Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Johnson, Denis - Susan Yuzna (essay date 13 August 2000)

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Susan Yuzna (essay date 13 August 2000)

SOURCE: Yuzna, Susan. “Reading My Life Between the Lines.” The Washington Post (13 August 2000): B2.

[In the following essay, Yuzna reflects on her relationship with Johnson and her role in the short story collection Jesus' Son.]

How should you act when you meet yourself as a fictional character? What do you say? Do you embrace yourself warmly, or pretend you've never met?

Her name is Michelle. She's the girlfriend in the new movie based on Denis Johnson's short story collection Jesus' Son. I haven't met Michelle on the screen yet (the film hasn't opened in North Dakota, where I now live) and haven't made up my mind whether I want to, but I've met her in print.

The first time was in 1988, when I opened the New Yorker to find a story by Denis. He and I had been a couple at the time in which the story was set, and the protagonist's girlfriend was unmistakably based on...

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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