Incredible. Thank you for completely reviving Denis Johnson for me. (I’ve walked past that EMERGENCY sign at the Iowa City hospital so many times in my life!)
I’d never considered Denis Johnson and Elvis Presley in the same breath, but that image of the nineteen-year-old at the Louisiana Hayride is exactly right. Both of them arrived from somewhere the industry hadn’t planned for. Brett puts his finger on something most literary writing today actively avoids: the deranged, the exuberant, the unworkshoppable. Johnson didn’t write like a writer. He wrote like a man who’d been somewhere and barely got back. You can’t teach that. You can only hope to survive long enough to use it.
Getting the tattoo while broke in Gainesville is the most Denis Johnson thing you could have done with a Denis Johnson quote. And "I seek to mystify everything worth mystifying" is a line Johnson himself would have nodded at. Really good piece.
New Denis Johnson from Non Grata? I’m in
Incredible. Thank you for completely reviving Denis Johnson for me. (I’ve walked past that EMERGENCY sign at the Iowa City hospital so many times in my life!)
Great piece and very well-written.
I’d never considered Denis Johnson and Elvis Presley in the same breath, but that image of the nineteen-year-old at the Louisiana Hayride is exactly right. Both of them arrived from somewhere the industry hadn’t planned for. Brett puts his finger on something most literary writing today actively avoids: the deranged, the exuberant, the unworkshoppable. Johnson didn’t write like a writer. He wrote like a man who’d been somewhere and barely got back. You can’t teach that. You can only hope to survive long enough to use it.
I missed that a biography of Denis Johnson was published. . . Thanks
One book, any book, by Denis Johnson can change your life. Great piece, Brett
This was wonderful!
Getting the tattoo while broke in Gainesville is the most Denis Johnson thing you could have done with a Denis Johnson quote. And "I seek to mystify everything worth mystifying" is a line Johnson himself would have nodded at. Really good piece.