Jesus' Son - Denis Johnson

Over the past year, I have encountered amazing reviews of Denis Johnson's "Tree of Smoke." I was intrigued. Jonathan Franzen, the author of "The Corrections," offers us some hyperbole on the back cover: "The God I want to believe in has a voice and a sense of humor like Denis Johnson's." Who could resist? But I wanted to start small. I started with "Jesus' Son," a collection of short stories.

Fuckhead, the narrator, is careless and scatterbrained; his stolidity belies the craziness of his life and the horrifying stories he tells. In "Crash While Hitchhiking," he calmly recalls a fateful car crash. A family, with a young baby, pick him up by the side of the road. While Fuckhead sleeps, the car crashes. After running from the family's car, Fuckhead surveys the other car:

"Somebody was flung halfway out the passenger door, which was open, in the posture of one hanging from a trapeze by his ankles. The car had been broadsided, smashed so flat that no room was left inside it even for this person's legs, to say nothing of a driver or any other passengers. I just walked right on past (8)."

Johnson never has Fuckhead question his life. He just tells his stories. Similar events pass by, like a reel of images, throughout the book. The people, to borrow a phrase from a dementia patient, who appears later in the book, "are like meat." All the events, from Fuckhead's perspective, seem predetermined. It is as if this life, in all its craziness, is his destiny. This is the way his life is supposed to be.

In "Emergency," Georgie, Fuckhead's co-worker at the hospital and a fellow addict, walks into the emergency room with Terrence Weber, whose wife stabbed him in the eye; the knife is embedded in his brain. While the ER staff scatters to call numerous specialists, a doctor implores Georgie to prep the patient. When Georgie returns, he, as Fuckhead recalls, had the hunting knife in his hand! The next day, Georgie, numb from drugs, can not remember who Terrence is.

Johnson makes it difficult for us to firmly grasp the narration, because of Fuckhead's pithy descriptions. Fuckhead is transient; he mentions shocking events but then discards them. The effect is as mind-numbing as the mind-altering drugs Fuckhead takes. While the stories astound us, Fuckhead's apathy flabbergasts us. In "Out on Bail," Fuckhead recounts hanging out with Jack Hotel, a friend, who evaded a conviction for assault. They separate after divvying up their heroin purchase. They both overdose. Fuckhead's friends nurse him to good health. Jack's fate is worse:

"The people with him, all friends of ours, monitored his breathing by holding a pocket mirror under his nostrils from time to time, making sure that points of mist appeared on the glass. But after a while they forgot about him, and his breath failed without anybody's noticing. He simply went under. He died.

I am still alive (66)"

Johnson's achievement is a rarity; he explores the dangerous underworld of drug addicts, both insane and perspicacious, without sermonizing. Although these are Fuckhead's memories, we detach ourselves from his perspective gradually because of the form. We're are left with the question: how can someone be so numb to feeling? But the novel is not cynical; rather, it is a search for feeling. At the end of "Car Crash," Fuckhead hears a woman, the wife of the dead man, scream, after a doctor informs her of the husband's death:

"... from under the closed door a slab of brilliance as if, by some stupendous process, diamonds were being incinerated in there. 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" (11).

Fuckhead may be unsuccessful, but we feel it.