Denis Johnson Criticism
Denis Johnson, an acclaimed American author, is celebrated for his intense and poetic representations of marginalized lives seeking redemption within the tapestry of contemporary American society. His works delve into existential themes, often reflecting his own diverse life experiences and personal battles. Raised in an environment marked by frequent relocations due to his father's profession, Johnson's early life likely influenced his expansive narrative style. His transition from poetry, under the influence of cultural icons like Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, to fiction allowed him to explore themes of dereliction, addiction, and renewal.
Johnson's prominent works, such as the short story collection Jesus' Son and the novella The Name of the World, are noted for their vivid, hallucinatory prose and exploration of the darker sides of American life. In Jesus' Son, Johnson presents interwoven stories narrated by a heroin-addicted protagonist, capturing a world of existential quests and substance abuse, as highlighted in a review. The collection's characters, depicted in a state of "spoiled grace," echo sentiments found in Gary Krist's observations in Cape Hell.
Critics, including David L. Ulin in Universe of Faith and Terror, commend Johnson's style for its "rawness" and his ability to portray absurdity with credibility, drawing comparisons to Flannery O'Connor's "spiritual vocation for the grotesque," as noted by Daria Donnelly in Flannery O'Connor in Reverse. His narratives, rich with nightmarish or apocalyptic imagery, reveal characters in pursuit of redemption amidst chaos, a theme explored in Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son: To Kingdom Come.
Johnson's ability to blend realism with a dreamlike narrative style is noted in Stories That Range from Bleak to Bleaker, where his storytelling renders the absurd plausible, consistently bringing to life deeply human stories. His compassionate portrayal of flawed characters resonates with readers and critics, cementing his reputation as a significant literary figure in contemporary American fiction. Through his exploration of themes such as addiction, grief, and existential despair, Johnson's works continue to engage readers, offering a profound look at the complexity of human experiences, as noted in Robert Stone's assessment of The Name of the World.
Contents
- Principal Works
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Johnson, Denis (Contemporary Literary Criticism)
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Review of Fiskadoro
(summary)
In the following positive review, Eder praises Fiskadoro, calling the work “a leap of imagination, with no loss of precision and perceptiveness.”
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American Poetry, 1987
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Jenkins comments on the ubiquitous references to angels in recent American poetry and offers a generally positive review of The Veil.
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Mine Canary in a Noxious World
(summary)
In the following positive review, Eder evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, commenting that Johnson has a “dramatist's gift for dialogue.”
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Cape Hell
(summary)
In the following review, Krist offers a generally positive assessment of Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, discussing Denis Johnson's portrayal of characters in a perpetual state of spoiled grace, locked out of a rapture that they can dimly sense but never achieve without losing their sanity.
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The Hours before Dawn
(summary)
In the following negative review of Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, Kaveney finds shortcomings in what he perceives as the novel's jaded perspective and hopelessness.
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The Shape of Distant Things
(summary)
In the following positive review, Elie praises Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, noting that “few novels have rendered so well the zany nobility of life on the edge.”
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An Artist of American Violence
(summary)
In the following positive review, Miles praises Resuscitation of a Hanged Man and Jesus' Son, drawing attention to Johnson's distinctive characters and prose style.
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Holy Drunkalogs
(summary)
In the following positive review, Sutherland examines Johnson's prose in Jesus' Son, highlighting the bundle of short stories that revolve obsessively around drugs and booze, narrated by a nameless young addict who drifts through various cities and experiences.
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Flannery O'Connor in Reverse
(summary)
In the following positive review of Jesus' Son, Donnelly compares Johnson's writing style to the prose of Flannery O'Connor.
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Review of Jesus' Son
(summary)
In the following review of Jesus' Son, Birkerts compares the prose styles of Denis Johnson, Thom Jones, and Raymond Carver.
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Review of The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly
(summary)
In the following review, McGuiness offers a positive assessment of The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly.
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The Good Earth
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Martelle evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Already Dead.
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Review of Already Dead
(summary)
In the following review, Malin praises Already Dead, complimenting Johnson's vision of California culture. Although Johnson is drawn to sinners, deviants, and criminals, he does not glorify them. Instead, he attempts to find “virtues” in their misguided choices. He is interested in the possibilities of their conversion, their secret longings for salvation. The fact that his Catholic background has nourished his art helps him in his mission. He never preaches; he never writes propaganda. Johnson is interested in the “in-betweens,” those people who still desire some tiny measure of grace. And in his new novel Already Dead, he uses his heightened poetic language to shine light into his California Gothic. His rushing, driving sentences are a bit excessive, but they are saved by radiant phrasing, unexpected metaphors and strange beauty.
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Already Dead
(summary)
In the following review of Already Dead, Hitchings commends Johnson's prose style, but finds shortcomings in the novel's philosophizing and unsympathetic characters.
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Universe of Faith and Terror
(summary)
In the following review, Ulin examines the essays in Seek, praising the “rawness” of Johnson's prose style.
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Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son: To Kingdom Come
(summary)
In the following essay, Parrish examines the recurring themes of transformation and redemption in Jesus' Son, drawing attention to Johnson's preoccupation with transcendence.
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Review of Fiskadoro
(summary)
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Johnson, Denis (Short Story Criticism)
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Review of Jesus' Son
(summary)
In the following review of Jesus' Son, the anonymous critic maintains that “Johnson's beautifully damned stories sing with divine poetry, all the while bludgeoning us with existential reality.” Johnson brings together eleven down-and-out stories linked by their disagreeable narrator—a lowlife of mythic proportions who abuses drugs, booze, and people with reckless indifference. But this eventually recovering slacker reveals in these deceptively thin tales a psyche so tormented and complex that we allow him his bleak redemption.
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Stories That Range from Bleak to Bleaker
(summary)
In the following review, Kakutani commends Johnson's poetic language and utilization of metaphor and wordplay in the stories in Jesus' Son. The characters in Jesus' Son, Denis Johnson's savage new collection of stories, which takes its title from the Lou Reed song “Heroin,” are all lost souls, waiting eagerly or despondently for salvation. Like their counterparts in Fiskadoro and Angels, they are sinners and misfits, the lost, the damned, the desperate and the forgotten. Out of their bleak, frightening experiences, Mr. Johnson manages to extract a harsh, lovely poetry; in their violent, seemingly random lives, he is able to find modern-day parables that glow with a strange, radioactive light.
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The Road from Detox
(summary)
In the following favorable assessment, McManus provides a stylistic and thematic analysis of Jesus' Son. Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son is his fifth book of fiction, the previous four being novels with similar preoccupations: loveless promiscuity, the abuse of narcotics and alcohol, the debilitating effects of parental neglect and the sometimes violent paradoxes inherent in the Christian notions of salvation and self-sacrifice. His prose, especially in this book and in the novels Angels and Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, consistently generates imagery of ferocious intensity, much of it shaded with a menacing, even deranged sense of humor. No American novelist since William Burroughs has so flagrantly risked “insensitivity” in an effort to depict the pathology of addiction.
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Talk into My Bullet Hole
(summary)
In the following positive assessment of Jesus' Son, Wiggins asserts that reading Johnson's stories “is like living inside someone else's beautifully controlled nightmare.”
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Don't Wake Him Up—He's Writing
(summary)
In the following laudatory assessment, Grimson regards Jesus' Son as Johnson's “most accessible and accomplished book, from start to finish, without a single sentence that misses the mark.”
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A Family's Darkest Secret: Inside the Domestic Bonds of Love and Brutality
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Gates offers a positive assessment of Jesus' Son, describing it as a masterfully bleak sequence of short stories narrated by a young heartland lowlife, where brutality is unpredictable and unremarkable.
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Holy Drunkalogs
(summary)
In the following review, Sutherland traces the theme of substance abuse in Jesus' Son, asserting that “Johnson comes across as a fourth-generation Beat.”
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Flannery O'Connor in Reverse
(summary)
In the following favorable assessment of Jesus' Son, Donnelly determines the influence of Flannery O'Connor's “spiritual vocation for the grotesque” on Johnson's work.
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Review of Jesus' Son
(summary)
In the following laudatory review of Jesus' Son, McGuiness finds a similarity between Johnson's verse and his short fiction.
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Secret Agent
(summary)
In the following essay, Johnson reflects on the role of observing and reporting in his life.
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The Name of the World
(summary)
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 by the well-known poet and author.
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The Name of the World
(summary)
In the following positive review of The Name of the World, the anonymous commentator contends that “Johnson's eloquent examination of one man's persistent inability to extricate himself from the tenacity of grief manages to be both lyrical and raw.” The novel explores a middle-aged college professor's attempts to come to terms with the gruesome twist of fate that has robbed him of his family. After losing his wife and daughter in a tragic automobile accident, Mike Reed seeks refuge in academia, reflecting on his losses and engaging in various episodic vignettes that depict his emotional paralysis and self-exploration with clarity and sensitivity.
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Discoveries
(summary)
In the following review, Reynolds differentiates The Name of the World from the rest of Johnson's oeuvre.
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In Transit
(summary)
In the following positive assessment, Stone explores the narrative line of The Name of the World.
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The Ever-Widening Circles of Grief
(summary)
In the following mixed review, Eder discusses the fragmentary nature of The Name of the World and questions the role of deliverance in the novel.
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Perfect Pitch
(summary)
In the following review, the anonymous critic lauds the tone and pace of The Name of the World. It isn't easy to recommend spending ＄23 on 120 widely spaced pages, but there's a reason why literature is not sold by the kilo. In his ninth novel, Denis Johnson purposefully takes on a slight plot, or what would seem slight, unless it happened to you. Having wandered from high-school teaching to senatorial speech-writing, in late middle age the narrator, Michael Reed, has forsaken Washington for the comfortably meaningless confines of an unremarkable, nameless Midwestern college.
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Dog's Tears
(summary)
In the following review, Updike unfavorably compares The Name of the World to Johnson's earlier work, especially Jesus' Son.
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What's in a Name?
(summary)
In the following review, Gates offers a favorable assessment of The Name of the World.
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Reading My Life Between the Lines
(summary)
In the following essay, Yuzna reflects on her relationship with Johnson and her role in the short story collection Jesus' Son.
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Addiction and Recovery in Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son
(summary)
In the following essay, Smith evaluates the meaning of substance abuse and recovery in Jesus' Son.
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Review of The Name of the World
(summary)
In the following review, Malin discusses the role of spirituality in The Name of the World, highlighting the narrator's struggles with loss and meaning in a secular world, and the ambiguous ending regarding his search for significance.
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Review of Jesus' Son
(summary)
- Further Reading