"Resuscitation of a Hanged Man" is definitely a lesser work by Denis Johnson. The blueprint of the book actually sounds like it should be one of my favorites. Leonard English failed in his attempt to commit suicide by hanging. He has closed all the doors to his former life and is moving from Kansas to Provincetown to take a job as a night disc jockey and part-time private detective. He falls in love in the messiest way possible, stumbles into a potential conspiracy and wrestles with religion and the meaning of existence. Unfortunately, the book fails to deliver on its premise. There's a lot of true to life bizarre characters around P-Town, mistaken/confused identity and a descent into madness.

So far I have learned that this book is good at absorbing spilled coffee.

Okay, whoa, this book is strange and tender and maybe a little whacky and underwhelming at the end. It's definitely entertaining, though. And a great insight into where Johnson was at shortly before he wrote Jesus' Son. In fact, some parts of this book almost feel like practice for that masterpiece. Many of the scenes and phrasings that take place here can be found, in an altered and much more refined form, in Jesus' Son. Certainly not a great book, but essential Johnson reading nonetheless.

Ps - the protagonist, Leonard English, is such an awesomely fleshed out and flawed character to follow.

Good early 1990's post-modern read. Existential protagonist. Struggles with faith and sexuality. Ending a bit messy, but post-mod endings usually are. Recommended if you want to get an idea of early D.J.

Leonard English, the flawed hero of Johnson’s darkly comic novel, moves to Cape Cod’s Provincetown during the winter lull following the suicide attempt suggested in the novel’s title. Beginning one job as a night DJ at the local radio station and another as an assistant to a private detective, English often finds himself wandering Provincetown’s late-night streets, and is quickly caught up in the tight social circle of any off-season tourist town. Throw in a missing artist, a star-crossed love triangle, and an employer’s potential ties to a right-wing survivalist movement in the mountains of New Hampshire, and English soon has more than enough to keep him busy, while Johnson has the beginnings of this engaging, gritty noir novel.

Unfortunately, even fine writing doesn’t help the novel as the plot begins to unravel, arriving at an ending that is bizarre even for an already strange book, and worse, ultimately disappointing. But this novel is an interesting artifact of sorts, a mid-point in Johnson’s career: although this was his fourth novel he was perhaps still transitioning from poetry to prose and had not yet published Jesus’ Son, the collection of short stories that appeared a year after “Resuscitation” that was so successful he has only recently crawled out from under its shadow nearly twenty years later. While Resuscitation of a Hanged Man might not be read as an early masterpiece, it is certainly an entertaining read, an odd stop on the road map of one of literature’s most celebrated writer’s career.

Could not finish. Plot was difficult to follow, characters uninteresting

Gradaully I realized I was reading a detective novel, and having a lot of fun.

I've read three books by Johnson now and am impressed with how different they all are. What they share in common is exploration of unexpected places in the United States, in this case Cape Cod and a little bit of Franconia Notch, New Hampshire.

Every character in this book is peculiar in a believable way and often hilarious. The characters speak the type of dialogue that you automatically hear in your mind - and once the protagonist starts to lose his mind his encounters with wood choppers, priests, and prisoners are side-splittingly funny.

What's amazing is that the author can balance the humor and intrigue of a missing persons investigation with bleak philosophy and sometimes very morbid images, and even some very adventurous American theology.

provincetown was a cool setting for a total wreck of a dude. picked pace up at end-

"I'll tell you what I feel like, kissing you," he said to her. "I feel like somebody's writing swear words on my balls."

--
Suddenly his eyes burned, he felt sexy, and he wanted to take off his clothes and dance around, fondling himself and screaming. In a while he did exactly that; he tossed aside his garments, even his shoes and socks, and for a few minutes, until he got too cold, he pirouetted whitely through the woods, like the naked soul of Gerald Twinbrook liberated from the corpse.

I want to start by saying that a troll unnerved me, and now I have a difficult time writing here. I deleted her vicious trolly comment, as well as the dispensable novel I'd commented on. It isn't worth commenting on bad work by writers only known by their circle of friends and community. I don't begrudge anyone who wants to write, even if they aren't good writers. I wish them all well, regardless of talent (or not). I'm sure he's a nice guy, and I would never attack a writer. But, shoot, I have as much right as anyone else to have an opinion about writing, books, and anything else. And that's all this is, my opinion. I don't attack others who have the opposite opinion I do. Trolls do that.

That said, I found one comment by someone who hated this Denis Johnson novel. She said she read half of it, then quit, because it was "too depressing". I find that amusing, because I read this novel, loved it, and I actually found moments of dark humor which made me laugh. Isn't it amazing and wonderful how we all perceive in our own way? Some say what we see mirrors our own self. I think that is sometimes true. I think we see what we fear, and we see what we love; we see what we don't want to (because we fear it), and we see what we want to (because we love it).

This novel is about a troubled man. It doesn't quite have the exquisite dark, poetic beauty, in MY opinion, of Jesus' Son, my favorite of all my favorites, but it does have dark humor and poetic beauty. As in Jesus' Son, we find a protagonist who apparently thinks God is "a senseless maniac". He thinks to himself, "...would God ask for anything sane? Did He come to Elijah and say, Go, secure a respectable position and wear out your days in the chores of it?" This God has a "strange monstrous finger to guide a person toward the round of events that wears us down..." I love this dark humor--it makes me laugh; it pastes a smile on my face.

I mean, this poor guy, Lenny English, falls in love with a bi-sexual woman. Boy, and I think she was ruthless. It sort of turns the tables on what I think of as the unattainable baby-don't-get-hooked-on-me dude, the freebird a woman can't keep in her life and all to herself. It drives him crazy and he has crazy fantasies. Which, made me laugh and shake my head. What is love, anyway? Insanity? Well, sometimes it seems so.

I think the novel ends in ambiguity. Different characters point to different possibilities. But Johnson leaves it up to us readers to guess as to what poor Lenny's fate will be. But I felt that the poor guy's actions cleansed him of some inner turmoil, and he's happy about this. I laughed when I reached the end. I laughed and shook my head. This novel pasted a smile on my face. It's one I will eventually re-read for sure.

I really enjoy Johnson’s writing—his rhythmic, poetic language and sense of humor—but I haven’t truly loved one of his books yet. Despite loving his words, I find it difficult to get in sync with his stories.

Train Dreams was the first of his that I read, and is still my favorite. Fiskadoro was a struggle apart from a few enthralling passages. Resuscitation falls somewhere between the two.

I spent the first 2/3 of the book wondering where we were headed. Then in the last third suddenly we arrived, but I didn’t understand how we got there (though I did like where we ended up).

Mentally unstable thirty-something year old white guy stumbles into Provincetown, MA during the early months of 1980. There he struggles against his delusions and may or may not be working for a detective on a missing persons case. Johnson’s prose as always is a delight to read, but the main character is so muddle-headed that the book can be a trial at times.

This book was quite enjoyable. It is impossible not to get submerged into the story, Johnson hooks you and never lets go. Denis Johnson is a master of the English language. It seems like every word is necessary for the story. Johnson has a focus on providing the reader a well-written novel that lacks useless page-filling words. Resuscitation of a Hanged Man makes you question your own life. This book is truly a work of art. A+ for Denis Johnson and Resuscitation of a Hanged Man.