It’s going to be difficult to draw out 250 words on this book. Not because it was bad. I rather enjoyed it. But because it’s really not much more than a fun, slim hardboiled tale. But I’m game to try. Denis Johnson is considered by many to be one of the best writers of the last few decades. I myself have never read him so I can’t comment on that. I’ve been meaning to get to Tree of Smoke for several years now. This one might encourage […]
Drugs and Other Unreliable Narrators
I read this with my mentor for our Advanced Fiction course, and it’s definitely far outside my wheelhouse in both content and structure. Johnson’s story follows an unnamed addict through a series of short snippets told out of order chronicling his cycle of addiction and rehabilitation. Johnson’s choice to tell this story out of order worked very well, as we get to see all the different facets of the narrator regardless of where he is in his habits, or what he’s doing. All the narration […]
Small Nonfiction/Small Fiction
84 Charing Cross Road- Helene Hanff 5/5 This is an incredibly charming book and was even a literary sensation that I didn’t really ever know about. More about that in the follow up. The set up is that Helene Hanff, a television screenwriter with a love of nonfiction, especially British diaries, writes letters to a British book shop asking for various books. As she gets her books, as she writes her thanks, and as the book shop returns her correspondence, a relationship develops especially […]
“The most dreamlike business he’d ever witnessed waking”
I think I liked this novella. I mean, it’s quite short (a scant…very scant 110 pages) and for the most part it’s whispy and floating and haunting in its narration. But I don’t think I trust a book called ” _____ Dreams” and then people describe as dreamy. It’s a little too on the nose and little too aware of contrivance. That said, it was narrated by Will Patton on my audiobook, and well, he’s perfect. So I can’t complain. Will Patton has that kind […]