Jesus' Son by denis johnson

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

Fantastiška knyga, maloniai nustebino. Tie, kas patyrė ar matė gatvinį dugną, turėtų pajusti, kad autorius supranta, apie ką rašo.

Tai –trumpų istorijų rinkinys, pasakojantis apie gyvenimą Amerikos gatvėse, baruose, narkotikus, alkoholizmą, nusikaltimus. Tačiau Bukowskio nesitikėkite.

Johnsono sukurtus personažus judėti verčia instinktai. Jie – priešingai nei Bukowskio personažai – nesimėgauja savo gyvenimo būdu, ir girtuoklystė jiems nėra nepriklausomybės išraiška. Man atrodo, kad Johnsono personažai išvis nemąsto tokiomis kategorijomis, jie tiesiog daro tai, kas konkrečią akimirką padeda išlikti ilgiau.

O ir pats rašymo stilius labai patiko. Vienas iš tų atvejų, kai knygą skaičiau sulėtintai, kad nesibaigtų.

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peesat

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

داستان‌های این کتاب دردناکن؛ بعضی بیشتر بعضی کمتر ولی دوستش داشتم!

قسمتی از متن:

یک مرد دیگه‌م بود اسمش فرانک بود. هر دو تا پاش از بالای زانو قطع شده بودند. هربار منو می‌دید به ادامه پاچه‌های پیژامه‌ش زل می‌زد و سلام می‌کرد.
به خاطر پاهاش اینجا نبود به خاطر غمش آورده بودنش. غم وحشتناک‌تر از پا نداشتنه.

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KurtisAA

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

These stories are not for devoutly religious readers...

The book takes its title from the Velvet Underground song, “Heroin”.
The setting is in America... Iowa, Chicago, Arizona, California, Seattle...

There are several addicts, a hitchhiker, bus riding, train riding, rush hour and commuters, nurses
and people running around in an emergency room, a mute man, beautiful women, phony women, puking women, a belly dancer, making love in hotels, eating steak in restaurants, a black-eyed, slit-eyed guy, a Jamaican woman, little children in the home of a cocaine dealer, girlfriends, boyfriends, strangers, lovers, Happy Hour, a visit to a laundromat, men drugged out and knocked out, a Greek nightclub, a fake brother, college girls, a writer, foreigners, drug use, upset crying women, Twaiwanese pot, psychedelic mushrooms, petty crime, rape, murder, every kind of smoking, a peeking Tom/ lurker,
souls who were brought together who had wronged each other, old men, gray-haired men, young men, muscular men, shirtless men, yucky-men, a man with a congenital bone ailment that had turned him into a seven-foot-tall monster, a man with multiple sclerosis, an amputee above both knees, Mennonites, a bible college near by, a local alcoholic center nearby, AA meetings in an Episcopal church’s basement, a woman with a paralyzed arm,
brain foggy people, unfortunate lonely, dreary, loss, sad people.

In one story a rapist met its victim. The child meets its mother.

We are weird people: God’s children...
We meet life—as it actually is—all around us—when we step outside our immediate bubble—
in our face realism...
people like you and me.

Eleven stories: (loosely linked together), riveting, raunchy, gritty, grimy, jolting....
insanely-brilliantly written deadpan prose.

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Chloesauras

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

This collection of stories is really short, but don’t let that fool you. Each word releases so much power that an hour spent reading Jesus’ Son carries the same impact as two hours of reading another book. Johnson throws off images like dazzling pieces of shrapnel, and for me, those gorgeous passages are what held the book together more than any actual plot.
The narrator is a junkie with a life so chaotic that you always have the feeling anything could happen at any second. He might see an angel, or he might see a man with a knife buried in his eye. Both occur and both are completely plausible.
All that said, I don’t believe Jesus’ Son is 100 percent deserving of its accolades. It’s a beautifully written portrait of particular people living in a particular time and place, but that’s about the extent of what I got from it. I was left wanting more…I don’t know…more to think about maybe.

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Evans_Born

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

So well written it hurts. Just sheer talent pouring through.

Since Johnson has just died, I found an article that ends with his three rules of writing and what he told somebody writing a novel was like.

Three rules of writing:

Write naked. That means to write what you would never say.
Write in blood. As if ink is so precious you can't waste it.
Write in exile, as if you are never going to get home again, and you have to call back every detail.

And as for writing a novel, his friend mentioned to him that he wasn't sure what direction his new novel was going to go. And this is what Johnson said:

"You get in your teacup and take your oar and strike off for Australia, and if you wind up in Japan, you're ecstatic."

R.I.P.

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XxMIDxMIDxX

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

Posted at Shelf Inflicted

I wasn’t sure if I would like this collection of loosely connected stories about a young guy who is addicted to drugs, sometimes homeless, sometimes employed, and occasionally steals. He’s not an especially likable character, but I enjoyed being a part of his thoughts, his views, and his haphazard journey through life. Maybe it's because I have empathy for addicts and others who live on the edge.

This powerful and gripping collection of stories was troubling, intense, and humane. I was overwhelmed by its beautiful language and poignant passages.

One of my favorite stories in this collection is Dirty Wedding, a sad and unsettling little story about abortion, loneliness, heroin addiction, and death.

n “The wheels screamed, and all I saw suddenly was everybody’s big ugly shoes. The sound stopped. We passed solitary, wrenching scenes. Through the neighborhoods and past the platforms, I felt the cancelled life dreaming after me. Yes, a ghost. A vestige. Something remaining.”n

Beverly Home was sad, a little humorous, and very hopeful. The young narrator finds a part-time job in a nursing home, spies on a Mennonite couple in their bedroom, and begins a life of sobriety.

n
“All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.”
n

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thechowsterderek

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

God I loved this. A perfect collection of short stories. Fuckhead is in his early twenties and he's a drug addict and alcoholic. And no, a series of stories about drug-fuelled craziness narrated by this kind of man, wouldn't normally interest me, either. But the free-wheeling mind-altered narratives are so fresh and scary, and sometimes even funny. Don't be put off by the subject matter, just read it.

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jak_III

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

I once fell in love with a man just because he recommended this book to me. He had a glass eye and fingernails with with half moons of crust lodged underneath, thick and dark as coffee grounds. He was living covertly and temporarily for about four years in one of those storage units out by the interstate, and I would sometimes go see him when I wanted to get high or feel better about my life. At some point he died when they blew up a bridge to build a dam, and he happened to be sleeping underneath it. Or maybe that was someone else. Maybe it was some kids from the high school found him sleeping under the bridge. It was late and they were drunk and had just lifted a stop sign off the road and, proud of it, they thought they might try to break it over his head. In any event, he died of some head trauma of the most religious sort, that much I know.

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Jesus' Son

denis johnson

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