Jesus'
Son
Denis Johnson
review
by: Matthew Scrivner
Date:
10/18/02
Those
of you familiar with Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground
will recognize the title of this book from the lyrics
of the song Heroin. It is about a heroin addict. But not
really. Really the heroin addiction is incidental, and
what we are witnessing is some sort of mystic or spiritual
struggle that the character, named only once or twice
throughout the book as "Fuckhead," progresses
through in a world fogged by desire and need. The book
is a mere 179 pages, and is probably the most accessible
of my list. It progresses from a violent car wreck at
the beginning, to criminal acts and drug use, to sacrifice,
overdose, voyeurism, relief, and demonstrates throughout
all of it the singular and joyous realization that all
these things are beautiful. Vomiting and blood and shit
and car accidents and screaming are beautiful. Gory rabbit
embryos and naked windsurfing women are beautiful. Death
is beautiful.
I need to emphasize here that part of the experience of
this book is the language it was written in. Johnson is
actually a poet before he is a novelist (see his collection
Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General
Assembly for an example.) The narrative here is from a
poet's voice, a poet's eye, distilling everything down
to it's glowing core. In one scene, we witness the aftermath
of a fatal car accident, a head-on collision that kills
a solitary male driver, and in the hum of a hospital emergency
room, Johnson writes:
"Down
the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She
didn't know yet that her husband was dead.... What a pair
of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek.
It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking
for that feeling everywhere."
This
is not the exception, but the rule in this work. Passage
after passage we are faced with language as brutally honest
and as tightly compressed as this, imagery that bursts
into our heads and scalds our fingertips. Of the four
books on this list, this is the book I lend to friends
and never see again.
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