Denis Johnson

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5 American Novels David Foster Wallace Loved

September 24, 2012 in Books | Permalink

It still bothers me greatly that David Foster Wallace fabricated huge sections of his so-called non-fiction pieces. I don’t think his great talent made that okay. But it’s difficult to discuss such things sensitively considering the unhappiness of his life and the sadness of his death.

I just came across a 1999 article Wallace wrote for Salon about the five most unappreciated American novels since 1960. I’ve read the titles on his list, so I thought I would give my take on them.

•Omensetter’s Luck (William H. Gass, 1966): I’ve never really connected to Gass’ work, even his short fiction, but this one, his first novel, is his best. That said, I didn’t really enjoy this Faulkner-esque story, which concerns a preacher obsessed with the good fortune of a seemingly undeserving man, until the final third. What’s amusing is that my edition contains an essay by the author about how his OL manuscript was stolen by a colleague. It’s straightforward, filled with rich metaphor and emotion. After reading it, I though that perhaps Gass has been trying his whole career to write with someone else’s strengths instead of his own.

•Steps (Jerzy Kosinski, 1968): Not so much a novel as a collection of nightmarish stories linked by theme and tone. Like Kafka, but with the lurid eroticism and violence above the surface. Kosinski’s sexual politics could be gross, but this is a very brisk read and some of the stories will remain lodged in your brain, unforgettable for their paranoia and horror.

•Angels (Denis Johnson, 1983): Bruising, heartbreaking novel about a single mom toting her at-risk family through the underbelly of America. It does not have the lightness of tone that Jesus’ Son has. Not at all. But it’s the second-best fiction Johnson has written after JS.

•Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West (Cormac McCarthy, 1985): This insane, brilliant and unsentimental novel set in the Old West is one of my absolute favorites. A story about innocence devoured in the belly of the beast, it’s the book that Herman Melville tried and failed to create in Moby Dick. 

•Wittgenstein’s Mistress (David Markson, 1988): The best of the author’s typically avant-garde anti-novels, it follows the (repetitive) thought process of a woman who may be the last person on Earth. Philosophical and challenging, you will love it or quickly put it down.•

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“We’ll Fight Till We’re Dead Or We’re Free”

December 3, 2010 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Denis Johnson was paranoid about both the government and the anti-government militia movement in 1990s America when he wrote the chilling article “The Militia in Me,” which appears in his non-fiction collection, Seek. The violence of Ruby Ridge and Waco and the horrific Oklahoma City bombing had shocked the nation into realizing the terror within, so Johnson traveled the U.S. and Canada to find out how and why militias had come to be. Sadly, the unsettling subject is as timely as ever. Three brief excerpts from the piece.

••••••••••

The people I talked with seemed to imply that the greatest threat to liberty came from a conspiracy, or several overlapping conspiracies, well known to everybody but me. As a framework for thought, this has its advantages. It’s quicker to call a thing a crime and ask Who did it? than to call it a failure and set about answering the question What happened?

••••••••••

I’m one among many, part of a disparate–sometimes better spelled “desperate”–people, self-centered, shortsighted, stubborn, sentimental, richer than anybody’s ever been, trying to get along in the most cataclysmic century in human history. Many of us are troubled that somewhere, somehow, the system meant to keep us free has experienced a failure. A few believe that someone has committed the crime of sabotaging everything.

Failures need correction. Crimes cry out for punishment. Some ask: How do we fix it? Others: Who do we kill?

••••••••••

They told me they made furniture out of antlers and drove around anywhere and everywhere, selling it. For the past month I’d been reading about the old days, missing them as if I had lived in them, and I said, “You sound like free Americans.”

“No,” the smaller man said and thereafter did all the talking, while the other, the blond driver changed my tire. “No American is free today.”

“Okay, I guess you’re right, but what do we do about that?”

“We fight till we are,” he said. “Till we’re free or we’re dead, one or the other.”

“Who’s going to do the fighting?”

“A whole lot of men. More than you’d imagine. We’ll fight till we’re dead or we’re free.”

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