Featured Author: Denis Johnson

Featured Author: Denis Johnson
With News and Reviews From the Archives of The New York Times

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In This Feature

Reviews of Denis Johnson’s Earlier Books

A Film Review

Recent Link

Ted Conover Reviews ‘Seek: Reports From the Edges of America and Beyond’ (June 17, 2001)

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Cindy Johnson

Denis Johnson

REVIEWS OF DENIS JOHNSON’S EARLIER BOOKS:

‘The Incognito Lounge and Other Poems‘
(1982)
“Pain can make his work excessively and awkwardly rhetorical, but he knows how to use his eyes. . . . To command the full measure of serious attention his vision deserves, he needs to shed the period style
a little more. But there are signs that he is beginning to do so . . .”

‘Angels,’ reviewed by Alice Hoffman
(1983)
“‘Angels’ is a terrifying book, a mixture of poetry and obscenity. Some readers may be put off by its melodrama and nearly overwhelming sense of desperation. But whether the characters are conversing
with a dark angel or ordering a platter of french fries, they are people who can’t be ignored. Mr. Johnson has written a dazzling and savage first novel.”

‘Fiskadoro‘
(1985)
“[Johnson’s] startlingly original book is an examination of the cataclysmic imagination . . . It is a complex and finally problematic vision. To convey it, Mr. Johnson constructs a fictional cosmos
that is hard to enter, but whose resonant power becomes increasingly evident.”

‘The Stars at Noon‘
(1986)
“[T]his novel is an encapsulated narrative, begging to be fleshed out. Still, it is daring, this political novel that disdains politics, this philosophical work that rejects all philosophies. Coming just
a year after ‘Fiskadoro,’ it suggests that Denis Johnson is one of our most inventive, unpredictable novelists.”

‘Resuscitation of a Hanged Man‘
(1991)
“There has never been any doubt about Denis Johnson’s ability to write a gorgeous sentence. . . . The novel seems, like a poem, to be written line to line. It is very much a book about one man, one
sensibility. . . . Yet in this book he has not found a subject to match the scale of his talent and intelligence.”

‘Jesus’ Son: Stories‘
(1992)
“His prose . . . consistently generates imagery of ferocious intensity, much of it shaded with a menacing, even deranged sense of humor. . . . [a] masterpiece of compression and moral entropy . . .”

‘Already Dead: A California Gothic,’ reviewed by David Gates
(1997)
“Johnson is a wonderful writer, and murk is one of the things he does best — even if it sometimes swamps the proceedings entirely. . . . Plain silly? You’d think so, just hearing about it. But once
Johnson gets his hooks into you — it takes about two sentences — it’s not so easy to maintain your bemusement, and pretty much impossible to stop reading, severely as he can try your patience.”

First Chapter: ‘Already Dead’

‘The Name of the World,’ reviewed by Robert Stone
(2000)
“The much-misapplied term ‘minimalist’ can pretty accurately apply. Transitions are rocky and the view can be dim. At other times, Johnson’s unique lyricism lights up his book’s interior
world . . . There’s no doubt about the power of this writer’s vision.”

A FILM REVIEW:

Film: ‘Jesus’ Son’: Travels With a Stoned Candide
(2000)
“Alison Maclean’s scruffy, likable new film [is] adapted from a book of linked short stories by Denis Johnson . . . Her decision to string together a series of self-contained vignettes could have resulted
in meandering tedium, but she manages to find a loose, improvisatory rhythm that matches Mr. Johnson’s discursive riffing, and that gives her scenes a keen edge of surprise.”

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