Denis Johnson is one of my favorite writers. His book Jesus’ Son is at the top of my ‘everyone must read’ list. No, no, no it’s not a “let me be a witness to you and help you find Jesus” kind of book. Rather it’s the opposite. The stories that comprise this book center around the no-formal-named protagonist. The narrator only clues us in by calling him Fuckhead. The book is Fuckhead’s journey through the dark, deep, often unemotional, pits of earth. Through these stories of despair, drug addiction, abortion, etc, Fuckhead rarely shows emotion towards the world around him, yet—a compliment to Johnson’s mastery—we somehow come to care and empathize with this numbed man who is really just trying to find his lot on this earth.If you haven’t yet run into any of Johnson’s work, I recommend starting with Jesus’ Son and moving on to the 2007 National Book Award winner Tree of Smoke. I’ve yet to read Nobody Move, so if you have, drop a comment and let me know what you think.
Below is from The New Yorkers fiction podcast. Tobias Wolff, and amazing writer himself (his Bullet in the Brain story is a must read), gives Emergency by DJ the radio reading it deserves. Take a listen.
Emergency by Denis Johnson as read by Tobias Wolff
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