In his 1980 Nobel Laureate speech, Czeslaw Milosz cautioned writers that it is not enough to denounce those who would align themselves with misanthropes and tyrants, but that we must broadcast the names of those from whom we have learned, in whom we have trusted and about whom we are reverent, whether as teachers and practitioners of art or as acquaintances through life.

Milosz's larger canvas, of course, in making this remark, was his attempt to paint a map from memory about how memory must work, and about how we, as humans and as writers, must force our memories into existence; how we must not allow the work of writers who have touched upon our lives to be forgotten, or to fade; how we must engage in the mnemonic exercise, if nothing else, of speaking out their names. So, like a cartoon figure in a trench coat with stolen watches, I am always flashing names of favorite writers at my friends. Then imagine that someone passes me a diamond Rolex, gratis. This Rolex's name is Denis Johnson. His book is called Jesus' Son.

Jesus' Son is Johnson's first volume of short stories (he has written several novels, of which the most recent is Resuscitation of a Hanged Man). There are eleven in this collection, and I started speaking his name to people as soon as I had read them. The first story is called “Car Crash While Hitchhiking.” In it, Johnson describes one of the victims of the crash: “His blood bubbled out of his mouth with every breath. He wouldn't be taking many more. I knew that, but he didn't, and therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person's life on this earth. I don't mean that we all end up dead, that's not the great pity. I mean that he couldn't tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn't tell him what was real.” One of the people I had spoken Johnson's name to called me the morning after he read this on my advice and asked, “Did you do this to me on purpose?” He had survived a car crash himself, and said he had to lie down in a dark room, alone, terrified, after reading the story. Another person I said Johnson's name to (an editor at a “men's” magazine) told me, “Johnson, yeah, he's hot. I've heard he's in jail now in someplace like Liberia. …”

Which is not to say that Denis Johnson is in jail in Liberia, or has ever been in jail in Liberia, or deserves to be in jail in Liberia, but that it is entirely believable that a writer of his nerve and numbnuts in the bunt of weirdly hellish shit (as opposed to, say, a writer like Susan Sontag) might be in jail in someplace like Liberia, because reading his stories is like living inside someone else's beautifully controlled nightmare.

Or (let me put it this way): Reading these stories is like reading ticker tape from the subconscious. Johnson's syncopations are unlike any writer's that I know—except Lou Reed's, from whose song “Heroin” the collection's title derives. Reed's lyric is, “When I'm rushing on my run / And I feel just like Jesus' Son / Then I guess I just don't know. …” But the genius of Johnson's work is that he does know: All his characters are strung out on a poison of their choice—booze, uppers, smack, religion, bourge-y culture junk—but as relentless as he is in exposing all their tics and scars, Johnson gives us, in the end, portraits of a shared humanity, even if their outlines must be seen in blood, or drawn with piss in snow. Of the characters in his story “Beverly Home” he writes, “Others were fine, except that they couldn't be allowed out on the street with their impossible deformities. They made God look like a senseless maniac.” And in “Steady Hands at Seattle General,” an alky getting a haircut in a detox center tells his caretaker,

“I been in places where all they do is wrap you in a wet sheet, and let you bite down on a little rubber toy for puppies.”

“… Hey, you're doing fine.”

“Talk into here.”

“Talk into your bullet hole?”

“Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I'm fine.”

Rarely is it within the power of the dreamer to interpret his or her own dream, or to describe it fully to another, bring to ground all its unearthly qualities and holy terrors. But Johnson does just that with one story, in particular—“Emergency.” I have read “Emergency,” now, four times. I believe that when you love someone it's possible to dream that you are both yourself and your beloved, and what I now confess is not intended to suggest a theft by me but a gift received from Denis Johnson.

One morning last week, I woke and imagined I had dreamed his story “Emergency.” Then, very quickly, in the next moment, I imagined I had written it. Those are the kinds of stories Denis Johnson writes: ones that tell you what you've been dreaming; ones that tell you what is real.