Angels

In "Angels" I think Denis Johnson is focusing on the mystery of being a particular self, and questioning how much of the stuff that goes together to make a self is actually that person's own doing. His vehicle for this exploration is the underbelly of the USA, and here he taps into a tradition in American writing stretching through Kerouac, and Fante, Bukowski, Miller and Dreiser, and no doubt many others unfamiliar to me; in a way, a more distant echo is heard in Beckett and his tramps. The wonder of individual consciousness, the experience of subjectivity, is illuminated by making all the gaudy trappings of the world dark. * I've read criticisms of "Angels" bemoaning the sketchy take on the central characters, but I disagree that this is a failing. Johnson gives us enough for us to sympathize and, at times, empathize with his motley cast, and certainly enough to share in their everyday epiphanies, when they see the world fresh and new and each moment appears precious and, by the miracle of Johnson's poetic prose, we see out of their eyes. * Likewise criticism falls upon Bill Houston's fate as being somehow unemotional, but this very fact suggests that we are not simply being asked to consider the ethics of capital punishment, but also to dwell on our own, that is to say everyone's, inevitable fate - the blind certainty of our mortality. * The entire work questions the role of personal will versus that of circumstance in deciding the choices we make. I do not think that a pat answer is provided, instead the question is raised and investigated through the thoughts and deeds of Johnson's miscreants. * All of this is dressed in Johnson's universally praised and delicately wrought language. For me, this novel is a celebration of the power of words to first and foremost communicate - if we gain a window into the souls of "Angels"' lost protagonists, then how much easier to see inside our own, and inside those who surround us.

Johnson is one of our greatest and most underappreciated living authors (yes, underappreciated, even though he has been lavishly praised by critics). He isn't just capable of writing a good book or two, he's a classic talent, and it's obvious from his very first novel. Angels reads like an epic poem - every sentence is carefully weighed and effective, and a sense of character emerges even out of shattered impressions. The flawed characters are still somehow endearing, and the sense of dark and cryptic religion, from occultism to by-the-book Christianity, underpinned by Bob Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone,' is powerful. This book should be read and enjoyed; eventually, also, reprinted and remembered.

The tragedy and doom that follows the characters of Johnson's first novel, as well as Johnson's gorgeous prose, make for one of the most compelling of all contemporary novels. This and Resusitation of a Hanged Man prove Johnson as a major writer with a unique literary vision. I've read this book four times, and each time found new elements to appreciate. My favorite contemporary work.P.S. I originally posted this way back in '99, and have since changed my e-address, so I'm reposting it. I have since read many other of Johnson's works - including his poetry - and must admit to being somewhat disappointed in comparison to the achievement and intensity of this book and Resusitation. If you were to read only one of Johnson's works, this - moreso than anything else (including Jesus' Son) - is the one.

Beaten down and living for the moment, Denis Johnson's characters scrape out a wretched life of drugs and alcohol, pipe-dreams, and daydreams. _Angels_ is a world of bus depots and scurrilous strangers, of people who can scarcely see past the haze of their cigarettes. It is a lonely world of randomness and drift. Some might say Johnson's characters aren't "3D", but that's because they're so richly flat. And when Johnson takes us into Jamie's descent into madness, it is a mind-bending trip. Yet somehow, Johnson's writing left me exhilerated and happy. I enjoyed this book immensely and had trouble putting it down--I would rank it among the best I've read over the last five years.

Extraordinary stuff lies herein. Deserves to be recognized as one of no more than ten novels that convincingly anatomize contemporary America--its provocations, its pieties, and its relentlessly broadcast promise of redemption through squalor. This was one of the first of the now-ballyhooed Vintage Contemporaries series, which recently issued an anthology of highlights from its fourteen-year history. Johnson was excluded, even though his first three novels were originally Vintage paperbacks; now "Angels" is the only book of his in the series. Sad to tell, alas, but not surprising. "Angels" belongs alongside Cormac McCarthy's "Child of God," Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood," and Robert Stone's "A Flag for Sunrise" (to which it pays homage in one extraordinary scene) as a seminal meditation on the nature of being lost and the extraordinary difficulty of "finding" anything.