Denis Johnson's first novel, which won him the acclaim of many fellow writers but isn't anywhere near as famous as some of his later works, is one of those books that deserves more attention. I'll admit it suffers from some pretty significant structural flaws - it feels like two different novels jammed together, which might've been resolved if the trip between Chicago and Phoenix had been fleshed out a little - but the effect it produces is spellbinding just the same, and readers only familiar with Jesus' Son might be surprised by how much of his act the guy had figured out at this point. Like that famous collection, this novel is built around a burned-out neon wasteland and features all manners of manipulation, deception, abuse, and guilt, but for all the unremitting darkness, there are these odd moments of tenderness and transcendence and even beauty that lend some substance to a title you only thought was ironic. In places, I can recommend this as highly as any of my five stars; it's at least as good as Jesus' Son.

fantastic. this book had me in a trance.

“That space between heartbeats had been big enough to accommodate any amount of contemplation of the act.”

Whew - what a ride. From the opening pages of Denis Johnson’s debut novel, he takes you on a dark journey, hurtling towards an inevitable ending that is equal parts haunting and gut-wrenching. A chance encounter between the two main characters, Jamie and Bill, sets of a chain reaction of events that take each of them on a downward spiral towards oblivion. Bill and Jamie come together, and get separated, then come together again - a twisted dance that quickly takes a turn for the worst for both of them, ending in violence and madness.

Johnson’s prose is electric; I felt movement in each sentence, driving the novel towards it’s grim conclusion. Don DeLillo is blurbed on the cover and it makes sense - I got a similar feeling reading his first novel, Americana. Angels is raw, both in the sense of the novel itself and Johnson as a writer - I’m excited to check out some of his later work and see how his craft evolves.

I got to the end of the novel, breathless, looking for some modicum of understanding for what I just read. After reflecting, it feels like Johnson is using Bill and Jamie to show how something so small - sitting next to someone on a bus - can lead to unexpected interconnectivity, a twisting of fates that knocked me off my feet.

In the words of Gwen Stefani: “This shit is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.”

This is the kind of book no mainstream publisher today would touch with a ten-foot pole. What’s in these pages contains stuff that is bound to offend someone (myself included), but I don’t care about all of that. Johnson had a clear vision and he went for it and he committed to it. This story is about the downtrodden and the “lowlifes.” The book is far from PC, but sometimes great literature has to offend once in a while.

Johnson’s works always contain compelling antiheroes (that’s his jam), but this debut novel may have taken it to a whole new level. I call this the “ultimate book on people who keep on making bad decisions.”

At first we meet Jamie and Bill, two ultimate screwups, who happen to meet on a Greyhound bus. These two loners make a connection and have no idea that this destined meeting will lead down a further path of destruction and danger. Jamie has walked out on her abusive husband with her two young daughters in tow. Bill has been married three times, a restless soul with an ongoing flirtation with crime. These two meet and we immediately figure out that nothing good can come from it.

There’s an early vibe in the book that lets you know that this ain’t going to be a book with a happy ending. This insistence on being in each other's lives, is going to be the downfall of Jamie and Bill and everyone around them. These characters, including all of the side characters, are more than rough around the edges; for most of us they’re the type of people we make sure to steer clear off. But Johnson doesn’t paint them as caricatures or cliches. We may not agree with their bad decisions/rationales, but we can empathize with them. And more importantly, we feel we understand them or at least where they’re coming from.

Johnson also enhances this story with his off-kilter prose. The way he can spin a sentence is like no other. I don’t know how he continues to do it, but his prose contains an unsettling vibe on its own.

The last 10 pages were absolutely masterful; so moving and so unbelievably gut-wrenching. It left me both tingling and numb (how does that work?). This novel was a ferocious ride that never once took its foot off the gas pedal. It’s violent, it’s troubling, it’s maddening, brutal and unforgiving. ANGELS is a monster “literally,” figuratively, intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.

This was really great. I appreciated that for a bleak book about people on the margins where life is cruel and random, Angels never feels too cynical or nihilistic. I thought about the Coens, Molina, Faulkner, Cox - good company to be in.

Somewhere in the middle of this searing portrait of what middle class folk might think of as America's "low-lives" or "lost souls," I started to wonder why Johnson had chosen the title "Angels." Not long after, I found myself led out of the catastrophe of the characters' bewildered choices and into their inner lives where madness opens out into some kind of heaven. A heaven of longing, of love, and even of enlightenment. I can't believe how young Johnson was when he wrote this book. A stunning achievement.

Denis Johnson was first known as a poet and he brings that sensibility to his reflections on class in America. His first novel is about a set of characters struggling between the underclass, the criminal class, and the working class. His writing reflects close observation, portraying the tiny movements, tics, twitches, small actions of characters unaware they're being watched that give away the whole of their being. Johnson is one of the writers and poets of squalor (aka "dirty realism") such as Bukowski, Burroughs, Celine, Fante, Jim Harrison, Henry Miller (who am I missing?). Reading about people who make poor choices and bad decisions, who are of limited intelligence, drug addled, or traumatised, is not for everyone. For those who appreciate the seamy underbelly of society, this is a sad and hopeless voyage. [4★]

loved it, especially this line: "His face was a shimmering computerized wall of beef."

QUEL POMERIGGIO DI UN GIORNO DA CANI



Denis Johnson aveva esperienza diretta di tossici e alcolizzati. E quindi di emarginati, reietti, marginali, outcast, homeless: dedito lui stesso al consumo, sia di alcol che di droga, si è liberato del primo a ventinove anni e ha rinunciato alla seconda a trentaquattro.
Qui racconta una storia che deve in parte all’uno e all’altra, che contiene situazioni e umori che urlano a stelle-e-strisce, per me confermandosi scrittore di razza con in più il talento di spiazzarmi sempre cambiando tono, registro, voce, approccio. Per esempio, non so se in questo caso si possa parlare di momenti lirici, ma il fatto che Johnson abbia esordito proprio come poeta si percepisce bene tra queste pagine.



C’è la famiglia – tre fratelli e una madre, i padri sono diversi, sono due, uno non si incontra mai, l’altro sì ma solo brevemente; c’è il tipico girovagare per gli States, quello che ha marcato e impregnato anche tanto loro cinema; c’è l’uomo in fuga dalla società che se solo le cose andassero in modo diverso potrebbe passare per eroe; ci sono alcol e pillole, sbronze e bottiglie a fiaschetta che spuntano fuori come funghi; c’è l’action, una rapina; ci sono le macchine, quelle con quei cofani immensi e cilindrate da TIR che però si guidano con un dito; ci sono armi, spari, sangue, violenza (ma con parsimonia); c’è la prigione; ci sono storie d’amore improbabili, nate da un barlume, che si sfasciano al primo raggio di sole, oppure durano oltre la pioggia. C’è, ci sono altre cose, Denis Johnson non si risparmia.


Dog Day Afternoon

Angeli è la storia di persone che scivolano impotenti nei loro incubi. Jamie Mays lascia il marito in un parcheggio per roulotte a Oakland, in California. Viaggia attraverso vari stati con le due figlie piccole su un Greyhound quando incontra Bill Houston. In un primo momento è scoraggiata dai suoi tatuaggi e dagli occhiali da sole argentati (a goccia, immagino). Ma la solitudine e la sua condizione di mamma single con doppia prole a carico e seguito li fanno avvicinare e diventare amanti. Dopo un periodo terrificante a Chicago, dove Jamie viene violentata, approdano in Arizona. Lì trovano la cosa più pericolosa di tutte, la famiglia di Bill: quando i tre fratelli si riuniscono, è solo questione di tempo prima che le cose esplodano. Mentre Jamie Mays va in tilt a causa di pillole e vino, i fratelli Houston pianificano ed eseguono una rapina in banca. Tutto ciò che può andare storto lo fa.


Camera-a-gas made in USA.

Ma sarebbe un errore credere che il libro si esaurisca qui. Nell’ultima lunga parte c’è il percorso di Jamie in manicomio, e, mentre io temevo per lei - il rischio di elettroshock scorre sotto ogni pagina - lei invece trovava una strada, forse non “la sua”, ma almeno una. E poi, agghiacciante e terrificante, la vicenda giudiziaria di Bill.
Questo romanzo d’esordio (uscito nel 1983 dopo una gestazione lunga dodici anni) è un misto di poesia e oscenità, déjà vu et jamais lu, un melodramma selvaggio, disperato e a tratti opprimente, i cui personaggi e le loro vicende non si possono mettere da parte.


Things to do in Phoenix, Arizona: rob a bank.

Πρόζα εκπληκτικής δύναμης, για το περιθώριο, για ανθρώπους νικημένους (;), που οι ευκαιρίες τους πνίγηκαν σαν γατάκια που δεν τα ήθελε κανείς, για έναν κόσμο που γνωρίζει από πολύ κοντά

I feel a little unfair giving this only two stars, considering nothing was offensively bad and the writing itself was quite good. But it was my gut reaction and I'm sticking to it. Here's why.

It's a cross-country roadtrip, classic Americana novel (file this between Kerouac's On the Road and Steinbeck's Travels with Charley). Honestly, that's already a losing position to be in. I *hate* American-centered books (by which I mean, not books that are simply set in the US, but books that are specifically trying to present an image of American Culture with a capital C) and I hate roadtrip books. So it was probably going to be a 3 star book already, short of some incredible (for instance, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things is arguably one of those "snapshots of American Culture" books, but got 5 stars from me easy because it was so emotionally saturated).

And as I said before, it wasn't a terrible book. It was perfectly adequate. It's about a woman named Jamie with two daughters, Miranda and Baby Ellen, who are leaving their California home where Jamie's husband cheated on her with her best childhood friend, and planning to stay with her sister in Pennsylvania. On the bus, she meets someone named Bill Houston. They fall in love, travel together across America, he robs a bank, she has a nervous breakdown, shit ensues.

But it's completely forgettable. It's no different from every other novel of its genre. If I weren't writing this review right now, in a year I'd have no idea what I thought of the book or what happened. This will be one of those reviews I come across later on and scratch my head and go, "I read that? I don't even remember reading that. Or writing that review."

So to me, it just felt pointless. It felt like a book that didn't need to be written because it contributes nothing new to the genre. Just another road trip across America book.

And "a perfectly acceptable representative of the genre" is simply not what I am looking for when I read books. So, 2 stars-- though it's arguably the most well-written book I've ever 2-starred, and better written than plenty of 3 star books.

deliriously good
He got up and went to the counter. "One small order of French fries," he told the boy. They were the only customers in the establishment, and so the boy hustled to fill the order, rocketing around in his very own fast food universe, a tiny world half machine and half meat.