Seems to be just a publish-or-perish contractual obligation effort, but there are great moments of both humor and poetry in this short novel - but what gets me hot is how it seems to paint with effortless numbers and connect with bright dots the late-90s complacency and directionlessness of the United States (the U.S. here is portrayed as a non-tenure-tracked academic, a long-grieving Godless widower) and, at the very end, Johnson predicts the boom-and-rush of post-911 America: all pride and industry, full of...full of purpose, the Protestant work-through-redemption ethic. Y'know?

The acclaimed author of Jesus' Son and Already Dead returns with a beautiful, haunting, and darkly comic novel. The Name of the World is a mesmerizing portrait of a professor at a Midwestern university who has been patient in his grief after an accident takes the lives of his wife and child and has permitted that grief to enlarge him.

Michael Reed is living a posthumous life. In spite of outward appearances -- he holds a respectable university teaching position; he is an articulate and attractive addition to local social life -- he's a dead man walking.

Nothing can touch Reed, nothing can move him, although he observes with a mordant clarity the lives whirling vigorously around him. Of his recent bereavement, nearly four years earlier, he observes, "I'm speaking as I'd speak of a change in the earth's climate, or the recent war."

Facing the unwelcome end of his temporary stint at the university, Reed finds himself forced "to act like somebody who...

The acclaimed author of Jesus' Son and Already Dead returns with a beautiful, haunting, and darkly comic novel. The Name of the World is a mesmerizing portrait of a professor at a Midwestern university who has been patient in his grief after an accident takes the lives of his wife and child and has permitted that grief to enlarge him.

Michael Reed is living a posthumous life. In spite of outward appearances -- he holds a respectable university teaching position; he is an articulate and attractive addition to local social life -- he's a dead man walking.

Nothing can touch Reed, nothing can move him, although he observes with a mordant clarity the lives whirling vigorously around him. Of his recent bereavement, nearly four years earlier, he observes, "I'm speaking as I'd speak of a change in the earth's climate, or the recent war."

Facing the unwelcome end of his temporary stint at the university, Reed finds himself forced "to act like somebody who cares what happens to him. " Tentatively he begins to let himself make contact with a host of characters in this small academic town, souls who seem to have in common a tentativeness of their own. In this atmosphere characterized, as he says, "by cynicism, occasional brilliance, and small, polite terror," he manages, against all his expectations, to find people to light his way through his private labyrinth.

Elegant and incisively observed, The Name of the World is Johnson at his best: poignant yet unsentimental, replete with the visionary imaginative detail for which his work is known. Here is a tour de force by one of the most astonishing writers at work today.

**

It's 120 pages, so after seeing it on a friend's (actual) bookshelf I grabbed it from the library and read it in three short sittings. I feel like it's a bridge between the shadiness of "Jesus' Son" and the state-sponsored lunacy of "Tree of Smoke." There are eight or ten thunderbolt-type lines, pretty good outing for such a short book. And the last half takes place on a summer-deserted state school campus, conjuring my own summer of 1990.

I like it when you read a book and turn up some crazily random connection to the one you just read and the one you have next up. Like "Full Dark, No Stars," this one features (even gets it's title from) a segment that includes a little wooden box full of secrets. And when I finished this book and searched some reviews to see what other readers thought of the Flower Cannon character, I read this: "...like Gogol but without all the mania..."-and I'd also checked out a Gogol book along with this one.

Denis Johnson took the flattest of dull, male fantasies - the flailing, lonley professor gets in a spell-casting match with the wild, arty, enigmatic co-ed - and managed to fold it into mental origami, sense and even time folding back on itself into a flower. It is about a girl named Flower, in fact, and he makes that work, too. The creases in his folding of reality don't exactly line up at the end and the resulting flower of a story is shimmeringly and organically imperfect for it. And its just the right length at ~120 pages, enough to shoot through a whole life in a day. And it is cockablock with lyrical wonders like:

I'd offered to witness to power's corrupting influence, but apparently no such witness was required.

I thought I just liked the Denis Johnson of Jesus' Son and lesser so, the one of Fiskadoro, and then I read Train Dreams and whoa, and then this is just as whoa and I realized I have a bunch of his books to read: Tree of Smoke, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man and that poetry collection with the great name of The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems Collected and New.

Where'd THAT come from??? Not I! No spoiler here... The car accident occurs 4 years before and is mentioned in the paragraph of the jacket blurb!

One more DJ to go(besides the poetry and the newest book, which I'll get to one of these days. The prose, not the poetry.) Starting tonight.

It's a short book and I'm half way through after last night. This is a curiously subdued story by DJ, whose tales are usually full of craziness. It feels more autobiographical as well. It's fine and readable and all that but the poetry is somewhat missing. Notes...

- I met a guy in Boulder one night whose wife and children had been killed recently in a car accident. In Florida I think. My neighbors brought him home from a bar. Poor bastard was a in COMPLETE collapse.

- Who's Kit? Updike?

- Reminds me of "Straight Man" - a LOT!

- Flower Cannon... encountered a couple of women like that back in the day. The first was a fellow student in a Logic class at Metro State in Denver. A tall, slender, red-headed stripper and possibly the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. At least that's the way I remember it. The other was a one-time teen-aged stripper in Boulder and performance artist associated with MECA in Portland. She was a friend of a friend. One of her "pieces" was to sit in a storefront window(probably at MECA) and draw blood from her own arm. ICK!

Now done with this curiously subdued, flat and even boring book. Seems like MAYBE this comes the author's life. He did get divorced... There's some of the familiar Johnson lyrical stuff but the whole thing seems overly slight and contained. Tough to give this a 2* as it's better than "Already Dead" so I'll give it a 2.75* which rounds up to 3*... Notes -

- The author himself became a Christian. To me this is boring stuff - I can't relate.

- The whole Flower "thing" and final encounter seems totally forced, artificial and clichéd. See the odd-ball free spirit set the sad sack on the path to emotional and spiritual cleansing! Barf...

- On page 92-high - the use of the word "chlorophyll" is poetic overkill.

- The Flower thing also reminded me of the Clara Sachs thing in "Underworld". Another artist-poseur... Grow UP!

- Some nice writing at the ending.

- So that's it for DJ for the time being here's my list in order of preference...

1 - Jesus' Son
2 - Train Dreams
3 - Angels
4 - The Stars at Noon
5 - Fiskadoro
6 - Tree of Smoke
7 - Nobody Move
8 - Resuscitation of a Hanged Man
9 - The Name of the World
10 - Already Dead

I THINK that's it...


-

De beste dagen uit het leven van Michael Reed zijn al geweest. De hoogleraar geschiedenis doolt verloren rond, doet min of meer wat er van hem verwacht wordt, gaat naar de feestjes en diners waar men op hem rekent, toont zich welbespraakt en geduldig, maar intussen voelt hij zich dof, soms zelfs volkomen afwezig. Zelf spreekt hij over een ‘verlamming’ die hij eerst ‘nog met eenvoudig verdriet verwarde’. Reed is in de rouw.

Winters geleden, op een ijskoude dag, verloor hij zijn dochter en echtgenote bij een auto-ongeluk, waarvan flarden zich nog altijd bij hem blijven aandienen. Hij keek toe hoe ze wegreden, met hun ook omgekomen buurman. Het schuldgevoel is bij die terugblikken nooit ver weg: had hij ze maar even tegengehouden. Had hij de woorden waarmee hij de buurman op een ander weggetje wilde wijzen maar hardop uitgesproken en niet ingeslikt. Tegelijk is Reeds hardste, schrijnendste verdriet al geluwd. Zoals hij zelf aan het begin van De naam van de wereld formuleert, in kenmerkend kalme bewoordingen: ‘Het was bijna vier jaar geleden, lang genoeg om weer op de markt te zijn. Dat leken andere mensen in elk geval te vinden, en dat liet ik maar zo.’

In zekere zin is De naam van de wereld het verslag van een geduldig man die probeert de buitenwereld weer iets meer toe te laten. Die zelfs – na jaren waarin hij alle gedachten aan seks meteen verwierp – een verbond aangaat met een innemende roodharige kunstenares genaamd Flower Cannon, tevens studente en stripper. Maar hoe prettig hun contact ook is, Reed beseft dat zijn verdriet aan hem zal blijven kleven. En laat het maar aan Denis Johnson over om grote begrippen als rouw en leegte fijnzinnig in te vullen.

Laat het maar aan Johnson over om grote begrippen als rouw en leegte fijnzinnig in te vullen
Er valt bijna geen stuk over Johnson (1949-2017) te vinden waarin hij niet wordt omschreven als typische writer’s writer of waarin zijn stijl niet wordt geroemd – ook ik kan daar moeilijk omheen; hij is een groot stilist, nauwkeurig en strak, gespecialiseerd in het oproepen van sfeer. Het leverde een toonvast, vitaal oeuvre op waarvan de romans het zwaartepunt vormen; enkele verschenen er al in het Nederlands, maar het verhaal van Michael Reed bleef jarenlang onuitgegeven. Nu heeft het kleine, altijd boeiende Koppernik – alweer Johnsons derde Nederlandse uitgeverij in de laatste tien jaar – De naam van de wereld (2001) alsnog laten vertalen. Het doet vermoeden dat Johnsons eerdere uitgevers er vooral in commercieel opzicht geen brood in zagen: de roman bezit weliswaar niet de beeldende kracht van Johnsons roemruchte Treindromen (2002) of de rauwheid van zijn bekende verhalenbundel, Jezus’ zoon (1992), maar De naam van de wereld vertelt wel een heel eigen, compact en intrigerend verhaal.

In weloverwogen zinnen, scherp geformuleerd, neemt Reed je vanaf de eerste pagina’s in vertrouwen. Hij vertelt over de politieke arena te Washington D.C., waar hij als hoofd van de juridische staf werkte voor een inmiddels in opspraak geraakte senator; over zijn hoogleraarschap in het Midwesten van Amerika, over het ongeluk van zijn vrouw en kind, over de bedwelmende Flower Cannon – ondanks zijn dofheid klinkt hij nergens duf. Door het eerstepersoonsperspectief kom je dicht bij hem zonder dat hij zich helemaal laat vatten. Eigenlijk is deze roman een lange monoloog, een vloeiend vertaalde verzameling losse herinneringen en overpeinzingen: er zijn geen verschillende hoofdstukken, geen witregels, Reed maakt soms moeiteloos tijdsprongen van maanden of zelfs jaren, en het voelt allemaal heel natuurlijk aan, alsof het op geen andere manier verteld kon worden.

Het maakt De naam van de wereld een vreemd boek, zowel toegankelijk als moeilijk peilbaar, tegelijkertijd losjes en strak gecomponeerd, dramatisch en plotloos. Af en toe moest ik terugbladeren om te zien bij welke scène Reed inmiddels was beland, het volgende moment zette ik weer volop bewonderende streepjes in de kantlijn. Het knappe aan het boek is dat Johnson – en misschien geldt dit wel voor alles wat hij heeft geschreven – nergens voor de makkelijke oplossing kiest. Nadrukkelijke symboliek of grootse gebaren rondom Reeds rouw worden vermeden. Er is geen eenduidige closure of climax. Het geijkte verloop van zijn band met Flower Cannon zou zijn dat zij hem seksueel bevrijdt: de oude, stilgevallen man die wordt overrompeld door de jongere, onweerstaanbare schoonheid. In plaats daarvan ontvouwt zich een verhaal over het loskomen van religie, over de onmogelijkheid om je helemaal te ontdoen van het klevende verdriet.

‘Ik blijf iemand die de geschiedenis bestudeert, meer dan ooit nu onze eeuw zich aan haar cocon heeft ontworsteld en te mooi is geworden om zich te laten onderzoeken’, overpeinst Reed op het einde van de roman, in zinnen die allesomvattend aanvoelen maar gelukkig nergens worden geduid. ‘Voorspellen op welke manier haar grootste uitbarstingen ons de volgende keer zullen opschrikken is niet langer het belangrijkste. Het belangrijkste is nu dat we met haar meeliften, de lucht in.’

Oblique in that great Denis Johnson way, but not hipster prophetic like Jesus' Son. Older, sheltered man who's experienced a loss has a moment in time in a college town. Interesting turn in the narrative focus 2/3s of the way through, great, compelling, engrossing scenes, but the ending falters a little and doesn't pay off the way that the book wanted it to. Love it though, warts and all. Made me want to keep reading and I was involved with the characters.

Video review https://youtu.be/Ff65iEk5684

'"Clara, ik dacht dat we een afspraak hadden." Maar ik had net zo goed kunnen zeggen dat ik een afspraak had dat we iets dachten.'

2,5/5. I’m still unsure about this book after finishing it. First, the prose is very interesting. The author knows how to write and if you’re all in for writing style than I think you could enjoy. My concern is about the story. There isn’t much of a story in fact. We find ourselves in a very contemplative read, jumping from scene to scene, some are quite good, but some are quite boring as well and I end up closing the book after the last page with a sense of emptiness. Like we just gone wandering for 130 pages while still going more or less nowhere. I guess this really is a matter of style vs story kind of book, so depending on which you enjoy, your opinion may vary a lot. I can enjoy both, but I prefer a well balanced book, so I didn’t like this one that much.

This was a lot different from what I had expected, given the other Denis Johnson I had read, but then toward the end things started to twist in a way that was more familiar to me. A very quiet story about returning to the world of the living. There's no real plot; it's a character study, and a marvelous one at that, taking on a dreamlike quality which propels the reader through its sparse, beautiful 129 pages.

Constantly gobsmacked by the beautiful, delicate language. Denis is a master of articulating the tiniest feelings and sensations in ways that make the reader feel them intimately, even if s/he has never experienced that particular emotion before. This is why I don't even care where his books go - although they always do end up somewhere.