Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Johnson, Denis - Timothy L. Parrish (essay date fall 2001)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page

Timothy L. Parrish (essay date fall 2001)

SOURCE: Parrish, Timothy L. “Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son: To Kingdom Come.” Critique 43, no. 1 (fall 2001): 17-29.

[In the following essay, Parrish maintains that “Jesus' Son explores Johnson's basic theme of transformation, but it does so to reflect on why the author writes the kind of stories that he does.”]

At the end of Denis Johnson's first novel, Angels, the lawyer whose client is about to be executed for murder experiences a revelation about his future career and, ultimately, his identity. He recognizes that he is still young enough to be the elected official “to something or other” that he had assumed he would eventually become, but he realizes that his client's death has changed him. Instead of achieving respectable political office, he knows that he will “probably continue the rest of his life as a criminal lawyer because, in all honesty, a part of him...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

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