Insane

OK, denis johnson re-read of 2015 is back on chronological track.

this one steps past my previously imagined limits of the DJ poetic imagination, vivid as it is. it is a sun-fried post-apocalyptic novel with an extended flashback to the fall of vietnam, set in a nuclear wintered key west, and revolving around 1) drowning 2) clarinets 3) chaotic suffering. in terms of raw storytelling materiel, johnson moves past the stark basic shapes of Angels into a much, much richer place. a lot of precise and effective imagery here. but Fiskadoro (named after the mainest character) doesn't have the same charisma, the same propulsiveness as Angels, or Stars at Noon for that matter. Johnson makes a pretty brave move in writing a huge chunk of the dialogue in a broken, atavistic spanglish-rasta patois. when it works the dialect doesn't add that much, when it doesn't it's a legit chore to puzzle out what the hell is going on. since the biggest chunk of the story related in this patois is a weird abduction/fever dream involving DIY adult circumcision with a rock and literally forgetting who you ever were, probably for the best that the intensity was throttled. that's from a readerly perspective. from the POV of a writing choice it makes more sense. this is a novel about the radiation sickness that is memory and being, so for language itself to corrode makes sense. but it does take a toll in terms of the feel of the book.

there is enough here for a more patient, less visionary writer to craft a ten book series of weird parrothead mad max stuff. johnson stops way short of that, turning int a jagged and fragmentary drive-by. still laced with killer one liners and descriptive language, although less than the usual. Train Dreams, one of my faves, comes from a similarly frantic place I think. I did not like reading this book that much, but I think I understand what the author was trying to accomplish. This also makes sense in the artistic heritage of reagan era nightmare fiction (blood meridian, american psycho, what else).

It takes some time to get into this world, with its own language and post apocalyptic reference points, but once you're there it's worth it. This book isn't just a harrowing tale of how we might rebuild civilization after a nuclear hellscape; it's also a meditation on the burden of memory after all manner of losses.

"And today was a big place that held everything inside of it -- the Keys, the sea, the sky and the outer space of stars. Today didn't close around her throats like all the other days."

It’s just fine

Frustratingly weird with glaring technological plot gaps (decades after a nuclear holocaust, diesel fuel remains just fine and fishermen are motoring out into the Caribbean every day in their diesel-engined boats). The best part, by far, deals with the ancient grandmother's distant memories of her harrowing escape from Viet Nam as the Americans left and the North Vietnamese took over. The rest -- largely a mishmash of semi-intelligible English and severe learning deficiencies -- seems to have been written under the influence of powerful hallucinogens.

If I had a gun to my head, I'd probably say this is my favorite novel of all time.

A first read abandoned 8/27/17 after reaching page ~160. I have read enough to know it's good and could reward discussion but in Knoxville right now I'm short on discussion partners and I was so distracted on the plane getting here with writing down notes unrelated to the story in the margins of the first chapters that a complete reboot of the read is needed. I realized that yesterday actually. I'll do that reread later and afterward amend this review.

https://electrichalibut.blogspot.com/...

An eerie and surrealistic vision of survivors Mr Cheung and Fiskadoro trying to piece their lives together after the apocalypse. Dreamlike with images of water, fragmented memories, Jimi Hendrix, it’s not straightforward as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road; or any of the Ursula K LeGuin that I’ve read, but this novel is one of the strangest ones I’ve encountered, experimental and both exciting in its world building.

Note- read this in the middle of the 2020 Covid pandemic, and it couldn’t have been more timely.

Τέταρτο βιβλίο του Ντένις Τζόνσον που διαβάζω, μετά το "Άγγελοι" και το "Τ' αστέρια του απομεσήμερου" που διάβασα το 2011 (πρέπει να τα ξαναδιαβάσω σύντομα αυτά τα δυο, και ειδικά το πρώτο), καθώς και τη συλλογή διηγημάτων "Η γενναιοδωρία της γοργόνας" που διάβασα το 2019, ήταν και αυτό πολύ καλό και ιδιαίτερο, αν και ίσως το πιο αδύναμο και παράξενο από τα τέσσερα. Κάπου διάβασα ότι τούτο το βιβλίο μπορεί να το έγραφε ο Χέρμαν Μέλβιλ αν ζούσε σήμερα και μελετούσε ανόμοια βιβλία σαν τη Βίβλο, την Έρημη Χώρα, το Φαρενάιτ 451 και το Dog Soldiers, αν είχε δει κάμποσες φορές τον Πόλεμο των Άστρων και το Αποκάλυψη Τώρα, όντας φτιαγμένος με LSD και ακούγοντας ώρες ατελείωτες Τζίμι Χέντριξ και Ρόλινγκ Στόουνς... ε, δύσκολα θα μπορούσε να περιγράψει κανείς καλύτερα το "Φισκαντόρο" -ένα αρκετά παράξενο και περίεργο μετά-αποκαλυπτικό μυθιστόρημα-, καθώς και την αίσθηση που αφήνει στους αναγνώστες όταν τελειώσει. Το βιβλίο έχει πυρετώδη και υποβλητική ατμόσφαιρα, ενώ η γραφή του Τζόνσον είναι πότε ποιητική και παραισθησιακή και πότε σκληρή, σίγουρα όχι για όλα τα γούστα και όλες τις ώρες, αλλά προσωπικά μου άρεσε πολύ, αν μη τι άλλο ο συγγραφέας κατάφερε να δημιουργήσει κάμποσες εικόνες άγριας ομορφιάς. Γενικά, είναι ένα μυθιστόρημα που χάρη στα σκηνικά, την ατμόσφαιρα και φυσικά τη γραφή με κράτησε δέσμιό του από την αρχή μέχρι το τέλος, χωρίς βέβαια να με ενθουσιάσει κιόλας (σίγουρα μπορώ να κατανοήσω όσους το διαβάσουν και δεν ικανοποιηθούν). 7.5/10

The intriguing setting and beautiful language far outstrip the story, which is meager, vague and altogether forgettable. Dreaming, memory and forgetfulness are themes, so it makes sense that the whole book has a vague, impressionistic quality where you're not completely sure what is going on and nothing much seems to happen. Everyone and everything is just sort of floating along in a post-apocalyptic hellscape populated by impoverished, poisoned, and sometimes mutated survivors.

Johnson's prose is beautiful, as you would expect from the guy who wrote the ravishing Jesus' Son. Even in his first full novel he displays the lyricism and rhythm that make his writings a unique and invaluable work of art. In this case I just wish the typically gorgeous prose was in service of a less ephemeral story, one I could better sink my teeth into.

In a nutshell: if you have ever found yourself wondering what it would have been like had Italo Calvino beaten Margaret Atwood to writing Oryx and Crake, you would probably enjoy this book. If not, well. . .

Not Bad Reviews

@pointblaek

"But we are human. Can we help it if sometimes we like to tell stories that want, as their holiest purpose, to excite us with pictures of danger and chaos?"

I re-read this book as part of my project to read all of Johnson's poetry and novels in publication order (it was his second novel after 3 poetry collections and his debut novel, Angels).

I was going to write a review of it, but I had forgotten I had already written the review that follows, which does a good job of saying what I wanted to say...

This is a book set 60 years after a nuclear holocaust. It is a dystopian view of a future where it seems only Florida Keys and Cuba have survived. As with most dystopian novels, some parts of the world we know carry over: we see a large, empty parking lot, songs by Jimmy Hendrix are played on the radio broadcasts from Cuba, there are Quonset huts decorated with parts from old cars. But the world Johnson creates is dream-like and disjointed. The whole book feels almost like reading a dream sequence. The geography of the area is separated into a number of very distinct locations that add to the feeling of dislocation.

But Fiskadoro isn’t really about the dystopian vision it inhabits. It is about "eternal recurrence" with history repeatedly repeating itself.

"The Cubans will come, the Manager recited to himself, the Quarantine won’t last forever. Everything we have, all we are, will meet its end, will be overcome, taken up, washed away. But everything came to an end before. Now it will happen again. Again and again."

There are elaborate side-plots such as Cassius Clay Sugar Ray who creates a cult by re-telling his adventures, drawing people in. But there are three main characters whose journeys we follow. Mr Cheung clings to his vague memories of the pre-apocalyptic world. He recites the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to himself, he recites the names of the American states, he is part of a society that pores over scraps of written information. He seems to be telling us that history must not be forgotten, even if it can't actually save us. His grandmother is the only survivor of the earlier civilisation and in her senility she lives in a world of memories of her escape from Saigon. The titular Fiskadoro is a young man under the tutelage of Mr. Cheung who has a nightmarish experience with the swamp people that returns him to his "real world" a changed person.

In the midst of these three stories, each character comes to some kind of epiphany or realisation.

All of this happens in the context of Johnson’s mastery of language. It might just be that I respond well to his writing, but he creates passages of prose that paint amazingly atmospheric pictures in my brain as I read:

"The sweat-shiny figures around him, crossed out continually by the shadows of smoke and the silhouettes of other dancers against the light of driftwood bonfires and the blazing kettles of radioactive fuel oil, cried, 'Rapto!' and so did Fiskadoro. 'Rapto! Rapto!'"

I don’t know how visual your reading experience is, but I know mine is more visual when reading Johnson than with any other author I have so far experienced:

"Sometimes, but not all the time, when he read to Mr. Cheung from one the books the teacher brought around, instead of marks on a page Fiskadoro saw images in his mind."

This might not rise to the heights of my favourite works by Johnson (e.g. Jesus' Son, Train Dreams and the recent The Largesse of the Sea Maiden), but it is still intensely poetic and a pleasure to read.