“Morning’s an oven; noon is a star; dusk is a furnace; but the middle of the night, at its worst, is only a hot bath…”

This slim novel, set in 1984 Nicaragua, is my first by Denis Johnson. I’m not sure why I started with this probably lesser-known work, except that I liked the title and the setting. The oppressive heat of war-torn Nicaragua is perfect for a tale like this one. It adds significantly to the stifling and dangerous atmosphere of feeling trapped in a country that is ruled by a revolutionary government with constant threats from counter-revolutionary forces. Add United States involvement to the mix, and you have a boiling hotbed of covert activity.

“I don’t know at what point, maybe it’s as you pass the second or third miserable sugar refinery looking just like a prison, that you realize you’ve been ejected from Paradise. And whatever these stunned, drenched people did to get themselves banished here is an absolute mystery. Like your own mortal error…”

The narrator is about as unreliable as they come, which adds to the mystery of the whole thing. She’s an American, carries a press card, and claims to work for a magazine. She also ‘admits’ to working for a peace organization. But right from the start we see that she exchanges sex for money, so it would be safe perhaps to add ‘prostitute’ to her resume as well. It’s unclear if this is her true ‘vocation’ but rather a survival tactic in order to raise enough cash to get herself out of this Hell. One thing is for certain however – she’s one clever and resourceful heroine. When she falls for one of her clients, an English businessman with a questionable resume of his own, the book takes off into high gear. I didn’t expect a survival sort of story, but that’s what this is at its best. It is fast-paced and a bit perplexing (which I’m guessing is intentional – this is a militant corner of the world with a number of dubious characters, after all.) Oh, and I’ve hinted at the romance of course. This is a messy, convoluted kind of love story. No need to duck and cover from cloying sentimentalism here.

“In his own way he’s a beautiful human, perhaps he’s a hallucination, he’s no easier to credit, in this obscene heat and dust, than a frail white snowflake. We’re trying to outrun the Devil and everybody else…”

How does one take a dark and murky plot set in a land of decay and turmoil and turn it into something poetic? Something reeking of desperation and depravity and transform it with beautiful language? I’m saving the extra star for one that I anticipate will inspire me even more. The voice of the narrator was just a tad bit detached for my liking, but that’s really just a feeble whine at this point. I’m a fan!

“We can’t remember our sins here. We don’t know who we used to be.”

3.5, which I’d probably have rounded up to 4 except I felt like saying “Th(re)e Stars at Noon.” I’m sure you understand.

Ah;such a fantastic book.I have read 3 other Johnson books already;"Jesus son","angels" nd "Fiskadoro"...but this read was the most gorgeously written so far.The voice of the female lead character carried me along to 1984 Nicaragua after the Sandinist revoution where she meets an English guy in a bar working for an oil compagny.She sleeps with him for dollars-everyone in Nicaragua wants dollars if they think there are some to get-.Next time she meets him he is followed by a Costa Rican agent she helps him shake off and they fall in love..It seems he is in more trouble than she tought:he devulged the location of a possible oil reservoir to the Nicaraguans to be fair;this after he akready spoke about it to the Costa Ricans.Anyway;the facts get out and now they are both wanted..Th convince her to cut him loose and sign something..they should leave the country in haste but nothing gets done there quick so they procrastinate and make love..Eventually they try to leave but a redhaired cia- man bumps into them repeatedly to try and make her cut the Englishman loose and a sign a report..

(Goodreads needs half stars; this is 3.5.)


Great sense of dislocation and pervasive dread, and mind-numbing thick heat. Super atmospheric. And influences on Sonic Youth lyrics in “The Sprawl” are fun to spot. I never believed in the protagonist’s voice as being from a woman, but this kind of makes me all the more excited for Claire Denis’s adaptation, in a weird way, like she’s reappropriating an appropriation. The ‘80s language and othering is cringey, but such were the times. Overall, recommended. It’s been years since I read The Sheltering Sky, but this ultimately put me in a similar headspace (this is a compliment).

I’ve read Jesus’ Son and Johnson’s first novel Angels. This novel which came out in 1986 in a world post-Iran-Contra hearings and already accepted Watergate meanderings and secret wars as the norm of American foreign policy.
This novel isn’t so much about that, but it doesn’t avoid it at all. It almost seems bored with the horrors of war and political duplicity, and at the same time interested in the psychological effect it has on people.
The novel is about boredom being the source of destruction for most people. It seems like boredom brought the narrator to Managua, boredom kept her installed in the cities’ web of chaos, and boredom is what brought her to the brink of destruction in assisting someone that seemed harmless.
And it appears that once she escaped that hell- she continued down that road of boredom, refusing to go back to the U.S., continuing with sex work, and hiding her true self from others, until it’s hard to know what it even is. She’s an enigma and her being the narrator places the narrative in an enigma. Johnson is loose with the facts and more concerned with the emotions. This is the novel’s strength as it refuses to be a straight, international thriller.

l

4 / 10

Really weak. The book starts strong enough, with a pretty remarkably murky atmosphere that, as a city guy from Canada, might as well be another planet. Everything seems to run on its own internal logic based around pulling ahead in the most minor ways possible. It's not enough to survive, you need to be able to get one little notch over on the other person. But very little of this is really developed in any way, more so just repeated with settings and characters that are similar enough to all blend together.

It's really part 2 where it starts to fall apart completely though. Almost all of that interesting early atmosphere is lost, and we begin to have almost nothing to latch onto except the dialogue, which I think Johnson is particularly terrible with. Absolutely none of the dialogue here reads either naturalistically or in any kind of heightened, interesting way. There's just nothing compelling whatsoever for me here.

I know this is often considered a minor work, but it has definitely put me off of reading more Johnson for the foreseeable future. Hopefully he's written some more interesting stuff.

An American reporter and English businessman become entangled in one another's lives while desperately trying to get out of Nicaragua. Like many post-modernists, there's a satirical edge to Johnson's writing. A wryness and wit similar in many respects to DeLillo; but Johnson does not alter his realities nearly as much: they are more recognizable to real life, if not more severe. None of the characters have names in the book, which allows the author to be vague or off-handed with the descriptions of 1984 Central America. But to someone without enough knowledge on the politics of the time, these generalities can become bothersome. The book begins with pointed, amusing observations, turns more thriller/noir, and then resolves itself how it began. Not his best work, but definitely enjoyable for any fan of the author.

In my mind, The Stars at Noon forms part of a great triptych of novels, along with The Last Thing He Wanted and A Flag for Sunrise, set “on the far frontiers of the Monroe Doctrine,” where the gravitational pull of morality decreases with distance from Washington. The American version of the genre known in Britain as "Greeneland," after its geographer Graham Greene.

Read this in about 3 hours I found myself so captivated by this book. Granted, maybe some of that was because of my letting it sit on my dining room table for months. :P

In any case, I picked this up because I had seen Denis Johnson as an author favorably compared with my favorite author, C.E. Morgan. Having read this, it's clear to see the artistic influence he had on her (if any, she didn't acknowledge him as a particular influence in a previous interview she'd done) in terms of characterization. He does a fantastic job of making his characters believable humans with relatively sparse characterizations--I felt like these were real people, the Brit, the narrator, the American with the red beard, the menagerie of local characters around them, even without names, and those with names were beautifully written so as to point out what the political science literature has pointed out in the years post this novel: it's rare that revolution affects everyone the same way and things can often proceed normally for long stretches.

My lone gripe with this book is its sometime reliance on sex as vehicle for character development of the narrator. It's not *bad* per se, not in a prudish sense, but it strikes me as being inauthentic and, at times, overdone. I also think that things move a bit too fast in describing the Brit's motives. After all, I think Johnson could craft a more compelling character with the Brit if the Brit's narrative arc to seeing why he wants to leave Nicaragua were a more slow burn that didn't resolve until Two.

That being said, though, an excellent book and one I think whose themes will only hit me in an "Aha!" moment down the line.

"It's never enough to observe suffering. With my eyes open, I have to let that suffering pay for me. I have to confess alone in these solitary places unheard in the roaring rain that the suffering of the afflicted pays for me".

(placeholder for the movie, directed by claire denis)

in a way,

you were good to me