Denis Johnson

An intense collection of interconnected stories that portray life through the eyes of a young man in a small Iowa town, by the author of Angels and Resuscitation of a Hanged Man. Each story's perception distinguishes Johnson's hauntingly beautiful vision of American life.

Stories by

Jesus' Son

A collection of stories contemplates subjects ranging from old age and mortality to the unexpected ways the mysteries of the universe manifest, depicting haunted characters trying to atone for the past, remember departed loved ones, or come to terms with lifelong obsessions.

Stories

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden

The lives of Skip Sands, a spy-in-training engaged in psychological operations against the Vietcong, and brothers Bill and James Houston, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war, intertwine in a novel of America during the Vietnam War.

Tree of smoke

Angels

a novel

Nobody move

Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond

Seek

The Incognito Lounge

Poems Collected and New

The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly

A Novel

The Name of the World

Angels puts Jamie Mays--a runaway wife toting along two kids--and Bill Houston--ex-Navy man, ex-husband, ex-con--on a Greyhound bus for a dark, wild ride cross country. Driven by restless souls, bad booze, and desperate needs, Jamie and Bill bounce from bus stations to cheap hotels as they ply the strange, fascinating, and dangerous fringe of American life. Their tickets may say Phoenix, but their inescapable destination is a last stop marked by stunning violence and mind-shattering surprise. Denis Johnson, known for his portraits of America's dispossessed, sets off literary pyrotechnics on this highway odyssey, lighting the trek with wit and a personal metaphysics that defiantly takes on the world.--Amazon.com.

After the world has been virtually destroyed and the United States consists of only its southernmost reaches, it is the period of the Quarantine, the beginning of a new era for the youth Fiskadoro, Anthony Cheung, and Cheung's one-hundred-year-old grandmother.

Fiskadoro

Set in Nicaragua in 1984, The Stars at Noon is a story of passion, fear, and betrayal told in the voice of an American woman whose mission in Central America is as shadowy as her surroundings. Is she a reporter for an American magazine as she sometimes claims, or a contact person for Eyes of Peace? And who is the rough English businessman with whom she becomes involved? As the two foreigners become entangled in increasingly sinister plots, Denis Johnson masterfully dramatizes a powerful vision of spiritual bereavement and corruption.

The Stars at Noon

A passionate young man recovering from a suicide attempt moves into a homosexual community to take a job as a disk jockey-private detective, and falls in love with a gay woman

The Resuscitation of a Hanged Man

The protagonist is Nelson Fairchild, a rich man's son who grows marijuana in California and who has cheated a dealer. If he doesn't settle his debt he will be killed. But the person who holds the purse strings is his wife and she won't give him money, so Fairchild decides to kill her.

A California Gothic

Already Dead

American master Denis Johnson's nationally bestselling collection of blistering and indelible tales about America's outcasts and wanderers Denis Johnson's now classic story collection Jesus' Son chronicles a wild netherworld of addicts and lost souls, a violent and disordered landscape that encompasses every extreme of American culture. These are stories of transcendence and spiraling grief, of hallucinations and glories, of getting lost and found and lost again. The insights and careening energy in Jesus' Son have earned the book a place of its own among the classics of twentieth-century American literature.

and, Purvis : two plays in verse

Soul of a whore

Çiğdem Erkal (çevirmen)

Yayımlandığı yıl The New York Times, The Economist, NPR gibi dergilerde yılın en iyi kitapları arasında gösterilen, Pulitzer Ödülü Finalisti Tren Düşleri, pek çok otorite tarafından “minyatür bir destan”, “olağanüstü bir roman” olarak anılıyor.
National Book Award 2007 kazananı Denis Johnson, Tren Düşleri’nde 20. yüzyılın başlarında Amerika’da giderek artan köprü ve yol inşaatlarında bulduğu gündelik işlerde çalışan Robert Grainier’ın hikâyesini anlatıyor. Roman, sıradan bir adam olan Grainier’ın hızla değişmeye başlayan dünyaya tanıklığı üzerine kurulu. Amerika’yı baştan başa saran demiryollarına, gelişen teknolojiye, şehirleşmeye başlayan kasabalara, değişen yaşam tarzına, ölümlere, en çok da ölümlere tanıklık bu.
 
“Şahane bir hikâye… Johnson’ın aldatıcı ölçüde sert gerçekçiliğinin altındaki cevher, bu kitapta hayali, mucizevi görünümler sunuyor. Tren Düşleri’ni büyük bir şüpheyle okumaya başlasam da sayfaları çevirdikçe hikâyenin yapmacıksız inceliğine ve dürüstlüğüne tamamen teslim oldum.” – James Wood
“Şiddetle tavsiye edilir.” – Library Journal

Tren Düşleri

O Sonho Americano tem dois lados como a moeda de um dólar. Um deles é reluzente feito o sol dourado do Vale do Silício. Já o outro, fosco e arranhado, é o que perfaz as histórias de Filho de Jesus, livro fundamental da literatura estadunidense do final do século XX. O que encontramos aqui não é a idílica América com o pé na estrada dos livros de Jack Kerouac e da geração beat, e a relação com a droga não guarda mais qualquer sentido libertário ou espiritual. Publicado originalmente em 1992, Filho de Jesus consagrou Denis Johnson, ele próprio um sobrevivente do alcoolismo e do vício. Narrados por um personagem anônimo que participa da ação o tempo todo, os contos são povoados por seres à deriva, gente que trocaria a própria mãe por um pico na veia. São enfermeiros junkies num pronto-socorro onde deveriam ser os socorridos, não o contrário; ladrões que roubam casas arruinadas e homens que são esfaqueados no olho pela mulher enquanto dormem. A despeito de o sonho da contracultura ter acabado, a realidade dura e cinzenta dos anti-heróis de Johnson tem como único ponto luminoso o delírio fugaz de um barato qualquer. A via-crúcis bíblica tem catorze estações, assim como o programa de recuperação dos Alcoólicos Anônimos tem doze passos. Filho de Jesus, por outro lado, não ultrapassa as onze histórias, fábulas embebidas em ácido nas quais ninguém se recupera nem ressuscita ao final. (Joca Reiners Terron).

Denis Johnson

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