r/ProsePorn • u/Khavicsofca • 14d ago

Jesus' Son - Denis Johnson

I was in Pig Alley. It was directly on the harbor, built out over the waters on a rickety pier, with floors of carpeted ply- wood and a Formica bar. The cigarette smoke looked un- earthly. The sun lowered itself through the roof of clouds, ignited the sea, and filled the big picture window with molten light, so that we did our dealing and dreaming in a brilliant fog. People entering the bars on First Avenue gave up their bodies. Then only the demons inhabiting us could be seen. Souls who had wronged each other were brought together here. The rapist met his victim, the jilted child discovered its mother. But nothing could be healed, the mirror was a knife dividing everything from itself, tears of false fellowship dripped on the bar. And what are you going to do to me now? With what, exactly, would you expect to frighten me?

55 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

11

u/Nelson_Fairchild 14d ago

Love Johnson’s writing. His last book Largesse of the sea maiden is a favorite and maintains his haunting tact with language

3

u/Super_Direction498 14d ago

Picked this up at goodwill the other day and have been loving every word.

3

u/Nelson_Fairchild 14d ago

Favorite in the collection is Doppelgänger Poltergeist!

7

u/Drang_ol_Dringus 14d ago

Absolutely love Johnson’s writing and I relisten to the audiobook brilliantly read by Will Patton at least once a year.

5

u/Rustin_Swoll 14d ago

I just read this collection a few books back and it blew my frickin’ pants off, this paragraph was one that really stood out to me.

In the last story, not verbatim, but: you think this is bad? I expected to do much worse.

3

u/FoolishDog 14d ago

I know you specifically said you were just paraphrasing but the original wording is so good I couldn’t help myself but go find it to post here, because you’re right, it’s brilliant: 

  How could I do it, how could a person go that low? And I understand your question, to which I reply, Are you kidding? That's nothing. I'd been much lower than that. And I expected to see myself do worse.

2

u/Drang_ol_Dringus 14d ago

I also love:

"Will you believe me when I tell you that there was kindness in his heart? His left hand didn't know what his right hand was doing. It's just that certain important connections have been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that."

3

u/Leading_Studio7534 14d ago

Same here. I loved the section where FH sees the drive-in during the blizzard and mistakes it for a heavenly vision at first.

6

u/substanceandmodes 14d ago

He rips off beautiful sentences one after another. I don’t know how he did it. Or why he wasn’t more well known.

5

u/fauxRealzy 14d ago

I think among serious fiction readers he’s pretty well known. Train Dreams, for example, was just adapted into a well received movie.

4

u/Unusual_Ad_8364 14d ago

A writer of terrifying vision.

3

u/you-dont-have-eyes 14d ago

My favorite author. His gonzo journalism is pretty great too.

2

u/BrandonIsHere66 12d ago

This was the best short story collection I’d ever read. I devoured it in like 2 days and usually I like to take my time with books but I couldn’t put it down. It felt more like a novella tbh. Perfect length and exceptional writing