“…ci eravamo squarciati il petto
mostrando il nostro cuore vigliacco, e
non si può rimanere amici dopo una
cosa del genere.”

Undici racconti che sono in realtà capitoli di un romanzo. Pezzi di puzzle in prima persona, frammenti di esperienze, di una coscienza sempre alterata da qualche sostanza, sempre però alla ricerca di uno scopo, di un significato, di un “come sono arrivato a questo punto”.

Racconti in cui muore sempre qualcuno, che sia un uomo vittima di incidente stradale o dei leprottini vittime della follia umana e della negligenza. Oppure c’è sempre qualcuno con qualche limitazione fisica o mentale.

La scrittura segue le allucinazioni, la solitudine, il senso dell’umorismo e l’assurdo per poi scoprire perle di rara bellezza in immagini e frasi. Ho provato la stessa sensazione che mi dà sempre la lettura di Roberto Bolaño: il cuore che si spezza davanti all’empatia, alla sensibilità nella comprensione per la debolezza della condizione umana, espressi come solo un grandissimo scrittore può fare.

I love this. Jesus’ Son is beautiful, it’s smart, it’s funny, it’s all the good adjectives. All the stories work brilliantly standing on their own, but they’re even better huddled together in a circle, little anonymous addicts in a church basement.

Johnson writes in a way that I’ve never experienced. Normally you feel a phrase coming before it’s written. Sentences have a natural place within the paragraph, styles are consistent, clauses are foreshadowed by their precedents, writing can be powerful but rarely surprising in the same way as visual art - books don’t make you gasp. This book made me gasp. Denis Johnson can swerve a sentence in such a way that it astonishes.

“Will you believe me when I tell you there was kindness in his heart? His left hand didn't know what his right hand was doing. It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.”

Trečioji mano skaityta leidyklos RARA knyga. Visiškai ne mano tema. Net labiau - viena iš tų temų, kurių aš nuoširdžiai nemėgstu nuo pradėto ir nusmesto "Traukinių žymėjimo" laikų. Mano tvarkingam ir nuosekliam miesčionikam pasauliui svetimos narkomanų ir girtuoklių iš pašaukimo kančios ir nepritapimo visuomenėje pojūtis. Vis dėlto net aš negaliu nepripžinti, jog tekstas parašytas tikro meistro, kalba nuostabi. Bene labiausiai knyga žavi tuo, kad kiekviename apsakyme, nepaisant jame aprašomos nelaimės ar nusikaltimo, atsiranda beveik romantiškas šviesos ar bent menko žiburėlio blyksnis. Tarsi dideliame apleistame ir apšnerkštame name kas nors uždegtų žvakę, o šalia jos pasidėtų mylimo žmogaus nuotrauką. Galbūt būtent šis momentas ir atveda personažą iki paskutinio apsakymo įvykių.

بابا چقد خوب بود. چقد ریویوهای اینجا هم خوبه. دیدم هرچی می‌خواسم من بگم، بهترشو بقیه گفتن. پسرعیسا رو توی یه روز بارونی و تعطیلم خوندم، با هر داستان بیشتر جذبش می‌شدم. تصویرسازی‌های طبیعی و ناب در کنار روایت تکه‌تکه و تارانتینویی که با هوشمندی لایه‌های مخفیش رو آروم‌ باز می‌کرد و دیالوگ‌های عالی. در دیالوگ عالیه، طوری که اگه فیلمش ساخته بشه هم موفق خواهد بود. دیدم یکی از بچه‌ها گفته بود یکی این کتابو برسونه به دست تارانتینو. آره واقعاً. :))

از کتاب‌هاییه که بازم بهش مراجعه می‌کنم. خیلی جرئت و خودآگاهی می‌خواد که یه نفر از مسائلی که عمیقاً خودش باهاشون درگیر بوده، بنویسه. اونم با این انسجام و تکنیک.

Viena iš tų knygų, kur - labai gera, bet ne mano. Ir išties labai gera - narkomanai ir gyvenimo paraštės kaip iš Bukowskio / Welsho, bet liūdesys ir literatūriškumas - kaip iš kokio nors McCarthy. Ir neįtikėtinas žodžio, pasakojimo taupumas. Šiaip būčiau davus 4*, bet tas trumpumas, kad kiekvienas apsakymas yra kažkaip tobulai išbaigtas, nors ir nesmūgiškai, - tiesiog puiku, nesvarbu, artima ta knyga tau ar ne.

Rinkinį sudaro 11 apsakymų, jungčių tarp jų daug: ir pasakotojas, kuris tai apsivartojęs blaškosi per vietas, draugus ir moteris, tai dirba ligoninėj ir užrašinėja nutikimus, ir skirtingi personažai, ir labai laisva, bet vis dėlto numanoma tų pasakojimų chronologinė seka. Visokių patirčių, tik susijusių, mozaika truputį priminė Namų tvarkytojos vadovą, tačiau ten visko buvo labai tiršta ir daug, tikros džiunglės, o pas Johnsoną - labiau kaip gėlių parduotuvė, maždaug tokia "Gėlės ir gvazdikai" - ne per daug, gražu, yra kas brangiau, yra ką pražiūri. Visur - paribių žmonės ir paribių patirtys, ar tai būtų nepažįstamų žmonių sekimas per langą ir vaizdavimasis, kas jie, kaip gyvena, ar pasakotojo merginos su skirtingomis fizinėmis negaliomis, ar apsinarkašinęs slaugytojas Džordžis, geriausiems chirurgams tariantis, kaip ištraukti peilį, pacientui pavojingai įsmeigtą į akį, jį paprasčiausiai nukniaukęs.

Atskira padėka Burokui už vertimą ir grubią kalbą, įskaitant chuinia ❤

Ak, tas anų dienų pasaulis! Dabar jo nebeliko, jį ištrynė, suvyniojo kaip ritinį ir kažkur nukišo. Taip, aš galiu jį paliesti savo pirštais. Bet kur jis?
Po kurio laiko Hardis paklausė Džordžio:
- O tu kuo užsiimi?
Ir Džordžis atsakė:
- Gelbsčiu gyvybes.
(p. 70)

دنیس جانسون در پسرِ عیسا از انسان‌هایی روایت می‌کند که به نظر زیست منفعلانه‌ای دارند.به حاشیه رانده‌ شده‌اند و جانسون هم در بین همین آدم‌ها زیست کرده،و زیبایی‌‌ همین انسان‌های منفعل را ترسیم کرده:
هنوز به یک بخش از وجودش اجازه نداده بود متولد شود چون برای یک چنین جایی زیادی زیبا بود.
دیالوگ ها کوتاه و داستان‌ها اکثرن از زبان اول شخص نوشته شده‌اند و طنز بسیار ظریف و درخشانی دارد.
کتابی ساده با آدم‌هایی ساده و موضوعی ساده،اما بی‌نظیر.
((جزء کتاب‌هایی که بسیار دوستِش داشتم))

n  

'I knew every raindrop by its name. I sensed everything before it happened'

n

I reckon last year, I have read innumerable short stories. Too many. From contemporary guys out there, I read Mavis Gallant and Donald Barthelme. Now Denis Johnson is added to the list, Born in Germany, He has won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2007. I was intrigued to try his short stories and I found this one book most popular.

I admire the writing style. His way of storytelling is gripping and I like this sort of style. He has a unique narration style. He uses very few words, that’s commendable. He generates a thoughtful spasm in your head both at the beginning and at the end. After finishing most of the stories, I was forced back to revisit some of the paragraphs, to make sure I did not miss what the author wanted to convey. Though what an author wants to convey and what readers lay hold of, are two different things sometimes. The reader’s state of mind plays an important role. This sort of prose requires more concentration I guess, and it certainly tested my frail focusing abilities. If you go astray for two-three lines the essence of the story may transpire.

Regarding the content, It's a collection of interconnected short stories. it is about boos, drugs, alcohol, burglary, sniffing and thieving, and jail and all, but he has made things around his flawed and addicted characters very stylish. The way he is represented is strange. The author takes you to the lives of many troubled individuals from the underbelly of society, their tale is dark and shady. The tone is unapologetic in nature.

In one story, in a pensive mood, a thief contemplates, wanting to steal from even a ruined house. He had a work ethic, I assume!

n  

“All the houses on the river bank- a dozen or so, were abandoned. The windows in the lower stories were empty of glass. We passed alongside them and I saw that the ground floors of these buildings were covered with silt. Sometime back if blood had run over the banks, canceling everything. But now the river was flat and slow. Willows stoke the waters with their hair.
“Are we doing a burglary?” I asked Wayne.”
“You can't burgulate a forgotten, empty house.” He said, horrified at my stupidity.

n

If you are comfortable with the subject matter, then I will recommend the book to witness the tactful storytelling from the author. I was utterly impressed with the style and skill of the author. I am going to remember it. I wish, I soon read his novels too.

I think the craft of Denis depicting human frailties is amazing in this book!

Denis Johnson took the fringe sensibilities of The Beats, added his own raw poetic touches, nicked a line from Lou Reed for the title, and ended up with an intensely unsettling collection of stories that prefigured to a T the drug classic Trainspotting. You may wonder at first if the unnamed narrator of these accounts could really be such an uncaring cad. Well, as a bottom line, maybe so. But the thoughts of murder, the thieving, and the ultra-callous disregard for fellow man were in large part a function of the skag, the booze, and the stolen pharmaceuticals. This does not excuse the insensitivity and messed up behavior so much as it explains the eeriness, fragmentation, and reflexive anger. But amidst the distortions, bits of clarity stand out. And in contrast to the alienation in dull shades of gray, a kindness of any tint will catch the eye.

Has it ever been proposed as an exercise in creative writing to imagine being (if not actually being) high as a kite? What am I saying? Of course it has. And abstract, luminous words have come from such otherworldly mindsets, I’m sure. In fact, I would argue that this short book set in the psychedelic 70’s is a prime case in point. It figures, with Johnson also being a poet, that the writing would be taut and expressive. He captures the sentiments of the down-and-out so well, too. For example, he describes how the “tears of false fellowship dripped on the bar” and how a gunshot victim should be happy he’s getting “Haldol pumped by the quart.” The drug scene is the backdrop, but the fallout is the real focus.

n  ” I'd been staying at the Holiday Inn with my with my girlfriend, honestly the most beautiful woman I'd ever known, for three days under a phony name, shooting heroin. We made love in the bed, ate steaks in the restaurant, shot up in the john, puked, cried, accused one another, begged of one another, forgave, promised, and carried one another to heaven.”n

My favorite parts were when little hints of what it means to be human snuck into the stories. It didn’t always put the narrator in a favorable light, but usually pointed to something redeemable within him. He appreciated co-worker and co-addict Georgie for telling a friend of a friend who was seriously AWOL that he’d help get him to Canada. Georgie also wanted to save the baby rabbits of the mother he ran over with his car. Another story described the narrator’s best day ever, one where he and a friend made $28 each from honest labors stripping copper wire out of the friend’s abandoned house and then celebrating with their favorite bartender pouring them double shots but charging them only for singles.

The last story was set at Beverly Home, a place for senile, disabled, and disfigured adults where the narrator was given a part-time job as the newsletter writer and a point of human contact for those rarely touched. He was off drugs and sober at this point, and regaining his health. His straight and narrow path was still a little skewed, though, when he discovered a Mennonite woman who happened to time her shower every day as he passed by her place after work. As immoral as his actions were, though, there was a sense that he’d turned the corner I was going to say he turned the corner to find an odd looking guy with a long beard but no mustache about to aim a shotgun his way, but I’d be taking too much literary license saying that. It never happened.

A book like this is an eye-opener. It’s a hard look at addiction, it’s an artistic peek at altered perceptions, and it’s a clever way to highlight humanity when set against the stuporous default settings. Oh, and since it matters, the writing was really good, too.

This searing book of short stories, of losers and addicts, the desperate romanticism of the street, jobs mopping up blood in the emergency room--I remember trying to read it years ago, and disliking the hell out of it. But took it out of my library on audio--I check out anything my library has on audio that looks good. Every night, listening to this brilliant book, I'd end up standing in front of my house, in the dark, waiting for the story finish. Or in the garage, listening. The downside of audio--and of library use--is that I no longer have the book to quote from. But the overall impression of devastating clarity, of these subworlds of awful accidents, low-life bars (what Malcolm Lowry's Consul called "the paradise of my despair"), of having friends where you find them and perhaps only for a moment, brief glimpses of beauty:

"Sometimes what I wouldn't give to have us sitting in a bar again at 9:00 a.m. telling lies to one another, far from God.”

Redemptive moments and stunningly bad choices, all carried by a language both as coarse as a rough board and beautiful as a bolt of silk. Uniquely expressive of a culture where you expect to be dead at 21, hustlers and users and criminals, boy-men capable of sudden violence, the search for community and brotherhood, home and some meaning.

'Car Crash while Hitchhiking'--the first one in the collection, pulls you completely into the universe where 'shit happens' and you walk away, knowing you're doing the wrong thing, that you will always do the wrong thing, and you hear the metal prison doors of life swing shut.

"Emergency", where our narrator has been working as an aide in an emergency room, will always be remembered for the night a guy came in stabbed through the eye, and his co-worker... but no spoilers! A brilliant story whose milieu reminded me of the title story in Melanie Rae Thon's First Body, without the careening moral freeforall of Jesus' Son, and insights that hit the center of the earth. "That world! These days it's all been erased, and they rolled it up like a scroll and put it away somewhere. Yes, I can touch it with my fingers but where is it?"

Several of these linked stories visit a bar--the Vine--where, in the story I liked the most, "Out on Bail" a young man (everybody in these stories is very very young, which gives a poignant shading to the crime and the nostalgia both) runs into an old pal who is supposed to be going to prison in the morning. The yearning for community, for attachment, for friendship, to be part of something, even at society's bottom--or rather, especially at the bottom--is the note heard throughout this collection, the throughline of these otherwise crazily out of control lives.

What’s the deal with great writers and drugs and/or alcohol? It seems most of my favorite writers start out with amazing talent and then slowly fizzle out under the weight of some form of substance abuse. Patrick Hamilton, Carson McCullers, Richard Yates... (add your own).

In my book, Denis Johnson is turning out to be an inverse exception to the rule. For most of his twenties, Johnson was addicted to drugs and alcohol but he quit drinking alcohol in 1978 and quit recreational drugs in 1983 and this is reflected in his writing. I think his talent has grown immensely with his continued sobriety. I haven’t read Angels yet (his first novel, published in 1983), but I’m in no rush. I’d much rather start with his more recent work and move backwards to that one and, if I never get to it, I won’t fret.

I loved The Largesse of the Sea Maiden (2014) so much that I still haven’t written the review that I want to write for it and I enjoyed Resuscitation Of A Hanged Man (1991) very much, but I think Jesus' Son is only so-so. I found most of the stories in it to be a bit “samey” and not particularly interesting. Should drug addicts be so boring? Okay, come to think of it: maybe so. And maybe that’s Johnson’s point? Anyhow, if this collection had been my first experience with this author, I doubt I’d want to read more. Thankfully, it wasn’t and I do want to read more. Lots more.

FUOCO DENTRO


In copertina una foto del 1978 di Mimmo Jodice: Bruciatura.

Stavo all’Holiday Inn da tre giorni, sotto falso nome, in compagnia della mia ragazza, sinceramente la donna più bella che avessi mai conosciuto, a farmi di eroina. Facevamo l’amore a letto, mangiavamo bistecche al ristorante, ci bucavamo al cesso, vomitavamo, piangevamo, ci accusavamo, ci imploravamo, perdonavamo, promettevamo e ci portavamo in paradiso a vicenda.

Fortunata chiusura delle letture di quest’anno con questo librino smilzo assolutamente magistrale di un autore mai sentito prima che per la qualità e potenza dei suoi racconti in molti affiancano a Hemingway e Carver - del quale fu allievo all’Iowa Writers’ Workshop, da molti considerata la migliore scuola di scrittura creativa del mondo.
Qui ci sono undici racconti in novantatre pagine. Il protagonista è sempre lo stesso, lo stesso io narrante, “ubriaco di una tristezza che non gli bastava mai”, il nome di battesimo non viene mai fuori, il soprannome è Fuckhead, che nella traduzione italiana diventa Testadicazzo.
Ma oltre che una raccolta di racconti, è un romanzo breve, una novella: undici episodi, undici momenti della vita di Testadicazzo.


Padri e figli: un’altra foto di Mimmo Jodice.

L’epigrafe sono due versi di Heroin, la canzone dei Velvet Underground scritta da Lou Reed:
When I’m rushing on my run // And I feel just like Jesus’ son…
che si possono tradurre in:
Quando mi sto godendo la mia pera // e mi sento come il figlio di Gesù…

Fuckhead/Testadicazzo racconta quello che gli succede, e un po’ anche quello che invece non succede: racconto che è come “una trasmissione radio con frequenze disturbate, interferenze che schizzano sulla scena alimentando un corto-circuito temporale”.
Ha un’esistenza geograficamente movimentata come nella migliore tradizione a stelle-e-strisce: si racconta a Seattle, nell’Iowa, a Phoenix in Arizona, Missouri, Texas, altrove. Ogni luogo sembra un’interminabile periferia: così come periferiche, marginali, delocalizzate sembrano la sua e le vite che incrocia.
Più che vivere, Fuckhead/Testadicazzo sembra esserci, esistere, riempire il tempo tra una sbronza e un altro tipo di sballo, con un po’ di sesso negli intervalli e momenti di un assurdità esilarante.
Per descrivere Fuckhead/Testadicazzo, un giovane uomo che vive il giorno in attesa della notte e della perdita di coscienza di sé, non trovo parole più appropriate di quelle che Johnson riserva alla coppia mennonita nell’ultimo racconto-vignetta: “fuori al buio con una grande solitudine e il terrore di un’intera vita non ancora vissuta”.


Ancora una foto di Mimmo Jodice.

L’umanità che s’incontra in queste pagine oscilla tra i disgraziati, i ladruncoli, gli strafatti, gli alcolizzati, i feriti a morte, i paralitici e i paralizzati, gli amputati, gli storpi nel corpo e/o nell’anima, i vigliacchi e gli eroinomani, i traditori, i bestemmiatori.
Non esiste luce e non esiste gloria in nessuna delle storie dei personaggi che qui s’incontrano, soltanto cuori squarciati e infelici che procedono per inerzia e perché non c’è alternativa.
Il Dio in cui voglio credere ha la voce e il senso dell’umorismo di Denis Johnson. Parole di Jonathan Franzen.



Indimenticabile l’episodio del film proiettato nel drive in deserto perché è in arrivo una tormenta. Si ride e contemporaneamente si prova un senso di solitudine così forte che schiaccia i polmoni, il cuore e tutto il resto

Il film, del 1999, è una commedia bittersweet indie che prende tutte le singole storie, le cuce insieme, realizza una narrazione più compatta che nelle pagine: ma rispetto alla potenza della scrittura non può far nulla, né sceneggiatori né regista sono all’altezza pur se il risultato complessivo è dignitoso.
Azzeccatissimo il protagonista, Billy Crudup, attore che trovo oltremodo sottovalutato (senza la sua presenza, come avrei fatto ad arrivare in fondo all’orrida seconda stagione di The Morning Show?), e gli cuce intorno un cast davvero interessante: Samantha Morton, Michael Shannon, Jack Black, Dennis Hopper, Will Patton, Miranda July, Holly Hunter, lo stesso Denis Johnson in un divertente cammeo

Al Vine ce n’erano tanti di momenti come quello, in cui ti capitava di pensare che oggi fosse ieri, e ieri fosse domani, e così via. perché eravamo tutti convinti della nostra tragicità, e bevevamo. Provavamo un senso di impotenza, di predestinazione. Saremmo morti con le manette ai polsi. Avremmo fatto una brutta fine, e non per colpa nostra. Così immaginavamo. Eppure venivamo sempre giudicati innocenti per motivi assurdi.


Jack Black con un paziente del pronto soccorso interpretato dallo stesso Denis Johnson.

کتاب انقدر تشبیهات و استعاره های ناب داره که حتی ترجمه بد خاکسار هم نمی تونه خرابش کنه
خط سیر داستان ها هم خیلی جالبه، داستان ها مثل یه سری عکس از لحظه های مختلف زندگی نویسنده ان که از اعتیاد شدید به الکل و انواع مواد شروع میشه، هی از شدت مصرف مواد کم میشه و دو داستان آخر مربوط به ترک و بعد از ترکه الکل و هرویینه
شکل و ساختار و فضای داستان ها هم با شدت اعتیاد نویسنده هماهنگه
ولی در کل کتاب با همه صحنه های وحشتناکی که داره، امید به زندگی رو داد میزنه
"وقتی در آن اتاق کوچک آفتابگیر دراز می کشیدیم، نسبت به تک تک شان احساس ترحم می کردم، ترحمی شیرین که دیگر نمی توانند زندگی کنند، با غم مست کنند،
چیزی که هرچقدر هم داشتم باز هم برایم کم بود"

پی نوشت: 1- یه جوونمردی پیدا بشه و یه نسخه از این کتاب رو بده تارانتینو
2- حتی تو نقل قول بالا هم میشه اشکال های ترجمه رو به وضوح دید