Or my brief thoughts on a book that suddenly means a lot to me.
You know how it is. You’re reading a book because someone somewhere told you it was good. No other qualifier needed. If they think it’s good, it must be, yes?
In school this happens all the time. Your professors add it to the reading list, so it must be quality. And certainly, if you’re going to make the grade at all, you have to read it anyway, right? When you’re young and impressionable, some of these experiences can be transformative. The themes and ideas explored in literature can be haunting. When expressed well, they burrow inside your mind and change something in your brain.
(Or is that just me who feels that way?)
Sometimes, though, the work feels grating and wrong, as if it’s expressing ideas you aren’t quite ready or willing to contemplate. Perhaps it’s just the aesthetic you disagree with, or the content? Maybe it’s the tone, point of view, theme? For whatever reason, sometimes the work just isn’t right for us, or we readers for it.
During my career as an undergraduate, we were required to read a long litany of short fiction and novels, some of which stand out distinctly, as having truly impacted my heart and mind, others of my required reading have faded into the background.
One short story in particular haunted me for a long time after I’d read it: Car Crash While Hitchhiking, from Denis Johnson’s collection called Jesus’ Son. I think perhaps I was not the right reader for it on my first go-around.
Its detached, degenerate narrator frightened me. The way it challenged what I thought a protagonist should be put me on edge, made me feel unstable. So when I came across a copy of it years later, approached it with more than mild trepidation. But because I have impulse control issues, particularly when it comes to buying books, I purchased the collection anyway.
Despite my hesitation, I cracked it open. I’ll admit it, I was nervous about reading it. To make matters worse, the collection begins with the Hitchhiking story. Nonetheless, I forced myself to read through it. To my surprise, it didn’t take much beyond the initial leap to find myself enthralled. Even the initial story which had so bothered me previously was some purer form of joy than I’d ever expected.
The way Johnson creates a new and unique world out of something as seemingly insubstantial as the improbably buoyant thoughts of an addict, the way the narrator’s world is so unreliable yet somehow so true despite of (or perhaps because of) his very unreliability.
A collection of stories about a heroin addict referred to only as Fuckhead, the stories in Jesus’ Son are naturally grim and bleak. But somehow you suffer through the darkness with Fuckhead and come out on the other side hopeful but perhaps not quite knowing why.
Or maybe that’s just how I felt after finishing Johnson’s collection of short stories. One of my first moves was to then purchase a handful of Johnson’s other works to dive into straightaway, including Train Dreams, Tree of Smoke and Angels.
I then immediately lent Jesus’ Son to someone else, saying “You have to read this. It’s beautiful.”
I now regret lending it out, as I’m already itching to read it again.
Nathan Schluter 