I read out of order over the years and this was it, my final Denis Johnson book. All for the best, perhaps, because reading more of Kafka's letters and the early John Hawkes novels prepared me for this vision of hell on Earth. It's 1984, war is on in Nicaragua, and a U.S. woman whose name and reason for being there remain unknown is trapped and plunging into deeper trouble. There are elements of absurd Kafkaesque inertia and unnerving Hawkes atmospheres (like a shot-in-the-back-whilst-sluggishly-running nightmare) at play here. Everyone is fallen or falling, every interaction is transactional, things are falling apart, and no one is seeking transcendence of any kind; it's almost down to raw survival, with a veil of civilization atop it. This is Johnson, though, so there are moments of grace and humor, lines of great poetic vibrancy, and glimpses of redemption and a deeper meaning for human existence. If you dug Fiskadoro or Seek, you'll find this worth your time.

The following is a book review of Denis Johnson’s novel “the Stars at Noon.”
“The Stars at Noon” is a vivid contrast to the first book I reviewed which was Andre Dubus’s “Meditation from a Movable Chair”. While Dubus’ memoirs were optimistic despite his suffering the Stars at Noon is one of the single most pessimistic works of literature I have ever read.
“The Stars at Noon” is the fictional first person narration of a former American journalist trapped in Nicaragua prostituting herself to fulfill emotional need and to make money to fuel her alcoholism. She meets an Englishman who works for an oil company and is being pursued by the Costa Rican OIJ for a reason that is never really embellished upon.
“The Stars at Noon” is a love story in some aspects, and in some ways it is an international adventure story, but I think the primary purpose of the novel is to revel in human squalor. I am not sure if Johnson’s motivation was to illuminate the horrors of third world countries to a more privileged readership, or if a military controlled environment was simply the best way to pack as much degradation into one book as possible.
Much of the story reads like a 1970s exploitation movie, the pacing is languid, but in a pleasantly torturous way. The description is very fluid and really establishes the setting as though one were viewing it off of a 16mm film reel, the little details such as the way that Johnson describes someone’s sweaty shirt are really what make the book feel real. And finally everyone suffers, everyone engages in less than pleasant sex acts, and everyone is threatened by death and poverty at all sides.
The narrator is an interesting character she recites poetry, coolly describes atrocity and turning tricks, and then moments later raves against the universe. Throughout the book she uses the extended metaphor that Nicaragua is hell and its citizens are the damned.
Johnson is a Romantic in how he uses the environment to reflect the emotions of the characters, his descriptions of the stifling hot environment and the steaming jungles greatly add to what pleasure the reader can derive from the book.
The dialogue in “the Stars at Noon” is well written and the language barriers that the main characters encounter is an interesting plot device.
Unfortunately despite how superbly written “the Stars at Noon” is, and how many evocative images it presents the reader the story of the book comes across as nothing more than a vehicle to show human misery. The lovers make illogical decisions throughout the work such as fleeing for the Costa Rican border despite the fact that the Englishman is wanted in Costa Rica. At the end of the book the narrator sells the Englishman to the CIA and OIJ and receives U.S currency for her betrayal. Throughout the whole book the narrator had been talking about getting back to the U.S and even though she has the money to get a flight she simply goes back to drinking and prostituting herself.
All in all “the Stars at Noon” is an interesting book, Denis Johnson’s technique is superb and one can see how books like this one established a market for later writers such as Chuck Palahniuk to come into. However the character motivations really detract from the experience of the reading, and I would not recommend this book unless you enjoy really grim stories that have no catharsis.

Just started last night. As with "Already Dead" the author starts us out with an articulate character with issues of self-destruction. NOT an appealing girl. Typical DJ... great writing applied to a murky purpose.

- Something different for DJ - a first person female voice.

- The New Yorker has a recent article about today's Nicaragua. Sounds pretty much the same.

- DJ's books REALLY tend to focus on max losers. These people have serious problems. A lot of them tied to substance and behavior(prostitution/sex in this case) abuse.

- Some funny, madcap dialogue takes place between the girl and the Englishman. Obviously intentional, but believable????

- "Already Dead" crossed with "Nobody Move"...

Finished last night; more later. ... So now it's later and my ardor for adding more has cooled. I was going to give this a 3* but that's being a chicken. It's either a 2* or a 4*. I think I'm beginning to get a better idea of what Denis Johnson is up to. For starters, his characters all tend to be REALLY f'ed up with alcohol and drugs. He wants to illuminate the distorted and nasty way the world looks to them and seems to think there are some significant opportunities for a poetic look at their spiritual/psychic dysfunction. He's a former alcoholic-addict in recovery as well as some kind of born-again Catholic(like Mary Carr and Graham Greene). To me that's just as crazy but ... whatever... My perspective is also from the point of recovery from my own codependency and addictions but I take a more detached and scientific view of it all. But then... I don't have his creative drive and talent either. The writing is beautiful, especially when it's put to a fairly succinct and focused goal - like a 200+/- page novel(like this) rather than a big 'un(like "Already Dead" or "Tree of Smoke"). The ending is a bit "airy", unlike "The Power and the Glory", which this book quite closely resembles. I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't just read Mr. Greene's book! Notes...

- The poetry fan angle is abused and forced.

- Karlmarx.com by Susan Coll - a truly awful novel about a clueless American lass meeting a hapless English twit named Nigel.

- The narrator... realistic??? What the bleep is she doing there? Barely any back story at all for either of them.

- So... they "fall in love"??? Tough one to swallow. A hellbound fairy tale.

- The conversations with the red-haired American jerk are pretty entertaining.

- This book is similar to "Already Dead" but saved by it's realative simplicity. Keep it simple - right?

- She forgets about the money????? Really????

- The "logic" of the plot at the end is a bit shaky. At least the author mentions the possibility that they "could have" just gone to their respective embassies and saved themselves. Why not? Especially the Englishman...

- The narrator is a symbol for something - WHAT? Is too much a deal being made out of simple alcoholism? Maybe not...

"I watched the last of Nicaragua go by. We passed along a stretch of Panamerican Highway quite typical of the south, running a sparse gantlet of crippled vehicles - and here and there a dead dog stretched out beside the road, and wrecked, flip-flopping chickens, and your occasional truck-struck horse, still somewhat alive in the dirt, hindquarters jerking and the all-too-visible ribcage heaving with the desire to get back up and go on protractedly starving..."

- OMG! as of October 2022 this book has been movie-ized with the plot brought forward to the present. Is this the first of DJ's books to be filmed???

Characteristically great Denis Johnson prose, delivering his take grubby, meandering take on the sweltering equatorial expat thriller. Having seen Claire Denis' film adaptation prior to reading this, I was struck by how much of Johnson's dialog she lifted directly for the script, but also by the subtle but potent change in viewpoint/tone. Both are character studies, but Denis' film is standing just on the outside, looking in at her protagonist, whereas Johnson's first-person novel is on the inside, decisively in the character's headspace. Accordingly, there's a soupy haze of self-loathing and self-annihilation that permeates the book. YMMV whether that kind of pungent angst is exquisite or insufferable (for me it's the former) but it unarguably creates a more claustrophobic atmosphere.

I was expecting something more propulsive from Denis Johnson, but "The Stars at Noon" was a tangled combination of intriguing and exasperating. The unnamed young American woman that narrates the novel is more smarmy and cynical than empathetic, a meandering, burned out lost soul who really has no idea of the contradictory complexities of the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary Central American politics she finds herself embroiled in. I found myself wondering just what was she doing down there as an "observer", other than turning cordobas into US dollars, knocking back copious amounts of rum, and having mucho sex with the Englishman. And I hated the way it ended, with carefree emotional indifference. Graham Green and Robert Stone would have made this story far more compelling.

When you hear the name Denis Johnson, you inevitably think of Jesus' Son, the book that put the man on the map. But 'The Stars At Noon' is another masterful work from a true talent that should not be missed.

This is a novel about being trapped out in the open; one American woman's paranoid escape attempt from a corrupt country while she tries to stem the erosion of both her sanity and soul. Set in Nicaragua in the 1980s, we experience the story through the main character as she is allowed to exist within the country, but forbidden to exit it. Supposedly a correspondent, her actual background and reasons to be in Nicaragua appear shady at best, as are the majority of the people she comes in contact with. Her entrapment/abandonment starts subtly, but it isn't long before she must try to flee using whatever means necessary: sex, manipulation, crime, bribery and beggary. The desperation and dismay feels so prominent on the page, it's enough to make you want to avoid ever traveling to any region in the world that has an ounce of instability.

It's no secret that Denis Johnson holds rank as one of the best writers in the business, and he delivers another compelling and unnerving piece of fiction that should be on everyone's must-read list. 'The Stars At Noon' is a walk in a frightened, yet cunning woman's shoes. It makes for a thrilling and uncomfortable story about being stuck on foreign soil while being increasingly perceived as an enemy by people who are more than capable of killing you. The lengths we will go to when backed into a corner is a hard swallow, particularly when we all know it's true.

Highly recommend.

Ονειρικό, κλειστοφοβικό, δυστοπικό παρόλο που λαμβάνει χώρα στην Νικαράγουα του εμφυλίου, των σαντινίστας και των κόντρας, είναι γραμμένο όμως το 1984 (την χρονιά του μεγάλου αδελφού) και αυτό έχει την σημασία του...δύο αντιήρωες-ένα στέλεχος μια πετρελαϊκής εταιρείας που έκανε το θανάσιμο λάθος να πει την αλήθεια και αυτό όπως πάντα έχει το κόστος του...και μια δημοσιογράφος που παράλληλα είναι και ιερόδουλος, με το αλκοόλ να αποτελεί την μόνη προσωρινή διέξοδο τους, ερωτεύονται με πάθος, ίσως από φόβο, ίσως από την ανάγκη της επιβίωσης, προσπαθούν μάταια να δραπετεύσουν, μα το μόνο που καταφέρνουν είναι με τα χέρια τους κρατημένα να βυθίζονται ολοένα και βαθύτερα σε μια αόρατη δίνη...
<<Δεν έχεις άλλη επιλογή>>
<< Δεν έχω>>
<<Είμαστε στο 1984>>
<<Ακριβώς>>, είπε εκείνος.
<<Έγινε πραγματικά αυτή η συζήτηση; Η μήπως είναι συζήτηση που κάνω πάντα εδώ στην κόλαση; Και μήπως η κόλαση είναι απλώς αυτή η μοναδική συζήτηση που οδηγεί στην χρονολογία 1984; στην αναγνώριση της απόλυτης φυλάκισης μου, στο αναπόδραστο του είναι μου; Μήπως η ζωή μου όλη αποτελείται απ' αυτόν το έναν και μοναδικό διάλογο σε μια απεριόριστη ποικιλία παραλλαγών;>>

Actually, the book that really set me straight was Denis Johnson's The Stars At Noon. Johnson is one of those names I've always carried with me, and so one evening when my boyfriend and I were having dinner, and I got an itch to scour the Halfprice Bookstore shelves, when I saw this one title on the shelf, what with its appealing cover and description, and an alluring randomly-read paragraph from the middle of the book, I decided to take it home with me.

Best decision I could have made. I started reading, and wow. Now, I tried Johnson once before with Already Dead and was less than enchanted. Granted, Johnson's subject matter is really not for the faint of heart, but dear God. The thrill of the perspective he offers, a basic survival story in a completely foreign territory but without losing over to lengthy description and standoffishness in regards to his characters in this foreign place, was freaking rock solid. Not only that, but I made one of the coolest discoveries I have ever made while reading - I found the lyrics from the first verse to a song from my favorite Sonic Youth album, Daydream Nation. The song is called "The Sprawl", and it was actually one of the first Sonic Youth songs I ever heard, and that convinced me to check them out (well, that and the irresistable Madonna cover 'Into the Groove(y). Some of the sentences in the verse were very distinctive, others not so much. But they stuck out like sore thumbs of the best sort to me while I scoured the first fifty pages. Turns out it was lifted from the book, and that just makes me like Sonic Youth even more.

Aside from that, this story of human degradation and what lengths people will turn to when they have no other choices is completely engrossing. Enter love story? And you have a complete winner. If I met that book in a dark alley, it would totally kick my ass. I really wanted to include an excerpt in here, and even though certain passages really rocked my socks off, I had a hard time pulling it from the context of the book. It is just all so good.

In short, this book gave me a pulse again. It inspired me to actually be fair with the stack of to-reads I've been holding at bay, and for the sake of actually accomplishing them, I am not even going to list them here. It seems I jinx myself whenever I declare lists or to-do's, as if by nature of acknowledging that they are in my future I am also dismissing them at the same time. Boo! No more!

"Remember where we are, the connections down here are so sexy because down here this stuff really does happen" (134) from "The Stars at Noon".

I love the work of Denis Johnson. He always manages to write in surreal, terrifying sentences with imagery that is the stuff of never-ending nightmares. He writes as if to tell a story is the means of constantly showing the world that life is hell on earth, and that there's simply we nothing we can do but live in a constant state of anxiety and sadness.

Set in Nicaragua, 1984- our narrator is an unnamed woman, a journalist who either writes foe the Eyes of Peace, or a journalist for a magazine, assigned from New York to cover the corrupt government in which she is transplanted to, "more time would be wasted before anything was accomplished, that is the style" (Johnson 55).

She moonlights as a prostitute at seedy hotels, having aimless and mechanical sex with Nicaraguan government officials for both money and information, engaging with espionage, "what point was there trying to sleep? I'd only at some point wake up again" (51).

She meets a shadowy Englishman, whose business is big oil. As she falls for him, an American CIA agent tells her that he will help her get back to America, if she turns her lover in.

She is one of the most unreliable narrators I've read in a while. Her point of view is often skewed since she's either apathetic and looking to get her next fix on sex and alcohol.

She acts if she doesn't want to return to New York- a life wandering aimlessly in the villages of Nicaragua and Costa Rica is more exciting: it provides her with a life of hedonism, a life with no true motivation.

I thought of her as a version of Sally Bowles from “Cabaret”- a woman from a mundane existence who somehow found herself in a situation that she doesn’t want to leave, addicted to a life of nothingness. She’s a Sally Bowles who is a magazine writer and a spy.

She only lives for the moment- and the sex and violence excites her, "if you want to sleep as certainly as you've overdosed, it's simple...in a while, who knows how long we opened our eyes and found each other"(68).

The finale of this novel is both tragic, filled with a surreal ambivalence that is haunting. Beware, for readers who want loose ends tied up will not find satisfaction with this book. It's a vison, an idea of a life of melancholy that needs to keep going in this direction.

For me, I am always going to devour any book that is as bleak as this one because I am drawn to eternal stories about the sad realities of life. I like how Mr. Johnson did not name his characters except as archetypes: The narrator, the Englishman, the American.

Johnson makes it clinical and merciless, the fates of these characters that live in a world of violent, surreal imagery of both jungles and dirty towns, tawdry bars, and wet soppy food and beer that captures both degradation, and despair.

There is a 2022 film adaptation of this novel by the revered Claire Denis- and starring Margaret Qually (as the narrator); Joe Alwyn (as the Englishman) and Benny Safdie (the American). After seeing Miss Qually in the horror comedy "The Substance" recently, I am definitely interested in seeing the film. Claire Denis is one of my favorite directors, and I am sure her film will be just as bleak.

In 2017, I somehow found myself invited and attended Johnson’s memorial service where I met friends of his such as actors Billy Crudup and Mike Shannon- their eulogies moved me to tears and wept as I told both Mr. Shannon and Mr. Crudup how much Johnson’s work meant to me as an educator and aspiring writer.

When the words are so idiosyncratic beautiful & meaningful it doesn't matter if the plot makes no sense. I kept getting pages ahead of myself lost in the Writing and losing track of what was happening, which isn't much anyway. That split between a silly plot and gripping true sensorials is perfect for a (Claire) Denis movie so I'm very excited for that adaptation to come out in a week or two.

Not an all-timer like Train Dreams, Tree of Smoke, Jesus' Son or "Largesse", but is encouraging me to finally dig deeper into the back catalog

three stars by the standards of DJ. if i wrote this i would award myself five stars just for some of the individual lines. sort of a stoned redo of Graham Greene's The Heart of The Matter; white lady adrift in the tropics bumps into another human, experiences something that combines love, sex, and two-way pity. This book feels like practice, but still has crucial moments. Last line is bulletproof "To be put her with his dreams, but not himself, made substance" is about the most beautiful description possible of a drunk welder who can't get it up during a three-way with prostitutes, but is also just independently amazing sentiment/thought.

ultimately this runs aground on the lack of actual story/character -- have to say that the protagonist does not feel entirely natural as a female voice, and the Englishman really doesn't exist except as a reflective surface for protag. but still glad I read this.

Interesting to see some Mr Christ talk creep in toward the end.

I screwed up and read this before Fiskadoro, so my project of chronological DJ reading is off, but whatever, I forgive myself.

Treasured nuggets of prose from this:

the light sad and harmless, virgins eating ice cream cones walking up and down

his features were unshaped, they seemed to be materializing out of a bright fog, nothing more than a shining blank with shadows floating on it

the small, timeless dead center of Hell, where souls were being branded with the shapes of their hope

as soon as you enter you go deaf

the green fire of boredom streaks the air

Imagine a bus station presided over by demons, some of them hateful and some of them helpful

trace the characters of your desires

I couldn’t help thinking of a spirit wandering in the Bardo between its death and the next birth, trailing behind its future parents

(dated pop music on the radio as evidence that) we were using up our tiny lives, going around in these ridiculous circles, along the outflung fingers of an empire

I had to observe him. In fact they were upping my voltage, weren’t the little demons, doing away with whatever was formerely unimaginable, putting before me for observation the most horribly tormented soul of all, the humanitarian among the damned

their diesel blackened nostrils, their gnarled arthrtici hands and shrievled guts

having been struck by altruism like lightning

he wore a secret face bottomless with losses

the fat-faced moon. The moon whose bow tie we can never see

in a suit exactly the color of dusk

pyscho humming of the tires

women idling on one leg, like storks

If it wasn’t real, it wouldn’t be Hell

i sensed cool sanity drifting just beneath me but I couldn’t reach it

He needed to dominate something, if only a steering wheel

ribcage heaving with the desire to get back up and go on protractedly starving

should have felt the terror searching between my ribs for my heart

My eyes felt as if they’d been baked

settle down in some nice community someplace and watch the little boys grow up

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. Either I’m Christ or I’m Judas.

In a sense I was playacting, but in another sense I was trying to communicate something to myself.

(he) has the idea no non-paying humans should appear anywhere near where he’s leading his life

looked the scene of a combined virgin sacrifice and Boy Scout meeting


"Holy Jesus, what this guy must have done in his time on Earth... to be put here with his dreams, but not himself, made substance...

Love me a tight chaotic thriller with no named characters!