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Johnson at some way below his best.
Despite its scanty page count it struggled to hold my attention.
Despite its scanty page count it struggled to hold my attention.
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The Name of the World
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Michael Reed is a man going through the motions, numbed by the death of his wife and child. But when events force him to act as if he cares, he begins to find people who - against all expectation - help him through his private labyrinth.
129 pages, Paperback
First published January 1,2000
This edition
- Format
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129 pages, Paperback
- Published
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January 1, 2001 by HarperCollins
- ISBN
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9780413771605
- ASIN
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0413771601
- Language
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English
Characters More characters
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Michael Reed
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About the author
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Poet, playwright and author Denis Johnson was born in Munich, West Germany, in 1949 and was raised in Tokyo, Manila and Washington. He earned a masters' degree from the University of Iowa and received many awards for his work, including a Lannan Fellowship in Fiction (1993), a Whiting Writer's Award (1986), the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from the Paris Review for Train Dreams, and most recently, the National Book Award for Fiction (2007).
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Community Reviews
Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 99 votes)
5 stars
33(33%)
4 stars
43(43%)
3 stars
23(23%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
99 reviews All reviews
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After my first reading of this novella, I gave The Name of the World two stars, which seems absurd and ridiculous and self-condemning now that I've read it a third time and think it as good as Jesus' Son if not better. This is not a story of grief, as many reviewers suggest; but a story of how grief becomes grotesque when it starts to exist solely on the strength of its own momentum. This book is a gem, revelatory, offering the best of Johnson's transcendent prose.
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Wanted to read Train Dreams but couldn't find it so I read this instead. Not sure I'll bother now - too bored by most of this to even pretend like I understood the point he was trying to make. Possibly that god is dead but that's fine but wait he isn't and maybe it's not but at least Greece is nice. Possibly I'd find more to like here if my wife and daughter were extant/ex-extant. But I did like the conversation with Flower Cannon that took place towards the end; if Train Dreams is more of that and less of the Sad Professor then I might yet give it a go.
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wish I could sing like Otis Redding and write like Denis Johnson
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The following has nothing to do with the content of the book.
Well, I was sorting my books today and found that I read this book back in 2001. And I could NOT remember ANY of the plot, and still I could NOT remember anything even after I googled the plot. That is weird enough, it is amazing that how can a story be so neglect-able? I feel sorry for this book and my time spent back in 2001 as it left nothing. However there are still many books to read and sorry that I will not give it another try.
Well, I was sorting my books today and found that I read this book back in 2001. And I could NOT remember ANY of the plot, and still I could NOT remember anything even after I googled the plot. That is weird enough, it is amazing that how can a story be so neglect-able? I feel sorry for this book and my time spent back in 2001 as it left nothing. However there are still many books to read and sorry that I will not give it another try.
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El nombre del mundo del escritor estadounidense Denis Johnson, relata la experiencia íntima del narrador y protagonista Michael Reed, profesor universitario del Medio Oeste estadounidense, posterior al fallecimiento de su esposa e hija. Cuatro años después, la pérdida se vive en calidad de compromiso; la tragedia enquistada irremediablemente en una existencia que muestra casi una total indiferencia a la vida, sino fuera por el encuentro con una extraña estudiante que se cruza en su camino.
Johnson, mediante un extenso racconto sin capítulos de 143 páginas, con un ritmo pausado, introspectivo y meditativo, nos permite asomarnos a las páginas de Reed. Errante, indiferente y en búsqueda de sensaciones que le permitan sobrevivir al tedioso entorno universitario, el protagonista cuenta los insólitos encuentros que mantiene directa e indirectamente con Flower Cannon, estudiante y artista de performances eróticos, personaje que permite al protagonista acercarse, quizás, a la epifanía que busca en su vida, rodeada de fantasmas y cargas personales que lo mantienen suspendido en un presente sin futuro.
Un libro, que pese a la brevedad, se extiende largamente acerca de la experiencia vagabunda y rumiante del personaje en relación a los temas que tibiamente le interesan.
Personalmente no conecté con la historia. Salta entre tema y tema, con personajes que nada me evocan y nada me dejan. Una lectura de un intervalo de vida de un personaje olvidable, en términos particulares.
Johnson, mediante un extenso racconto sin capítulos de 143 páginas, con un ritmo pausado, introspectivo y meditativo, nos permite asomarnos a las páginas de Reed. Errante, indiferente y en búsqueda de sensaciones que le permitan sobrevivir al tedioso entorno universitario, el protagonista cuenta los insólitos encuentros que mantiene directa e indirectamente con Flower Cannon, estudiante y artista de performances eróticos, personaje que permite al protagonista acercarse, quizás, a la epifanía que busca en su vida, rodeada de fantasmas y cargas personales que lo mantienen suspendido en un presente sin futuro.
Un libro, que pese a la brevedad, se extiende largamente acerca de la experiencia vagabunda y rumiante del personaje en relación a los temas que tibiamente le interesan.
Personalmente no conecté con la historia. Salta entre tema y tema, con personajes que nada me evocan y nada me dejan. Una lectura de un intervalo de vida de un personaje olvidable, en términos particulares.
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Dangit this is a tough one to review.
On the one hand, this is Denis Johnson at his best-- he's a Word Master and every word he uses in The Name of the World is exactly the right one. Beautiful and haunting and complicated in its simplicity. And because it's such a brief story, it doesn't suffer from some of the bogged-down-ness of his other novels. I'm very tempted to give it 4 stars. But...
On the other hand, I have no interest in reading this book again. It feels like a one-time experience. To do it again would be...unnecessary. And when we're talking about writing as sparse as Johnson's, "unnecessary" is not an option.
Also, I understand the complaints about the character Flower Cannon. I agree that she is presented as basically a caricature, but it bothered me less than it might have due to the POV in which the story was told. The narrator is a damaged person who, like all of us, sees (and, in this case, describes) only what he wants to see. I believe it would be a very different tale if told by Flower.
Still, if someone is new to Denis Johnson, they should start with Jesus' Son. Hands down, still the best.
On the one hand, this is Denis Johnson at his best-- he's a Word Master and every word he uses in The Name of the World is exactly the right one. Beautiful and haunting and complicated in its simplicity. And because it's such a brief story, it doesn't suffer from some of the bogged-down-ness of his other novels. I'm very tempted to give it 4 stars. But...
On the other hand, I have no interest in reading this book again. It feels like a one-time experience. To do it again would be...unnecessary. And when we're talking about writing as sparse as Johnson's, "unnecessary" is not an option.
Also, I understand the complaints about the character Flower Cannon. I agree that she is presented as basically a caricature, but it bothered me less than it might have due to the POV in which the story was told. The narrator is a damaged person who, like all of us, sees (and, in this case, describes) only what he wants to see. I believe it would be a very different tale if told by Flower.
Still, if someone is new to Denis Johnson, they should start with Jesus' Son. Hands down, still the best.
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I came to this book as part of my publication order (re-)read of all Johnson’s poetry and novels. This is novel number seven (yes, I am counting Jesus’ Son as a novel) and is one of the novels I am reading for the first time in this little project. It’s a strange beast, it has to be said.
Our narrator is Michael Reed, a college professor who hardly ever teaches and whose life has been on hold in the years since his wife and daughter were taken from him in a car crash. This is, at least in part, the story of Michael Reed’s search for meaning.
One of the things Reed does frequently is visit the art museum to look at one specific piece. It’s an artwork consisting of a series of concentric hand-drawn squares. Because they are hand-drawn, no square is perfectly aligned with the one inside it and…
“Each unintended imperfection in an outline had been scrupulously reproduced in the next, and since each square was larger, each imperfection grew larger too, until at the outermost edges the shapes were no longer squares, but vast chaotic wanderings.”
This is, in fact, a good summary of what reading the book feels like because, by the time you get to the end, it feels like any semblance of order is rapidly disappearing, although it is hard to put your finger on exactly when it starts to be a bit weird.
And when the book does actually finish, it feels more like you are in the middle of something even if that “something” is not what most of the preceding pages have been about. For most of the book, Reed has episodic encounters with a variety of different people on or near his campus, most notably the amazingly named Flower Cannon. But in the last few pages we head away and, in fact, all over the place!
I’m really not quite sure what I made of the whole experience. The book is actually very short and it probably deserves a re-read at some point. It doesn’t have the same level of poetry as I tend to expect in Johnson’s writing, although there is a scattering of quite amazing sentences.
At one point, a character called Seth is criticising novels written by one of the other characters and we read:
”Or, okay, I’ll say the characters are morally uninstructive - “
“Hey, come on, Seth. They're fictional. Do you really hope to get your moral lessons from people who don't exist?”
I guess those of us who read a lot of fiction would answer yes to that question (and possibly argue that that’s the point of fiction). And we’d agree with the character who says My habit when I’ve been humiliated is to go out and buy a book.
A slightly confused 3-star rating for now, but one for which I will at some point set aside a day for a re-read.
Our narrator is Michael Reed, a college professor who hardly ever teaches and whose life has been on hold in the years since his wife and daughter were taken from him in a car crash. This is, at least in part, the story of Michael Reed’s search for meaning.
One of the things Reed does frequently is visit the art museum to look at one specific piece. It’s an artwork consisting of a series of concentric hand-drawn squares. Because they are hand-drawn, no square is perfectly aligned with the one inside it and…
“Each unintended imperfection in an outline had been scrupulously reproduced in the next, and since each square was larger, each imperfection grew larger too, until at the outermost edges the shapes were no longer squares, but vast chaotic wanderings.”
This is, in fact, a good summary of what reading the book feels like because, by the time you get to the end, it feels like any semblance of order is rapidly disappearing, although it is hard to put your finger on exactly when it starts to be a bit weird.
And when the book does actually finish, it feels more like you are in the middle of something even if that “something” is not what most of the preceding pages have been about. For most of the book, Reed has episodic encounters with a variety of different people on or near his campus, most notably the amazingly named Flower Cannon. But in the last few pages we head away and, in fact, all over the place!
I’m really not quite sure what I made of the whole experience. The book is actually very short and it probably deserves a re-read at some point. It doesn’t have the same level of poetry as I tend to expect in Johnson’s writing, although there is a scattering of quite amazing sentences.
At one point, a character called Seth is criticising novels written by one of the other characters and we read:
”Or, okay, I’ll say the characters are morally uninstructive - “
“Hey, come on, Seth. They're fictional. Do you really hope to get your moral lessons from people who don't exist?”
I guess those of us who read a lot of fiction would answer yes to that question (and possibly argue that that’s the point of fiction). And we’d agree with the character who says My habit when I’ve been humiliated is to go out and buy a book.
A slightly confused 3-star rating for now, but one for which I will at some point set aside a day for a re-read.
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