Denis Johnson

American master Denis Johnson's nationally bestselling collection of blistering and indelible tales about America's outcasts and wanderers.Denis Johnson's now classic story collection Jesus' Son chronicles a wild netherworld of addicts and lost souls, a violent and disordered landscape that encompasses every extreme of American culture. These are stories of transcendence and spiraling grief, of hallucinations and glories, of getting lost and found and lost again. The insights and careening energy in Jesus' Son have earned the book a place of its own among the classics of twentieth-century American literature. It was adapted into a critically-praised film in 1999.

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson. Written in the luminous prose that made him one of the most beloved and important writers of his generation, this collection finds Johnson in new territory, contemplating the ghosts of the past and the elusive and unexpected ways the mysteries of the universe assert themselves.Finished shortly before Johnson's death, this collection is the last word from a writer whose work will live on for many years to come.

Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West—its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders—this extraordinary novella poignantly captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.Train Dreams tells the story of Robert Grainer, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century—an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime.First published in The Paris Review [Issue 162, Summer 2002]

This is the story of Skip Sands—spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong—and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, and its gritty, sympathetic portraits of men and women desperate for an end to their loneliness, whether in sex or death or by the grace of God, this is a story like nothing in our literature. Tree of Smoke is Denis Johnson’s first full-length novel in nine years, and his most gripping, beautiful, and powerful work to date.Tree of Smoke was the 2007 National Book Award Winner for Fiction.

‘A dazzling and savage first novel’ New York Times Angels tells the story of two born losers. Jamie has ditched her husband and is running away with her two baby girls. Bill is dreaming of making it big in a life of crime. They meet on a Greyhound bus and decide to team up.So begins a stunning, tragic odyssey through the dark underbelly of America – the bars, bus stations, mental wards, and prisons that play host to Jamie and Bill as they find themselves trapped in a downward spiral though rape, alcohol, drugs and crime, to madness and death.From the author of Tree of Smoke , winner of the National Book Award for Fiction

From the National Book Award–winning, bestselling author of Tree of Smoke comes a provocative thriller set in the American West. Nobody Move, which first appeared in the pages of Playboy, is the story of an assortment of lowlifes in Bakersfield, California, and their cat-and-mouse game over $2.3 million. Touched by echoes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, Nobody Move is at once an homage to and a variation on literary form. It salutes one of our most enduring and popular genres—the American crime novel—but with a grisly humor and outrageousness that are Denis Johnson’s own. Sexy, suspenseful, and above all entertaining, Nobody Move shows one of our greatest novelists at his versatile best.

Denis Johnson's New York Times bestseller, The Laughing Monsters, is a high-suspense tale of kaleidoscoping loyalties in the post-9/11 world that shows one of our great novelists at the top of his game.Roland Nair calls himself Scandinavian but travels on a U.S. passport. After ten years' absence, he returns to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to reunite with his friend Michael Adriko. They once made a lot of money here during the country's civil war, and, curious to see whether good luck will strike twice in the same place, Nair has allowed himself to be drawn back to a region he considers hopeless.Adriko is an African who styles himself a soldier of fortune and who claims to have served, at various times, the Ghanaian army, the Kuwaiti Emiri Guard, and the American Green Berets. He's probably broke now, but he remains, at thirty-six, as stirred by his own doubtful schemes as he was a decade ago.Although Nair believes some kind of money-making plan lies at the back of it all, Adriko's stated reason for inviting his friend to Freetown is for Nair to meet Adriko's fiancée, a grad student from Colorado named Davidia. Together the three set out to visit Adriko's clan in the Uganda-Congo borderland―but each of these travelers is keeping secrets from the others. Their journey through a land abandoned by the future leads Nair, Adriko, and Davidia to meet themselves not in a new light, but rather in a new darkness.

A contemporary noir, Already Dead is the tangled story of Nelson Fairchild Jr., disenfranchised scion to a northern California land fortune. A relentless failure, Nelson has botched nearly every scheme he's attempted to pull off. Now his future lies in a potentially profitable marijuana patch hidden in the lush old-growth redwoods on the family land.Nelson has some serious problems. His marriage has fallen apart, and he may lose his land, cash and crop in the divorce. What's more, in need of some quick cash, he had foolishly agreed to smuggle $90,000 worth of cocaine through customs for Harry Lally, a major player in a drug syndicate. Chickening out just before bringing the drugs through, he flushed the powder. Now Lally wants him dead, and two goons are hot on his trail. Desperate, terrified and alone, for Nelson, there may be only one way out.This is Denis Johnson's biggest and most complex book to date, and it perfectly showcases his signature themes of fate, redemption and the unraveling of the fabric of today's society. Already Dead, with its masterful narrative of overlapping and entwined stories, will further fuel the acclaim that surrounds one of today's most fascinating writers.

Michael Reed is a man going through the motions, numbed by the death of his wife and child. But when events force him to act as if he cares, he begins to find people who - against all expectation - help him through his private labyrinth.

Hailed by the New York Times as "wildly ambitious" and "the sort of book that a young Herman Melville might have written had he lived today and studied such disparate works as the Bible, 'The Wasteland,' Fahrenheit 451, and Dog Soldiers, screened Star Wars and Apocalypse Now several times, dropped a lot of acid and listened to hours of Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones," Fiskadoro is a stunning novel of an all-too-possible tomorrow. Deeply moving and provacative, Fiskadoro brilliantly presents the sweeping and heartbreaking tale of the survivors of a devastating nuclear war and their attempts to salvage remnants of the old world and rebuild their culture.

“Johnson writes with a fervor that can only be described as religious. Seek is scary and beautiful and ecstatic and uncontrolled…he elevates the mundane to the sublime; he boils things down to their essence. He’s simply one of the few writers around whose sentences make you shudder.” —Adrienne Miller, Esquire Part political disquisition, part travel journal, part self-exploration, Seek is a collection of essays and articles in which Denis Johnson essentially takes on the world. And not an obliging, easygoing world either; but rather one in which horror and beauty exist in such proximity that they might well be interchangeable. Where violence and poverty and moral transgression go unchecked, even unnoticed. A world of such wild, rocketing energy that, grasping it, anything at all is possible. Whether traveling through war-ravaged Liberia, mingling with the crowds at a Christian Biker rally, exploring his own authority issues through the lens of this nation's militia groups, or attempting to unearth his inner resources while mining for gold in the wilds of Alaska, Johnson writes with a mixture of humility and humorous candor that is everywhere present. With the breathtaking and often haunting lyricism for which his work is renowned, Johnson considers in these pieces our need for transcendence. And, as readers of his previous work know, Johnson's path to consecration frequently requires a limning of the darkest abyss. If the path to knowledge lies in experience, Seek is a fascinating record of Johnson's profoundly moving pilgrimage.

Leonard English, a sad and intense young man recovering from a suicide attempt, comes to Provincetown on Cape Cod to take a job as a disc jockey-cum-private detective. Provincetown is a last outpost of civilization, an end of the earth, a resort town emptied by autumn, where many of those who wear skirts are not women and many of the women do not love men. On his first day there, English encounters a beautiful young woman at Mass and falls desperately in love with her, but Leanna turns out to be gay; and English's first assignment as a detective, a search for the elusive artist Gerald Twinbrook, is equally frustrating. As autumn turns to winter and Leonard's anguish mounts, his desperate quests - for Twinbrook, for love, for redemption - take on an increasingly apocalyptic coloring.

From legendary writer Denis Johnson, The Stars at Noon is a novel of mystery and suspense set during the Nicaraguan Revolution—now a major motion picture produced by A24 and starring Joe Alwyn. Set in Nicaragua in 1984, The Stars at Noon is a story of passion, fear, and betrayal told in the voice of an American woman whose mission in Central America is as shadowy as her surroundings. Is she a reporter for an American magazine, as she sometimes claims, or a contact person for Eyes for Peace? And who is the rough English businessman with whom she becomes involved? As the two foreigners become entangled in increasingly sinister plots, Denis Johnson masterfully dramatizes a powerful vision of spiritual bereavement and corruption. "A daring novel... Denis Johnson is one of our most inventive, unpredictable novelists."— The New York Times Book Review

From the award-winning poet and novelist—a must-have collection of his four previous books of poetry plus a selection of new, unpublished work.

Book by Johnson, Denis

"Perfection is not the basis of what I'm talking about," says a member of the Cassandra family, which forms the center of Denis Johnson's plays, Hellhound on My Trail and Shoppers Carried by Escalators Into the Flames . The character could be speaking for his creator, because human imperfection is one of Denis Johnson's specialties -- in his critically acclaimed novels, short stories, and nonfiction, and, now, in two brilliant new plays. These two works present a dramatized field guide to some of the more dysfunctional and dysphoric inhabitants of the American West: a sexual-misconduct investigator who misconducts herself sexually; a renegade Jehovah's Witness who supports his splinter Jehovean group by dealing drugs; the Cassandra Brothers and their father and their grandmother, thrown together at a family reunion/wedding/melee at their shabby homestead in Ukiah, California. When Shoppers Carried by Escalators Into the Flames was performed in San Francisco in 2001, the Chronicle said, "There's an enormous appeal in Johnson's bleak-comic vision of a semi-mythic American West." That appeal derives from the author's perfect vision of imperfection, embodied with such energy and courage in these marvelous pieces of theatre.

A collection of poems of grief, regret, nightmare, acceptance, redemption, and the dark recesses of the soul

Bajo una lluvia torrencial un yonqui tiene un oscuro presentimiento cuando un viejo Oldsmobile se detiene a su lado en la carretera. Años después, confinado en el ala de desintoxicación de un hospital, recuerda lo sucedido aquel día... «Me dolía la mandíbula. Conocía a cada gota de lluvia por su nombre. Intuía cada cosa antes de que ocurriera. Sabía que un determinado Oldsmobile se detendría a recogerme antes de que amainara la lluvia, y por las dulces voces de la familia que viajaba dentro supe también que tendríamos un accidente durante la tormenta.» «Accidente durante el autostop» forma parte de la colección de relatos Hijo de Jesús de Denis Johnson. Aclamada por la crítica desde su publicación en 1992, Hijo de Jesús se ha ganado un lugar entre los clásicos de la literatura norteamericana del siglo XX.

Two plays—hilarious and searing in equal measure—by one of our most essential and original authors In his poetry, short stories, novels, and plays, Denis Johnson has explored the story of America—especially of the West, land of self-made men and self-perpetuating myths—with a searing honesty and genuine sympathy. In these two plays, written in verse both hypnotic and clear, he confirms his position as one of our great verbal stylists, and a literary conscience for our times. In Soul of A Whore, a lively cast of characters—faith healers, pimps, strippers, actual demons—converges, with unexpected hilarity, as Bess Cassandra awaits execution for the murder of her infant daughter. Purvis’s seven reverse-chronological scenes catalog the fall and rise of Melvin Purvis, the G-man who brought down John Dillinger and Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd. Johnson takes us from Washington’s backrooms to a Midwestern cornfield, dramatizing the seductive allure of power and our own human capacity for both pettiness and grace. In these furiously entertaining, occasionally terrifying works, Denis Johnson chronicles and questions America’s myths, heroes, and everyday realities with verve and elegance, proving once again that he is at the height of his linguistic and insightful powers.

Poetry. Limited to 260 copies.

Here are two complete audiobooks by Denis Johnson, narrated by Will Patton. Listen to both Train Dreams, and Jesus’ Son, as well as an excerpt from Denis Johnson’s National Book Award-winning Tree of Smoke.In Train Dreams Robert Grainer is a day laborer in the American West at the start of the 20th century—an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime. Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West—its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders—this new novella by the National Book Award-winning author of Tree of Smoke captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.Jesus's Son, recently adapted for the screen, is a now-classic collection of 10 stories from the author of Resuscitation of a Hanged Man and Angels. The stories are narrated by a young man, a recovering alcoholic and heroin addict, whose dependencies have led him to petty crime, cruelty, betrayal, and various kinds of loss.

First limited edition of 600 unnumbered copies of his 2nd poetry collection which was published 7 years before his first novel.

Johnson's work transforms the stuff of everyday life into something vibrant, wonderful, and strange. These are poems of grief and regret, of nightmare and acceptance, of redemption and the possibility of grace. They present a vision of the American landscape at once unique and startling, terrifying and true.

Un relato magistral de uno de los clásicos de la literatura norteamericana del siglo XX.Jack Hotel acaba de volver a la ciudad, una magnífica ocasión para salir con los amigos a emborracharse y a colocarse como en los viejos tiempos, cuando no habían demolido el Vine y pasaban las noches bebiendo y pensando que eran trágicos. Un reencuentro feliz y sin embargo...«Esa noche, estoy seguro, tuve un momento de gloria. Tuve la certeza de que estaba en este mundo porque no podría tolerar ningún otro.»«Libre bajo fianza» forma parte de la colección de relatos Hijo de Jesús, aclamada por la crítica desde su publicación en 1992.

Nach acht Romanen und der legendären Story-Sammlung «Jesus' Sohn» gilt Denis Johnson als einer der wichtigsten Autoren der amerikanischen Gegenwartsliteratur. Für sein Vietnamkriegsepos «Ein gerader Rauch» wurde ihm 2007 der National Book Award verliehen. Seine Reportage «Fünf Hinrichtungen und ein Barbecue» ist ein Blick in den Abgrund des amerikanischen Justizsystems. Für den «Rolling Stone» reiste Denis Johnson im Jahr 2000 nach Texas, um fünf Hinrichtungen zu begleiten, um Gespräche zu führen mit den Verurteilten, Beteiligten, Verwandten. Und auch mit Vertretern der texanischen Justizbehörde, insbesondere dem Chief Public Information Officer der Strafvollzugsabteilung, Larry Fitzgerald, der seine Recherchen verlässlich behindert, weil er keine kritische Berichterstattung zulassen will. Das Gefängnis und sein Todestrakt liegen aber mitten in der Stadt. Hier werden Menschen quasi vom Staat umgebracht, dort geht das Leben normal weiter, unter anderem bei dem titelgebenden Barbecue, auf dem auch besagter Larry Fitzgerald anwesend ist, der lustig Grillfleisch und Krebse vertilgt und dabei seine Lügengeschichten erzählt ...Denis Johnson schreibt in dem klaren Bewusstsein, dass es sich bei den Todeskandidaten um Mörder oder Gewaltverbrecher handelt, die harte Strafen verdient haben, aber auch als eindeutiger Gegner der Todesstrafe. Gemeinsam mit einer Handvoll Protestierenden harrt er vor den gelben Absperrbändern aus, bis nach sieben Tagen im Mai 2000 William Joseph Kitchens, Michael McBride, James Richardson, Richard Foster und James Clayton im Walls Unit von Huntsville durch Pancurioniumbromid und Kaliumchlorid den Tod gefunden haben.«Fünf Hinrichtungen und ein Barbecue» ist eine atemberaubende Reportage, ein vielschichtiges Porträt menschlicher Verstrickungen, ein genauso kunstvolles wie leidenschaftliches Plädoyer gegen den Missbrauch menschlicher Macht.

Reimagining Place Ecotone - the Brutality Issue No. 8 - by Sherman Alexie, Marving Bell, Denis Johnson, Antonya Nelson and Eudora Welry