Backlisted - Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson

Episode Date: February 19, 2018

John and Andy welcome authors Chris Power and Erica Wagner to discuss the multiple interlocking stories in Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson, including the phantasmagoric 'Car Crash While Hitchhiking'. In addition Andy has been reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke and John takes a look at Fen by Daisy Johnson.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)8'25 - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke15'53 - Fen by Daisy Johnson21'33 - Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Do you know what the middle name of Trump's father is? Christ. Yeah. Donald C... He was called Fred C. Trump.

And his friend is Frederick Christ Trump. Do you know what the T in James T. Kirk stands for? Tiberius. Tiberius. No. To boldly go away. Joke, copyright, Noel Edmonds, 1979. As we're on this, particularly unpromising,

but do you know what the S in Harry S. Truman stands for? No. Go on. Nothing whatsoever. Really? It doesn't stand for anything it was just his parents couldn't agree so they just left it as

they compromised and just left it as initial S there were two rival S names so brilliant Harry S Truman now I'm going to laugh every time I hear the name Harry S Truman no you're not, you're not calling him Sigmund but Mark E Smith going to laugh every time I hear the name Harry. No, you're not. You're not calling him Sigmund.

But Mark E. Smith. Yeah, so we're very sad. You've seen The Fall, Andy, more times than any other band. I think I've probably... Well, we've talked about The Fall quite a lot on Backlisted over the last couple of years, and the reason is because I really loved, loved, loved The Fall. And so I saw a friend of mine for lunch today

who's a big Fall fan, and we were saying that unlike, say, David Bowie's death, which also was a very sad thing, with Bowie you maybe felt that those last couple of records that he put out after a break were almost bonuses, that everyone sort of understood that he was nearer to the end. But in Mark Smith's case, he'd been producing a full album a year since 1978.

Yeah, since I was 15. And he'd been playing shows all the time since 1978. And he existed to go out there and do it until he couldn't do it anymore. And as a kind of example of a ornery creative ruthlessly moving forward sacking people as he went and you know he he was a he's a he was a uh i don't want to say a great man but he was a fascinating figure. And I totally understand that, you know,

the full are an acquired taste, like cigarettes. But they are, like Sig smoked here, you know, they are worth acquiring. Well, the criticism gets levelled at them, which seems to me to be a sort of pointless criticism, which is that they, oh, it all sounds exactly the same and he's released the same album over and over again. There's an element, I guess there's an element of truth in that,

you know, guitar riffs. I'm coming back here in a minute. But I don't believe... Wallowing it, as you do, when somebody dies in the back catalogue over the past few nights, I think he... I don't think there is a better songwriter ever. I'd put him right up there with Dylan. I would.

I think he's an absolute genius. The funny thing is, of course, when you listen to things... There's a period, particularly, I suppose, the last 15 years, where I haven't been as attentive to The Fall as I would have been when I was younger. And you go back and there's some brilliant, brilliant stuff. The Unutterable I was listening to. You were listening to Dr Buck's letter.

It's an amazing record. I was in the realm of the essence of Tonga. I was in the realm of the essence of Tonga. He was the template for credibility, never give in, never compromise with the man. I know listeners want us to get on and talk about books, but we're not going to do it. I'm not doing it. I'm going to

tell you some more stories about Marky Smith. Chris and I are just being so mean. No, I need to get this. So, like John was saying a moment ago, that the four, like, you know, they repeated themselves. The first thing to say is... I see, that's what people say. One of the first four records is called Repetition.

Yeah. The three R's. Repetition, repetition, repetition. That's the first thing. The second thing is there's an early four live album called Toe Tales Turns, where a member of the audience heckles Marky Smith and they ask for, like, Bingo Masters breakout or something.

And he goes to the bloke were you still doing what you did two years ago you were well don't make a career out of it take your voice your written voice your singing voice your lack of singing voice and find a new setting for it even if that means sacking your group and employing a new group. I met Marky Smith a few times. The first time I met him was at Dave Haslam's wedding, which was about 20 years ago. Dave Haslam was a friend of Mark's.

And he said, Andy, come and meet Mark. I was absolutely terrified. So I go up and Dave goes, so Mark, this is my editor, he's called Andy Miller. And Mark looks at me and he goes, Dave goes, so, Mark, this is my editor, he's called Andy Miller, and Mark looks at me and he goes, you are, you're Greek, are you Roman? And I went... I don't know! That was like, that was that interaction.

Brilliant. But then I... Mark East Smith published his extremely ghosted autobiography, Renegade, about ten years ago, and I can now reveal this, that I was employed on the choir by the editor at Penguin as the fact-checker of that work. And it did involve often moving entire decades around,

which had been put in the wrong place. But also I got the legal read. The legal read is one of the funniest documents, which I'm sorry, listeners, if you're... I'm not allowed to circulate it. But you can imagine, when Mr Smith says that he took speed non-stop from the years 1978 to 1998, will he be able to prove it?

Shall we start? Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Buy Unbound, the website which brings authors and readers together to create something special. You find us hunkered down in the Rebel motel on the outskirts of Chicago, just the kind of place where the cleaners spit their gum into the shower stall. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously, and joining us today are author and critic Chris Power.

Hello, Chris. Hello. Chris writes regularly for The Guardian and The New Statesman. Great things are expected of his debut short story collection, Mothers, which John Mitchinson has read and has been raving about on this podcast. In fact, raved about it on the last episode. And that's published by Fabian February, is that right? 1st March.

1st March. OK, so by the time you hear this, you're only weeks away from Chris's debut story collection, Mothers. Alternatively, if you're listening to this at any point after March 2018, Mothers was a worldwide hit on publication and has swept the boards at every awards ceremony going, including it won Best Album of the Year at the Grammys. That was a surprise, Chris, wasn't it? The Perrier Award Best New Stand-Up in Edinburgh

and the Nobel Prize for Science. Not bad for a debut collection of stories, Chris. Well done. Thanks for joining us. Still pinching myself. And making a welcome return to the show is Erica Wagner. Erica is a writer and critic whose most recent book is a biography of Washington Roebling, the engineer who constructed the Brooklyn Bridge.

Previous to that, she edited the collection First Light, a celebration of the life and work of Alan Garner, published by Unbound. And I, too, have read Chris's debut collection of stories. Excellent. I can vouch for it as one of the best things I've read in a long time. Yeah. Thank you very much.

Well, that's good, because we're here to talk about a collection of stories, Jesus' Son, by American writer Dennis Johnson. Anyway, Andy, we start, as usual, with asking the question, what have you been reading? This week? This week, yeah. Well, truthfully, it wasn't this week.

It was just before Christmas, but I wanted to talk about it because I devoted... It took me a good ten days, I think, to read it. I read a book called Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, and I'm confident that's less of a backlisted title than a frontlisted title, really, still. In no doubt, it still sells many copies every year.

When was it published? About 2004? Yeah, and was a huge bestseller. And in retrospect, perhaps catching a wave from the J.K. Rowling, Philip Pullman adults wanting to read big pseudo-historical fiction about magic. That's a guess. That's going back and analysing the reading trends. But also, what I liked about it,

I thought it was great. Flawed, but great, and the good things far outweighed the flaws in it. It's sort of a work of both historical imagination and imaginative history. If you haven't read it, it's set just pre-Regency, so it's set between sort of 1810 and 1820. I'll just read you the opening sentences of the book, because actually they give you a really good feel for it.

It starts, The Library at Hertview, Autumn 1806 to January 1807. Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic. They were gentleman magicians, which is to say, they had never harmed anyone by magic, nor ever done anyone the slightest good. In fact, to own the truth, not one of these magicians had ever cast the smallest spell,

nor by magic caused one leaf to tremble upon a tree, made one mote of dust to alter its course, or changed a single hair upon anyone's head. But with this one minor reservation, they enjoyed a reputation as some of the wisest and most magical gentlemen in Yorkshire. A great magician has said of his profession that his practitioners, quote,

must pound and rack their brains to make the least learning go in, but quarrelling away comes very naturally to them. Footnote, The Life of Jonathan Strange, published John Murray, 1816. And the York magicians had proved the truth of this for a number of years. number of years. So what you're in is a world which is a sort of delightful literary recreation of a particular period of history with one small addition which is that magic is real and exists. How would magic be practiced? How would it be perpetrated, to what uses would it be put, had it existed in that pre-Regency period. And it also features appearances from real figures from history, so Lord Byron is a character in the novel, the Battle of Waterloo takes place, Jonathan Strange encounters George III, who is in

fact not mad but can see magical creatures, and so on and so forth. And it's very witty and it's very erudite and it manages to pull in various literary templates and have fun with those. And so it's full of good stuff. And yet, and yet, and I'm able to say this because it's a huge best-selling book which many, many people love and have enjoyed, it doesn't quite pay off and it made me think about reading big books like this or like infinite

jest where when you go to the trouble of spending a long time reading a thousand page novel the temptation when you finish it is to say either it was incredible or, oh, it was rubbish. Whereas, in fact, a really long book, less like a book of any other length, can sometimes be sort of seven. It can be all right. I really enjoyed reading it. The world-building element of it is terrific,

and yet it sort of falters in the delivery of the denouement and the plot at the end, and yet it didn't matter. I sort of felt by the end of it that I would like to spend more time in the world that she built. And in fact, her volume of short stories are stories, aren't they? And indeed, I think I'm right in saying she wrote it piecemeal. So lots of the chapters on it were published as stories, and there was then a retrospective bid to rewrite and create a novel.

So you can kind of see why the narrative falters a little. But have the people gathered around the table read it? Matt's read it. I have read it, but when it came out, and not since. Yeah. Did you enjoy it, Erica? Did you find it? I know it's not hard to put either.

Yeah. You know, it made me think of... It's interesting what you say about that payoff of a big book and how maybe we expect a different kind of payoff to get into a world in another way and although it's not a magical book and maybe i'm thinking this because i've just read his new novel that denouement what you were saying made me think of the ending of oscar and lucinda okay and when you come to the end of a novel that's been building and building and it it really happens but also

i thought i was bracketed it with kind of the quincunx charles palace yes it felt a little bit that chemical wedding and the chemical just what i was gonna have but also it's weird i really i really love it's weird to talk about it in like five minutes at the beginning of this because it's such a big book you know chris you were saying to me that you had yeah i had it uh i had it biked to me it was very dramatic uh because uh bbc website that i was writing for at the time had to have that's the big deal had to have my expansive review which was capped at 120 For a, what, 850-page book? Yeah, it is, yeah. Five of which were the titles. And my memory isn't great,

but I do remember really liking the atmosphere of it. I think it chimes what you say about spending time in that world. People loved it. I mean, I didn't see the adaptation. When you read one of these big, big books, and Infinite Jest is a brilliant case of this, it seems to... Both the book itself and its place in the culture seem to demand that you have a strong response, that you say,

oh, this was an incredible... It's a masterpiece, the best novel of the 1990s. Or you say, oh, I hated it. People who say they like this, they're having a laugh. Whereas, you know, Infinite Jest is, you know, too long and full of brilliant stuff. But isn't that to do with the fact that you've invested so much time in it? It's a great book, but...

You can't sort of invest that much time in something and just go, hmm, that's all right. Yeah. People feel, you know... As any viewer of The Man in the High Castle can attest. We start with such... Have you watched it? No. If you're going to start talking television, I'm just going to talk about

Detectorists until you stop. That would be fine. My new passion. De no jour. So, John, anyway, we've dealt with that thousand page novel. What have you been reading this week?

Anything more different. It's a debut collection of stories by Daisy Johnson called Fen. I have, as you know, a bit of a soft spot for people who write about stories in locations, rural locations. I'm more interested in that genre. And it's a brilliant first collection. Again, I think it's always difficult. It's probably always been people writing good short stories,

but I just feel at the moment we seem to be living through every new collection. I mean, I'm thinking there's connections here, particularly with Sarah Hall. I think there are at least two stories where people transform into animals, and I'll read you a little bit from one of them. But also the wonderful Jessie Greengrass who I was

talking about last week. It just seems Chris who's here, I mean I just think it's a sort of, I don't know why but short stories are seeming to work again in a way that they have, it might be me it might not be the stories. But this is 12 stories, they're all about women, they're all set in the

fens but the real fens as opposed to what you might call the Graham Swift fens, although Swift's I mean I love that book and there's definitely but you know the fens are a bit of a they're a good place to set stories, flat weird, and indeed there's a

lot of weirdness, it's also kind of irrigated by kind of folk horror folklore, she tells the stories as a woman who's getting letters from her husband who's on a fishing trawler who's obsessed with the fact that there's an albatross that keeps looking at him and the albatross ends up to come and take her baby, appears in the kitchen in this sort of...

It's off licences. There's a pub that's the common theme to all the stories. So, again, it has that slight feeling, we'll talk about this more later, of being a linked collection, different kind of kaleidoscopic attempts to sort of get to the truth of a community. When was this? Last year.

So, first collection, she's writing, obviously, a novel, Jonathan Cate, so you always kind of think, well, you know, probably worth picking up. But it was much less nature-y, in the way that I know you don't much like. Hey, I'm happy to swim against the tide. I believe you'll like that metaphor, right? It's Angela Carter in lots of ways.

You've got that sense of... I mean, she writes really, really well. I mean, there are a few things that don't quite come off. One of the things, I think, reading it, you start to lose, to lose which again when we come on to johnson might not be a problem the characters leak into one another but then it is a very the book is a fluid it's all about bodily fluids and liquids and and shape-shifting and changes i'll read you this little the from the first story which is called starved which starts off i mean mean, again, really snappy, brilliantly kind of realised teenage girl who stops eating.

So you think you know that the story's going to go down one route and the parents are obviously worried, the sister narrating the story. But I'll read you the last page of the story. She rolled out of bed, flopped her way down the corridor, on her belly, searching for something. I followed her at a distance. They took to tying her to the bed, flopped her way down the corridor on her belly, searching for something. I followed her at a distance. They took to tying her to the bed, straps around her middle, her forehead, her ankles. She ignored our parents, looked blindly for me. I knew what she was asking. They knew there was nothing they could do for her. We took her home. A nurse would

come every day to feed and clean her. Katie locked herself in the bathroom and would not come out. Sitting on the floor by the door, I heard the sound locked herself in the bathroom and would not come out. Sitting on the floor by the door, I heard the sound of her in the bath, the water sloshing out, the slap of flesh on plastic, the sound of the shampoo and conditioner bottles falling to the floor. When Mum broke down the door, we stood and looked at her, but only I would stay, sat on the floor, patting messages through the surface of the water, pushing her under so she could breathe.

The ambulance was on its way, Mum shouted up the stairs. Katie rolled her head to look at me, moving her long body in the water. I wet a towel, lifted her free, carried her out through the back garden, under the hedge and into the field. Her face next to mine, the thrash of her excited stomach against my side, the flapping of gills shuddering on the side of her neck. side, the flapping of gills shuddering on the side of her neck. I carried her as far as the school field, paused at the stile to rest. The canal ran deep

there, was mired over with weeds and nettles. I lay her on the ground, jerked her free from the towel, pushed her sideways into the water. She did not roll her white belly to message me goodbye or send a final ripple. Only ducked deep and was gone.

That's pretty good. Do you know what she's writing at the moment? Novel. It's coming out this year, I think. I think it is, yeah. I'd be fascinated to read whatever she does. But no, I mean, yeah, as I say, it's great. It's really interesting,

the short story. Yeah. Phenomenon. If indeed it is a phenomenon at the moment. Well, you know, it's one of those things. Were they always there, but we just weren't looking? Or, you know, it's... But it's certainly... Maybe it's just that publishers have found a way

through the usual crap and decided that stories are... Actually, you can if with... I mean, given, as we know, the background of all this is that literary fiction... The amazing revelation from the arts council the literary fiction doesn't sell very much don't please don't please don't i had to mute the word literary fiction on twitter this way as a publisher of literary fiction i was i was shocked and amazed to discover this but um and we're here to talk about short stories because we've got a magnificent practitioner of the form right here.

And right here, actually. I wasn't going to say it. I wasn't going to say it. Well, I am. Are you saying both Chris and Erica are magnificent practitioners of the short story? That's right. Dueling magnificence. We'll be back in just a sec. And in front of us is perhaps, although shamefully I hadn't read it and you hadn't read it,

but we now see one of the most influential collections of short stories written in the past 20 years. Well, I'll tell you, you say I hadn't read it. But you hadn't. As you can see, I owned it. Bought this when it came out. Pre-loved. No, i owned it bought this when it came out uh no no i bought it when it came out this is the first edition home and back published by favour and favour i read the first story in it in 1993 or two i was 92 and thought no i don't like that and then that was it until uh three weeks ago but that's not a response that many people will have had.

Because we know that this was such a popular book. It didn't get great reviews, Andy. I look back. Didn't it? It didn't get great reviews. I remember it got great reviews. Maybe that's... It did in the United States.

Maybe in the United States. It got a few sniffy ones here. So, yes. So we're talking about Jesus' Son by Dennis Johnson. Title taken from the lyrics of Heroin by The Velvet Underground, written by Lou Reed, which is why we're calling it Jesus' Son and not Jesus' Son, because the epigraph of the book makes it clear

that that's where it takes its title from. Chris, you contacted me to say, are you planning to do an episode on Dennis Johnson? If you are, or if you aren't, please can I come on and talk about him? So where and when were you? When did you first encounter this book? Well, I first encountered it, fittingly,

for a book that does deal partly with the haziness of recollection and memory. I can't remember exactly how i had uh let's see 1499 to spare in 1993 but it was a waterstones in gilford i've since i've talked to favor i know that so it's published in 92 in the states it was in summer 93 it was june 93 that came out in the in the uk and um i didn't have a lot of disposable income that didn't go on... Can I ask how old you were? I was 18.

OK. And I was spending my money on various recreational things, but not books very much. But... What does that mean? The police don't... What's the statute of limitations? Guildford Rotary Club won't be pleased to hear this.

They are. They're on my trail. Go on. If you tune into a Dennis Johnson podcast and expect none of the people talking about the books never taking drugs of any kind... Also, I'm already thinking our American listeners will be delighted at the mention of the Guildford Rotary Club. But, anyway, Chris, go on.

As soon as I saw Jesus Son, I thought of heroin, which wasn't what I was spending my money on. But the song was, I was listening to it daily at that point. And I was also a fairly freshly minted atheist. I was raised Catholic. And the book's got a Sacred Heart Jesus on it, which kind of chimed with me. I think I'd just, for the last sort of year or so, I'd just been able to start saying I was an atheist

without crouching and waiting to be smitten. Scruffed down. Smitten. Smoted, smitten by a thunderbolt. And it's got a kind of cutout on the cover of a of a drug capsule so it it just kind of impelled me to uh to pick it up and when i did i was just astonished i think astonishment's a kind of very appropriate word with johnson because often his characters are kind of astonished by the world in in various ways good and bad and i was just astonished by the language, the control of it, the weird sliding time frame of it, the humour and the tension. I've got a question. I'm fascinated by this.

So you're 18 and you're in Guildford and you walk into Waterstones of Guildford and you see this book, you're saying to yourself, I'm going to buy that. Wouldn't happen today. But what else were you reading when you were 18? Who were your favourite? I'm putting you on the spot, but can you remember who your favourite writer was? I was only reading american writers so i'd sort of gone through um the beats which kind of feed into i mean johnson was was cited and influenced from

the beats but i'd read kerouac i've read burroughs earlier that summer in lanzarote which is a whole different story that won't go into i discovered not him in his physical form, but I'd discovered Donald Barthelme, not like on a beach in Landerotti, but... And then my troubles began. Yeah, so I'd been reading him pretty solidly. I'd been reading 40 stories and was just going on to 60 stories. So you weren't ready? I was ready. Oh, yeah. I think so.

Good. Just checking. So you were already tuned in to a kind of American literary sensibility when you found this okay right yeah very much so do you want to read us something to give us a taste straight away so that people who

haven't read Dennis Johnson before can get straight to it because it's such a particular voice in this book that before we talk about it we ought to hear it really it is yeah and I think uh I'm going to read the end of the first story which is called car crash while hitchhiking and um I think it kind of speaks to how it how it pulls you in because it's so um strange and it probably took me a few years to even have a stab at what was going on in this mindset that we're exploring. So the narrator, parental advisory, is only known as Fuckhead in the book,

so that's the only name we hear him given. It's not by his choice, but that is the name he's got, deservedly so. He's been involved in a car crash. He's been hitchhiking all day. There's been a car crash, and his family are in various states of woundedness and maimedness, and he's now at the hospital where they've been brought in to be treated. Down the hall came the wife.

She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead. I should say, fuckheadhead as he's detailed at the start of the story has been taking drugs all day and drinking all day with the various people who've picked him up on his journey she didn't know yet that her husband was dead we knew that's what gave her such power over us the doctor took her into a room with a desk at the end of the hall and from under the closed door a slab of brilliance radiated 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. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm surprised I let those words out, but it's always been my tendency to lie to doctors as if good health consisted only of the ability to fool them. Some years later, one time when I was admitted to the detox at Seattle General

Hospital, I took the same tack. Are you hearing unusual sounds or voices? The doctor asked. Help us. Oh God, it hurts, the boxes of cotton screamed. Not exactly, I said. Not exactly, he said. Now what does that mean? I'm not ready to go into all that, I said. A yellow bird fluttered close to my face and my muscles grabbed. Now I was flopping like a fish. When I squeezed shut my eyes, hot tears exploded from the sockets. When I opened them, I was on my stomach. How did the room get so white? I asked. A beautiful nurse was touching my skin. These are vitamins, she said, and drove the needle in. It was raining. Gigantic ferns leaned over us. the forest drifted down a hill.

I could hear a creek rushing down among rocks. And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you. OK, Chris, what's going to happen is you're coming to my house. And you're going to read me the book. That's tremendous. Erica, I thought you had read this before you hadn't read this before no i too am a novice although i was always very aware you know that that game of humiliation the people that the books you should have read and i knew that this was one of them

and finally reading it i suppose to me it's interesting when you think a book is like something else, but then you think perhaps that something else is like the book. So I was reading this and thinking about Joy Williams and I was thinking about George Saunders too, in a strange

way. The thing that fascinated me, and I was struck by it very much listening to Chris read so beautifully just then, and I'd need to read the book again and again, I think, to really get a handle on it, but one of the things that's most mysterious and captivating about it is the way that he uses time and that i think is what gives the reader the sensation of being in the strange world of fuckhead and even that when you were reading it thinking about that flash forward that years later which makes me think of the story set in the hospital at the end of the collection, there's this incredibly fluid sense of disorienting movement through the book

that is incredibly arresting and unsettling. And I think about your initial response of reading this and thinking, look, I don't like this. It's trying to make the effect in you of what's happening, I think, to the body and mind of fuckhead in the collection. I would like to say in my defence that I was 25 and an idiot. No, but I actually... No, no, no.

But I think, I think, you know, and I always say when I'm talking to my students, you know but I think, I think, you know, and I always say when I'm talking to my students, you know, I think the stuff, I think it's a good response, it's an interesting response not to like something. Yeah. Because it's doing something. Well, I'd like to, I'd just like to say a little bit about my experience of reading the book this time.

So I'd had the book, I'd tried to read the opening story when I was 25, just didn't get on with it, and so I put it on the shelf, lots of things. So when I knew we were going to be doing it for this, I thought, OK, great, I'm going to love this. I'm 49, now time's running out. Let's go, let's go. And I read it, I read it about three or four weeks ago,

and I didn't get it. And I thought, OK, And I was quite disappointed. I was not with Dennis Johnson, with the late Dennis Johnson, but with myself. I let myself down, right? So then I do what I always do for Batlisted, which is I let myself down. I read another of his novels.

I read another of his books. I read his 620-page... Ooh, that's brave. ..2007 National Book Award-winning novel, Tree of Smoke. And the first 400 pages, I was thinking, OK, this is fine, it's sort of nothing like Jesus' Son, nothing like, could be a different writer. And then the last 200 pages were incredible.

That was my moment then I read a little 100 page novella in a in a morning called train dreams and that is sensationally good and then I read Jesus son again and the second reading of Jesus son having almost learned to trust Dennis Johnson I got so much more out of it I really radically changed how I felt about the reading of it. And the thing I'd like to say about Johnson, before I hand over to you, John, is that... And this is such a good lesson to learn

from why we do this podcast, is that each of those books, a book of short stories, a novella and an epic novel, they are all remarkably different from one another. Not so much in style, though they are different in style, but in the narrative discipline required for each book. And in three different cases, three different ways of storytelling, the writer is completely in command of what he's doing.

the writer is completely in command of what he's doing so that the what you need to be able to create an epic novel is not what you need to be able to create a book like jesus son and he's totally on top of it seemed to me totally on top of both of them so coming back to jesus son with a sense of i think i thought on first reading okay dennis this is a Bukowski, this is one of those guys. I've seen it, done it. Coming back to it, having seen the control over it and thinking, OK, he's choosing very specifically to say what he wants to say in this way, really blew me away.

I hadn't read it before. I hadn't read it before. I hadn't read any Johnson. I had the dimmest notion that Johnson was important. You know, that's kind of important, probably ought to read him. He's one of the writers who's kind of saddled with the terrible epithet cult. What, writer's writer, even?

Yes. Geoffrey Jennerley's called him a writer's writer's writer. Oh, oh. That's so awful. I have to say, he's called him a writer's writer's writer. Oh, oh! That's so awful. I have to say, also, sorry, I... A cult with no members, is what somebody said. Speaking of cults and that, I feel the need to interrupt and say I must say that this edition, I feel, has the least attractive...

What on earth is it? But also this quote. The cover. But the cover is terrible. And also this quote from Jonathan Franzen is the least enticing blurb. Is that the one about rhythm? No, it's about God.

I've always had a God, like Janice Johnson. But fuckhead. Maybe the title, Jesus' Son. I mean, it seems that he's clearly not God. Although, I just thought this was one. For me, I'd often wondered how does the American short story bridge the Carver, George Saunders

gap it's such a great form in America and funnily enough my way into this book was having read Chris's excellent collection Mothers over Christmas and thinking a lot about why don't more people link stories? It has been done before.

But I think this book, Jesus' Son, and Chris does do that, there are three stories, Mothers 1, 2, 3, in your collection, and the other stories in it, which was a way in for me understanding, the other stories in it which was a way in for me understanding the other stories in it seemed to me to be kind of again uh that the the story arc of the book there were kind of individual the individual stories are not concerning the actual characters were emotionally kind of resonant and i feel that with with johnson that's what you get you get fuckheadhead is not reliable. That's the first thing.

Really? He goes around in time. I mean, he's addled on drugs. But you realise that Johnson kind of is reliable. What Johnson is doing is so clever and so precise. And he has that ability to turn in an instant something, you know, it's like a complete, you suddenly find yourself and you've gone through into a totally different dimension. I want to read just one amazing little passage in the middle of, I mean, I just, if I haven't said

that I love this collection, and I feel I will be reading it for the rest of my life, and rereading it for the rest of my life, I should do, because I connected with it in a way that... And I've been reading, as you know, a lot of short stories of Blades. In the middle of this story, he and his friend Wayne have gone back to his house and they've pulled out all the copper wire so they can sell it, and they go to this bar called... The Vine. The Vine.

And there's apparently almost going to be a fight, and then there isn't a fight. Wayne somehow manages the guy who he's picking on, Big Black, he manages to defuse it. And then he says, And then came one of those moments. I remember living through one when I was 18 and spending the afternoon in bed with my first wife

before we were married. Our naked bodies started glowing, and the air turned such a strange colour I thought my life must be leaving me, and with every young fibre and cell I wanted to hold on to it for another breath. A clattering sound was tearing up my head as I staggered upright and opened the door on a vision I will never see again. Where are my women now, with their sweet, wet words and ways, and the miraculous balls of hail popping in a green translucence in the yards?

We put on our clothes she and I and walked out into a town flooded ankle deep with white buoyant stones birth should have been like that I rest my case I mean in the middle of it it's that moment and then suddenly

it's like all the way through the book you're having to go back and reread other story earlier stories you you don't understand any of these stories on the first time around you just don't and it feels it's odd because although it you know i think that's possibly your problem you have to read all the way through and come back and and move around and you realize that what johnson's doing is it is kaleidoscopic but there is a kind of a, I mean the

story with the emergency which we might read. Well yeah there's a story in the emergency about a guy who's brought into a hospital with a knife in his eye and John and I, well we'll come on to this in a minute but John, because I want to ask Chris something but John and I both watched the

film that was unbelievably that was made of this book in 1999 and the guy I want to ask Chris something, but John and I both watched the film that was unbelievably made of this book in 1999. And the guy with the knife in his eye is Dennis Johnson. And that's one reason to watch it. Everything that is brilliant about this collection is how unfiltered it is. The film isn't bad, It just isn't very good. So this had a big impact on you when you were 18.

Did it have an impact on you as a writer, as a writer of short stories or in your prose or what? Yeah, I think it had a sort of deleterious impact for a while because you really don't want to try and emulate someone like Dennis Johnson because he's just too good. I mentioned to John just before, Johnson was a big fan of Malcolm Lowry and he used to say that he'd go away and read Lowry and then go well there's there's no point there's no one I can't compete with that so um he said when he'd get frustrated

with reading he did he did um but yeah I was I was definitely influenced unfortunately I was influenced by Donald Barthelme at the same time and you don't want if you don't want to be influenced by Dennis Johnson you definitely don't, I was influenced by Donald Barthelme at the same time. If you don't want to be influenced by Dennis Johnson, you definitely don't want to be influenced by Donald Barthelme and Dennis Johnson at the same time, because you're just going to get pulled apart by the writing gods. But as you've got older, what I'm interested in is, it seems to me that there is something in here, the extract you just read, which has that brilliant kiss-off

at the end of the chapter, which would be very appealing to a young reader, to an adolescent. Yeah. We were talking about, as John was saying, about the control that Johnston shows. As you, you know, as you've got older and you've written more, is it the control over the prose which works for you? I think it is...

Well, it's a couple of things. I mean, first of all, he's incredibly, he's got an incredible, I mean, he started as a poet. He published his first collection of poetry, I think when he was 19. And then kind of went off the rails a bit in his 20s. But he did very well, didn't it, that collection? It did do well. He was quite a fated. He was at Iowa. He was taught by

Raymond Carver at Iowa, and later taught there himself. But throughout the sort of late 60s early 70s he did have this kind of he was a junkie he was a drinker and you only get it in spots because he didn't give many interviews so you get spots of sort of memoir here and there like he wrote a little piece for the New Yorker called Homeless and High about being homeless in San Francisco in the early 70s always saying look I was middle class I could get out of it when I wanted to I could go to detox whatever other people didn't have that that option talking about him as a poet he

has this incredible gift for simile and metaphor that just kind of leap out to you like these these green balls of hail or these um stuff at this when i started reading i didn't even know if it was if it was good or not like the the clouds being like great grey brains. And I was like, I remember reading that and going, is that good or bad? I think it's amazing now. But at the time I was like, I don't know if this is even good or not. We've got a clip now of, this is from a lecture that Dennis Johnson gave at Cornell in 2016.

And I want to, we've got two extracts from this lecture to play. And the first one I want to play is that one of the things that I really like about Johnson, he strikes me as a writer who would go with what worked so a lot of the time he's looking for what's going to work so let's just hear that now and the title for this

if I ever finish it is Triumph Over The Grave I don't know what that has to do with any of the material so far, but I like the title. And so I will fix it as we go along so that it becomes, you know,

the material fits the title. I think that's what J.D. Salinger did with The Catcher in the Rye. You know, it's such a catchy, weird title. But then he has the lamest reason for it to be the title. Do you recall the book? Like, in the end, Holden Caulfield starts talking about sort of a vision he has about a person who catches children before they wander in the rye

off a cliff, and he's the catcher in the rye. I mean, it's the silliest thing, you know. But it does provide a reason for calling the book The Catcher in the Ride. And it's such a nice title. Anyway, Triumph Over the Grave. That lecture is on YouTube. It's terrific. It's three-quarters of an hour.

Again, if you haven't... I haven't heard that. And as you say, Chris, he didn't really give many interviews or do many public appearances so it's quite a precious thing his wife used to read all his work beforehand and she

was allowed one of three categories of response genius Shakespeare or Elvis Elvis who is mentioned in every single Dennis Johnson book. Everyone. Erica, did it surprise you? Did this book surprise you? Yes, it did surprise me.

And I thought it was a very... I thought also, I thought about it being published in the 90s. Yeah. And reading it now, I think it's a very prescient book you know I think the 90s were my memory of them a kind of very up time the end of history

you know the Berlin Wall falling and everything and it was all getting better and when I read this book I was thinking about what was going on in the United States now in all kinds of ways not just politically but the opioid epidemic. This portrait of a society that's fractured in every way,

and it's like somebody who knew that this was coming, and maybe that, to me, comes back to the sense of time in this book, which I also think is connected to his being a poet I think as a poet you are much less tied to forward narrative and I

feel that that sense you could call this a collection of poems as much as I think you could call it a collection of stories and can I read a tiny thing? Because I wasn't going to read this, but when you were reading from Car Crash While Hitchhiking, one of the things that really struck me was the description of the crash, which is so this amazing back and forth movement. And later, as I said, I slept in the back seat while the Oldsmobile,

the family from Marshalltown, splashed along through the rain. And yet I dreamed I was looking right through my eyelids and my pulse marked off the seconds of time. The interstate through western Missouri was in that era nothing more than a two-way road, most of it. When a semi-truck came toward us and passed going the other way, we were lost in a blinding spray and a warfare of noises, such as you get being towed through an automatic car wash. The wipers stood up and lay down across the windshield without much effect. I was exhausted, and after an hour I slept more deeply. I'd known all along exactly what was going to happen, but the man and wife woke me up later, denying it viciously. Oh, no, no! I was thrown against the back of their seat so hard that it broke. I commenced bouncing back and forth.

A liquid which I knew right away was human blood flew around the car and rained down on my head. When it was over, I was in the back seat again, just as I had been. I rose up and looked around. Our headlights had gone out. The radiator was hissing steadily. Beyond that, I didn't hear a thing. As far as I could tell, I was the only one conscious. Our headlights had gone out. The radiator was hissing steadily. Beyond that, I didn't hear a thing. As far as I could tell, I was the only one conscious.

As my eyes adjusted, I saw that the baby was lying on its back beside me as if nothing had happened. Its eyes were open, and it was feeling its cheeks with its little hands. That's the detail. That's the detail. That's magnificent. So, Chris, I'm looking. You brought with you Dennis Johnson's entire backlist. The most prepared. You've measured out your life in Dennis Johnson books. Wow.

So these are your actual... No, this is so great, though. So you're 18 in 1992, and you've bought, as you've gone along, a Dennis Johnson book whenever you could buy a Dennis Johnson book, and here they all are. Yeah, including the... The very last one. The very last one, which is coming out next week.

Well, this is a proof from Cape. Yeah, which is his second collection of short stories. Having written one of the greatest collections of short stories I've ever read, well, the greatest, he only published one more, and it was the final thing. And that triumph of the grave that he was talking about in that lecture is one of the stories in it, and it's an amazing story.

I mean, it's an amazing collection. I was kind of all fanboyed up, ready to be like, well, I hope it's quite good, because it's his last book. He died of liver cancer last May, but it's an extraordinary collection. This is a bit like Blue Peace where I've asked Chris to come in and tell us about his hobby We've got

a clip from the same lecture of Dennis Johnson reading the opening of one of the stories in La Jesse of the Sea Maiden. This is a story called Silences, I think, and it's a slightly longer clip, but I think people will totally hear the written voice

as well as his actual voice. This is the first one, and it's called Silences. After dinner, nobody went home right away. I think we'd enjoyed the meal so much, we hoped Elaine would service the whole thing all over again. These were people we've gotten to know a little from Elaine's volunteer work. Nobody from my work, nobody from the ad agency. We sat around in the living room describing the loudest sounds we'd ever heard.

One said it was his wife's voice when she told him she didn't love him anymore and wanted a divorce. Another recalled the pounding of his heart when he suffered a coronary. Tia Jones had become a grandmother at the age of 37 and hoped never again to hear anything so loud as her granddaughter crying in her 16-year-old daughter's arms Her husband, Ralph, said it hurt his ears whenever his brother opened his mouth in public Because his brother had Tourette's Syndrome and erupted with remarks like

I masturbate, your penis smells good, in front of perfect strangers, on a bus, or during a movie, or even in church. Young Chris Case reversed the direction and introduced the topic of silences. He said the most silent thing he'd ever heard was the landmine taking off his right leg outside Kabul, Afghanistan. As for other silences, nobody contributed. In fact, there came a silence now. Some of us hadn't realized that Chris had lost a leg. I didn't even know he'd fought in Afghanistan. A landmine, I said. a landmine I said yes sir a landmine can we see it Deirdre said

no ma'am Chris said I don't carry landmines around on my person no I mean your leg it was blown off I mean the part that's still there I'll show you he said if you kiss it I mean that's still there. I'll show you, he said, if you kiss it. I mean, that's

the voice, right? Yeah, that's extraordinary. And so, what I'm interested in is was there another one of his books that at a later point in your life you thought, wow, this is another incredible book, but it's different to what he's done before? Yeah, I mean, they're all different. There's one story in the new book

that, although he's got a different name i think it is fuckhead from jesus son it sort of ties in with dun dun one of the characters who's in jesus son but each of the books like you say i mean tree of smoke stars at noon this book of sort of graham greenish book in nicaragua i mean his books do sort of fall into two sides you got the laughing monsters stars at noon these sort of graham green meets malcolm lowry kind of like cold war sort of uh and then you've got these ones about these kind of losers and loners and broken people in america which is stuff like resuscitation of a hanged man tree of smoke kind of unites them both because you've got bill houston and his brother bill hou Houston is a character in Dennis Johnson's first novel, Angels,

so it sort of loops back to that. The thing governing it all, which it kind of would be remiss of us not to miss, is religion. I mean, he was a Catholic convert, and one of the reasons he didn't do many interviews is he kind of got tired of being asked about his religious beliefs. And he doesn't like proselytizing i don't think he liked that idea of he was trying to put christian ideas and it's a very strange relationship

he had with i mean resuscitation a hangman begins with a failed suicide asking for absolution from a priest and ends with him in drag trying to assassinate a bishop from a rowing boat he's great at last-minute reprises. Brilliant opening of Train Dreams where they're trying to execute the Chinaman. It's just a bravura piece of prose and storytelling. But I think when I first read Jesus' Son, because I was this freshly minted atheist,

I kind of read all the religious references from a cynical sort of viewpoint. I thought, oh, this is irony. This isn't like... Because a writer I love is like, they're not going to think like that. But it was really... He did believe...

I mean, he believed in, like, salvation or sort of... Like, Fughead is not a nice person. He elbows a girlfriend in the stomach. He talks about potentially raping a woman. At the end of Two Men is a very ambiguous ending. Is he going to hit her? Is he going to rape her? What's he going to do?

Like, there's some really dark stuff in there it he's kind of in the process of working out in the course of the book but he is sort of someone who that johnson is i think interested in because there's a possibility of salvation or that everyone has this possibility of salvation erica you know you were saying that you thought the paul quote on the cover of jesus son it was no good they should have used this one this This is Nathan Englander. Have you heard this quote? No. If you're only going to read one book this year about getting stabbed in the eye and

crushing tiny helpless bunnies, then I'd run right out and get Dennis Johnson's Jesus' Son. That's the one. That's what you want. What about the female characters in the book? How did you feel about that? I'm asking anyone around the table. I'm looking at Erica. I'm looking at you. That's what you want. What about the female characters in the book? How did you feel about that? I'm asking anyone around the table. I'm looking at Erica, I'm looking at you.

I'm looking at you. Totally othering. I think, and maybe you mentioned this, one of you mentioned this at the beginning of our discussion, I think, in a sense, it's all one voice to me. I think there's an amazing sort of fluidity between the characters. You know that Fuckhead is the central character narrating voice, but there isn't a huge amount of distinction

between any of the other characters, which when you say it like that... Sounds like a fault. Sounds like a fault. you say it like that sounds like a fault sounds like a fault but because the overarching sensibility is to put you into this perceptual world which is very narrow i don't think that's a problem i mean mean, weirdly, would you think I would mention Dennis Johnson and Julian Barnes in the same breath? Perhaps not.

But I just read his new novel, which is called The Only Story. And the first time I read it, I really didn't like it for just that reason. It's about a love affair between a man and a woman. He's recalling this obsessive love affair. And I thought, where's the woman? I'm not hearing from her at all. She's basically absent. And then when I read it again, I thought, of course she is. Of course she is of course she is because this is obsession obsessive love isn't real love it is obsession and i suppose i feel the same thing in in this book about any of the other voices really well

i think it's kind of his self-obsession as well because i think this is a sort of addict's memoir it's almost like a sort of 12 steps in where you're telling stories about your own life, but that is kind of self-obsessed by its very nature because it's first-person narration. He really only talks tenderly about women when they're dead, like his wife Michelle, who dies of a drug overdose. That's the only time that he's kind of... When he's with her and she's alive he's being horrendous to her he

said i like fuckhead's voice i liked i liked it the minute i heard it and i enjoy its doubleness he seems to be immersed in his era and then also looking back on it from years afterwards but that's all i can tell you about that i i and also erica confirming what listeners will uh to ballast with her you have to read every book twice because because once if they're any good yeah if they're any good yeah you know so you talked about who was it who said he was the writer's writer's writer jeffrey generally okay so he's the writer's writer's writer that adam folds wrote a piece in the ft at the weekend about dennis johnson and he ends the piece by quoting a paragraph from the new collection

and I'm just going to read that now about writing, this is incredible and also because Johnson taught creative writing didn't he and he also learned as you said creative writing under Raymond Carver, is that right? so this is from, I don't know

the story but this is from Triumph over the Grave. Is it? Okay, great. Writing. It's easy work. You make your own hours, mess around the house in your pyjamas, listening to jazz recordings and sipping coffee

while another day makes its escape. Bouts of poverty come along, anxiety, shocking debt, but nothing lasts forever. I've gone from rags to riches and back again, and more than once. Whatever happens to you, you put it on a page, work it into a shape, cast it in a light. It's not much different, really, from filming a parade of clouds across the sky and calling it a movie, although it has to be admitted that the clouds can descend, take you up, carry you to all kinds of places, some of them terrible,

and you don't get back from where you came from for years and years. So brilliant. I'm going to read more. Dennis Johnsonson that's my uh that's my new year's resolution i would like also true i would like to say not only do you have to read not only do you have to read books twice of course you've got to finish books tree of smoke i i at the 300 page mark i was thinking well i sort of get this i've seen seen Apocalypse Now, I've seen The Deer Hunter, and I get this. The final 200 pages, the first 400 pages of The Slow Burn, the last 200 pages are as good as anything I've read

since we started doing this. Just incredible. And not my sort of book at all, that very male, epic, guys chomping on cigars. You do like Call the Midwife. I do like Call the Midwife. I do like Colin Midwife. I do like Colin Midwife. We're hitting every target.

It's an important thing because I think that, you know, sometimes if you talk about the beats, there's a sort of macho... Johnson is not that. I love it, I'm not going to read it, but he was as influenced by Whitman as anybody. So there is a kind of rhapsodic and I think that's what I love most about this particular

collection, although it's there in Train Chains as well I think, thank you to Chris and to Erica for tag teaming us on Dennis Johnson I feel sort of ashamed that I haven't as often I feel ashamed that I haven't written

but also it's interesting that he isn't better, it's a shame that I haven't, as often. Well, it's quite... But also, it's interesting that he isn't better. It's a classic writer's writer curse. It's like James Salter, you know. He's another writer's writer who does not have a big constituency, but the people who love him really love his work and are inspired by it. I picked John St. David Salter, I have to say. Oh!

Yeah, me too. Go on. Controversial. No, I have to say. Oh! Yeah, me too. Yeah, it's controversial. Maybe not so controversial. Well, unfortunately, that seems as good a point as any at which to stop. Thanks to Chris and to Erica and to our producers, the brilliant Nicky Birch and Matt Hall. And thanks once again to our sponsor, Unbound. You can find us online at Twitter, BacklistedPod, Facebook at BacklistedPod,

and on our page on the Unbound site, which is www.unbound.com www.unbound.com www.unbound.com www.unbound.com Anyway, thanks for listening. We'll be back with another show on a fortnight. Wait, wait, wait, though. We have to say,

you just mentioned their producers, our producers, Nicky Birch and Matt Hall. We have to make an announcement, everybody. Matt asked me not to do this earlier. And Nicky can edit this out later if she wants to. But we want to say that Matt is, this is our last show with Matt as producer. Which we're very, very proud of. Our George Martin is leaving us

and being replaced by Phil Spector. No, I don't know. That's probably not too propitious, is it? But anyway, Matt has decided... Matt has got a day job and so won't be able to look after us. But so much of the success of Backlisted has been down to Matt and he has been a brilliant producer and we have been incredibly lucky to have him.

You don't know that because I'm the only one you've had. Yeah, but also it's time for you, like Peter Capaldi, for you to regenerate into a controversial female producer. So we'll be back in a fortnight with... With Nicky at the helm. With Nicky at the helm. Well, it's important to say about Matt, this podcast would not

have existed without him. I seem to remember it was some sort of weird Thai restaurant that we were in. We managed to persuade him to actually take us on with a half baked idea. And here it is slightly less half baked. What did we do?

Baked Alaska. Okay, that's it. Thank you. Bye, Matt. Don't call. If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts, you can sign up to our Patreon. It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early,

you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books, music and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.