kirkus Reviews (review date 1 October 1992)
   2. Michiko Kakutani (review date 11 December 1992)
   3. James McManus (review date 27 December 1992)
   4. Marianne Wiggins (review date 15 February 1993)
   5. Todd Grimson (review date 28 February 1993)
   6. David Gates (review date February 1993)
   7. Jack Miles (review date June 1993)
   8. John Sutherland (review date 2 July 1993)
   9. Daria Donnelly (review date 13 August 1993)
   10. Daniel McGuiness (review date summer 1993)
   11. Sven Birkerts (review date October-November 1993)
   12. Denis Johnson (essay date 1998)
   13. Kirkus Reviews (review date 15 May 2000)
   14. Publishers Weekly (review date 15 May 2000)
   15. Susan Salter Reynolds (review date 25 June 2000)
   16. Robert Stone (review date 9 July 2000)
   17. Richard Eder (review date 14 July 2000)
   18. Economist (review date 15 July 2000)
   19. John Updike (review date 24 July 2000)
   20. David Gates (review date 31 July 2000)
   21. Susan Yuzna (essay date 13 August 2000)
   22. Robert McClure Smith (essay date winter 2001)
   23. Irving Malin (review date spring 2001)
   24. Timothy L. Parrish (essay date fall 2001)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright