If you only know Johnson for Jesus’ Son, I envy you. You have this superb book lying in wait.

The last chapter is a hard one. The characters are no "angels" and they continue down a slippery slope at a very rapid pace. This is not a story of redemption. I can only recommend to folks who don't mind gritty and unsavory characters. This book has multiple characters who all think they are leaving something horrible for something better but it's in direct contrast to this situation. They are self destructive and no one is stopping another from poor decisions. They encourage this behavior. Harsh and raw. Note: another read that influenced Donald Ray Pollock. On another note, thank goodness a parent didn't ask me what this was about while reading at my kiddo's ballgame....:crickets!

I keep a short list of books that I consider Great-writing-Painful-to-read. A cringe accompanied by pain on nearly every page. Powerful. Memorable.*** Angels. It touches on so many things. Squalor, drug use, alcoholism, rape, murder, and good old insanity. Too well done and Painful. ** Others on the list- for alcoholism Malcom Lowry's Under The Volcano will leave you in a fog for weeks. * Theodore Dreiser's An American tragedy forces the reader to truly feel the shame a murderer carries.* And last as well as the one I most want to completely forget, American Psycho. All on my list of books not to read again. I can't deny they are well written, but they are keeping bad company.

Amazing

This book is a wild ride and felt epic even at just over 200 pages. The story opens with Jamie Mays and Bill Houston meeting on a Greyhound bus and from there kind of goes crazy. I don’t want to spoil anything but things get intense quick and build to a remarkable ending. I read Denis Johnson’s short book of stories Jesus’ Son ~7 years ago which I thought was pretty good but not especially impressive. Maybe I should try that one again because the writing quality of Angels is on another level. The book is mostly descriptive prose with a lyrical, poetic, at times psychedelic quality. Denis Johnson really shines when he writes from the perspective of the characters on drugs or experiencing insanity. Examples-

“His face was a shimmering computerized wall of beef.” (p.126)

“I believed I could set fire to things with my fingers.” (p.192)

“staring out of the jungle of hammers and white blindness in her mind” (p.96)

From what I understand, this was Denis Johnson’s first novel after previously publishing poetry and then spending part of the 70’s as a heroin addict. Angels makes sense as the product of that life… combined with a talent for writing uncanny combinations of words and dreaming up gritty cinematic situations. Everything feels carefully put together and tightly wrought, a work of craft and discipline. But the formal impressiveness doesn’t come at the expense of soul- the stories and the characters feel lovingly rendered. This is an empathetic portrait of individuals living on the outskirts of society. It’s like a love letter to criminals and drug addicts… characters who we shouldn’t sympathize with, but who after all are only human just like the rest of us. And the book shows this in a way that isn’t cliche or sentimental. More like emotionally rich but also bleak, violent, strange, unpredictable, musical, and at times laugh-out-loud funny.

Maybe it was just a case of “right book right time” for me but wow! Highly recommended.

Four stars for Denis Johnson’s use of language, three and a half overall. The writing is lyrical in passages, showing that McCarthy-esque truth and revelation darkness that some of us love so well. Plot? Myeah. Damaged people living damaging lives. At least with McCarthy and others who create these damaged characters in their novels, one will find at least one who is redemptive. Not here. This book is full of just awful people without any one of them giving the reader any glimmer of hope or change. I look for it, but did not find one here. Not one. I felt like I needed a good hand washing afterwards.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, if you are a Denis Johnson fan, you should read the book. Just not as an introduction to his body of work. Try Tree of Smoke. Johnson can do better.

First, an opening number: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq344k...

*****

Trying to forget your past is a futile as trying to dodge the rain drops when it goes from a drizzle to a downpour. Unexpectedly, the sky will just open up and you're fucked. I’m not going to lie, this book (the first half anyway) brought back an awful lot of unwanted memories for me.

What is it that protected me from turning into one of these sad sonsabitches? I grew up piss poor surrounded by a bunch of degenerates, why am I not chasing the dragon or locked up or living on welfare? Why do I not have 5 kids fathered by a bunch of different baby daddies? Why was I spared?

Allow me to digress for a moment (I swear, this will make sense later). I’m not much for computer games, but there is one game I love to play: two suit spider solitaire. See, this game is all about making the right decisions. And when you get stuck at the end with no more moves, you can simply go back go back go back and choose a different path. Maybe it will be the right one and maybe not, and if it’s not, hey, no biggie, you can keep choosing until you finally get on the right path, or you can give up and accept that you're just not going to win this round. It’s sort of a metaphor for life for me. Because I’d be lying if I said I haven’t made some pretty bad decisions along the way. But every day I wake up, I get the opportunity to make a different choice.

And that, folks, makes all the difference: having the courage and the conviction to make better, wiser choices. Johnson’s characters are all plagued by the same fatal flaw: the inability to change the course of the game. The Houston brothers are criminals and abusers just like their father. Jaime is a drugged out waste of life who neglects her children and herself. Save your pity though, because they are where they are because of their own stupid ass decisions, and I for one don’t feel sorry for a single one of them. And that’s all I have to say about that.

****

Endogenous vs exogenous. Internal vs external locus of control. Read  Arthur's exceptional review for the other side of the argument.

****
DFW - 2 hits, 2 misses. Bring on the tie breaker.

“He held his breath. Every rivet of metal was a jewel to him. He felt he could hold his breath forever — no problem. Boom, boom. Even as his heart accelerated, it seemed to him inexplicably that his heart was slowing down. You can get right in between each beat, and let the next one wash over you like the best and biggest warm ocean there ever was. His eyes were on fire. He hated to shut them, but they hurt. He wanted to see. Boom! Was there ever anything as pretty as that one? Another coming…boom! Beautiful! They just don’t come any better than that. He was in the middle of taking the last breath of his life before he realized he was taking it. But it was all right. Boom! Unbelievable! And another coming? How many of these things do you mean to give away? He got right in the dark between heartbeats, and rested there. And then he saw that another one wasn’t going to come. That’s it. That’s the last. He looked at the dark. I would like to take this opportunity, he said, to pray for another human being.”

Οι "Άγγελοι" του Τζόνσον δεν είναι ακριβώς άγγελοι αν και προς το τέλος του βιβλίου έχουν κάτι αγγελικό πάνω τους, λόγω της αισιοδοξίας με την οποία ατενίζουν το μέλλον. Είναι άνθρωποι κατατρεγμένοι, το λεγόμενο white trash, που ζουν, όχι ακριβώς στο περιθώριο αλλά κάπου εκεί ανάμεσα: γιατί θα μπορούσανε να γίνουν καλύτεροι αλλά οι αδυναμίες τους δεν τους αφήνουν. Και ο Τζόνσον σκιαγραφεί γλαφυρά αυτή την πραγματικότητα με απλή πρόζα που όμως είναι αρκετή για να απεικονίσει την σκληρή πραγματικότητα. Το βιβλίο είναι αρκετά δυνατό, με συναίσθημα χωρίς όμως να γίνεται γελοίο και αναδεικνύει το συγγραφικό ταλέντο του Τζόνσον.

Johnson's first novel, Angels is a savage downward spiral of people who you at first recoil from at their lack of self control, then come to love as the chaos reveals itself as something much greater than mere individuals. A gorgeous portrayal of confusion, drugs, and madness— a crying angel with roving tattoos is the center of my favorite scene, second only to the ending, which I won't spoil here. The heartrending moments of truth come with less immediacy than they do in some of Johnson's other works, such as Jesus' Son, and for that bit of down time I'm opting for 4 stars rather than 5, but overall this is an utterly moving read.

WOW. When I first picked this up, I did not expect to be reading a book that would grow to be so harrowing and painful, yet beautiful and serene. Johnson's writing, much like in Train Dreams (which I read recently), has an unmistakable, unreproducible aura to it. You can tell he loves his characters, but he does not want them to be anything they are not; in this way, everyone feels like a real person.

I'm speechless. I don't know what else I could add. All I can say is that Johnson may become one of my new favorite writers - up there with Faulkner, Pollock, and Selby Jr.

This is a book everyone should read. There is nothing more to say. It's written in an approachable style with beautiful language, engaging characters, and an enticing story.

"Houston, we have a problem". Depois de ler "Sonhos e Combóios" peguei em "Anjos" sem hesitação e é com espanto que descubro (ou começo a descobrir) Denis Johnson. A luz e a sombra da sua personalidade literária são profundas e deslumbrantes, este seu primeiro livro indica maturidade e considero-o um dos melhores dos 80s (lá em cima com Less Than Zero ou Blood Meridian). A história de Jamie e Bill Houston (até a forma como os nomes encaixam é reveladora) começa como uma odisseia inconsequente até se perder nos limites da decadência, não passa muito até entrarmos num submundo aparte, infernal e surreal.

Denis Johnson escreve a sua prosa como quem pinta um quadro, com amor à sua arte, trabalhando os artifícios da história e desafiando a realidade que criou até ao limite do que vulgarmente apelidamos de real. É uma obra dura, mergulhando os personagens no lago de fogo, ocultando deliberamente a perspectiva da violência gratuita. Johnson atormenta para chegar à bonança, levando o mal da humanidade a redimir-se sem alternativa, por se consumir e se extinguir na sua podridão.

O calvário pessoal de Johnson transparece um pouco, tal como a sua relação com essa fase da vida parece muito melhor aceite em "Sonhos e Combóios". É na irreverência e acidez, da forma como conta a sua visão da salvação, que se nota a estreia literária. Poderia dizer que escassas vezes se perde em devaneios, mas a qualidade da sua prosa é um deleite. Aguardam-me o "Filho de Jesus" e "Coluna de Fumo".

Sorry to say Denis Johnson came pretty hyped to me, and rather late in life, so I think I might have been a bit hypercritical of this one given my over-bloated expectations. It gets a fourth star for the exquisite writing style, but the plot was a load of modern Americana violent lost drug-addled cliche straight outta the worst of Cormac McCarthy. I don't want to go into details as the one thing I did like about the narrative was how it enfolded so I'm not going to spoil it for anyone else. In the end, hovever, Angels only made me long for a new Hubert Selby novel, which I'm not gonna get this side of heaven.

I'll read another Johnson soon to see if I can overcome my expectations--also to enjoy the poetic prose, and to see if he got as good as people say he did.