Even when I’m not totally in love with a Denis Johnson book, I’m still obsessed with it because it’s Denis Johnson.

Have had this one on the shelf for a while, and initially picked it up after I read Jesus' Son by Johnson. Sat down and read the thing in one sitting. Overall I enjoyed the narrative, but it seemed a to drag a little bit at times. To me, the entire book felt like a vivid dream (nightmare?) where there are several distinct settings and people inhabiting those settings, but you're never quite sure how all the pieces fit together, or where you're going next. The writing informs that feeling by refusing to give names to any of the characters (except for one at the end), and having the narrator be vague with specific location names as well. That vagueness also creates the feeling you get, being in a foreign country/culture and having only a basic understanding of the language, which creates a sense of being lost and disconnected. I also enjoyed that none of the characters had any real redeeming qualities, but for me, that only works in short stories and short books.

“We looked at Nicaragua stretching out toward wherever it went, the Pacific ocean was a good bet. Whatever was going on down here, it was none of our business.”

The stories he writes are always secondary to the dialogue and narration...all of his books have a theme of simultaneous damnation, absurdity, and poetic mysticism. I took away lots of great description (Johnson started out as a poet), strange gnostic world view ideas, and a pretty entertaining "story"...this was the last novel by Johnson that I hadn't read, so I'm kind of sad I'm done for now...

Classic Denis Johnson and early career practice for his masterful “Tree of Smoke”. This book, set in 1984 Nicaragua, is Heart of Darkness-light. “To live outside the law you must be honest.”

Great atmosphere. Loose plot.

a rare kind of novel in that it's not great but there are also so many sentences that are evidence of a pretty superior literary mind at work. having read a few of the pieces in Johnson's SEEK, i would have much rather preferred he stuck to the journalistic plan on this subject. i guess what i'm saying is if you are going to make your allegorical journey through a metaphorical Hell set in a real historical place in a real historical time (with a fairly straightforward history imo), you gotta be either 1) extremely sensitive to that subject matter or 2) willing to die for whatever convictions you're laying down. doesn't really seem like Johnson is either of these on this one. don't worry still love my boy i'll rep Train Dreams till i die

Denis Johnson loves to torture me with despicable characters. Loves it! A lot of it reminds me of the stuff he ran into in various essays from his book Seek. It is hard to relate to the goings on of the plot because of the lack of accountability. The cause and effect is either non-existent or so completely skewed that I find myself scratching my head. The exchanges between the Interturismo, the Sub-tenente, border guards, everyone has some strange control that the characters lack and are able to put the characters through whatever they want.

It is striking insomuch as I, as an American, cannot follow the causation. It paints a picture of the trials in developing nations that is extremely bleak, almost to the point of unbelievability. If the characters felt more believable then the book would have been somewhat harrowing. But, like a lot of Denis Johnson's writing on his time spent abroad in places like Liberia, I find the happenings absolutely frustrating and hard to comprehend.

His prose itself is fantastic and bites right to the heart, I only wish I felt more compassion for those in the story. I might be the only person on Earth that prefers The Name of the World to anything else he has written. I have a lot of his books to go though.


-J

p.s. I can't help but feel that she has a way out in the end, and instead of taking it, decides to don the scarlet letter.

3.5, rounded down. Denis Johnson is always worth reading, but this one doesn't pack the full-fisted punch of 'Angels' or 'Jesus' Son.'

‘”Only rum is forever.” I agreed.”’

I agree.

This novel is sunstroke on paper. If Cormac McCarty’s Suttree is captured drunkenness, which I would argue this novel has that going for it too, then The Stars at Noon is the dried tongue, manic mindset of a desert wander twenty minutes before her brain stops functioning. If Graham Greene had ever shot heroine and gone on South American bender with in a Volkswagen, he would have written The Stars at Noon, the 1995 novel by Denis Jonson, which takes place in Nicaragua during August of 1984—a point when the entire region was tipsy with bad politics, bad money, but maintained the same level of bad people the human race is known for. It’s all Coca-Cola and Communists as the narrator heads for Costa Rica, occasionally living off of rice and beans and whatever rum a sweaty hotel happens to have.

Denis Johnson’s sentences make this story worth the read. Here is what a reader is in for on the first page:

tI’ve always been the only patron in the McDonald’s here in this hated city, because with the meat shortage you wouldn’t know absolutely, would you, what sort of a thing they were handing you in the guise of beef. But I don’t care, actually, what I eat. I just want to lean on that characteristic McDonald’s counter while they fail to take my order and read the eleven certifying documents on the wall above the broken ice-cream box, nine of them with the double-arch McDonald’s symbol and the two most recent stamped with the encircled triangle and offering the pointless endorsement of the Junta Local de Asistancia Social de Nicaragua … It’s the only Community-run McDonald’s ever. It’s the only McDonald’s where you have to give back your plastic cup … It’s the only McDonald’s staffed by people wearing military fatigues and carrying submachine guns.

This is the same McDonald’s where the narrator went to the ladies’ room “doing nothing, only sweating—needless to say, I wouldn’t go so far in such an environment to raise my skirts and pee; and the walls were too damp to hold graffiti.” Although this is same girl whose wits have curdled by the Nicaraguan heat. Maybe. She’s a journalist who pretends to be a prostitute; or a prostitute who wants to be a journalist. Either way, she expects sex and to be paid for it, until she falls in love with an Englishman with a family and a history questionable enough for the CIA to want to chat with him under the Nicaraguan sun. The dialog in her head has either been eaten away by the heat or she doesn’t practice her language professionally, and instead only survives on sex and not conversation. She’s a victim of exchange rates, dirty sheets and the heat—that endless heat. She’s also a victim of herself.

The narrator of The Stars at Noon is a hard sell to most readers who want their narrators to be their special friends throughout the tale, a contemptible demand to make on a book. The heat makes her always feel naked, possibly due to sweat melding her clothing to her body, but we read her as naked and helpless, until she starts to talk, then our pity evaporates especially as her story begins to end and Johnson offers her some epiphanies—golden moments always wasted on the witless as those nostalgic for the good opportunities they squandered. Rum and good sentence are forever, enjoy both in The Stars at Noon.

I don’t like this as much as either Angels or Jesus’ Son, but it’s still great. Full of beautiful sentences and terrible decisions.

"'Don't forget, honey,' I said, 'the night you found me you were looking for a whore."'

Denis Johnson's The Stars at Noon was recently adapted into a feature film, directed by one of my favorite directors Claire Denis. The novel accomplishs a lot more than the film, and while Denis adapted it relatively well, she modernized and dehumanized it. The film prompted me to read the novel, and I'm glad I did.

The thing about Johnson's novel... it humaizes the worst people. This woman is a terrible person, but Johnson somehow managed to make her story beautiful. He breaks her and the Englishman down to their basic parts. He breaks them into the humans they are. He forces them to feel things that people as cold and jaded as them shouldn't feel. But they do. Because theyre human, whether they want to be or not.

The quote i used above really affected me. I audibly said "oh damn" but also wanted her to say more and him to say more. Theres so much desire in this novel, both in the characters and the feeling I had as a reader.

The prose is incredible. I'll definitely be reading more Johnson sooner rather than later. His writing in this really fascinates me. Not many can pull this off successfully.

Despite its weird plot holes, I really enjoyed this book! Definitely more of a 4.5, but not good enough to be pushed to a 5.