Jesus' Son: Stories by Denis Johnson

Jesus' Son: Stories Denis Johnson ebook
Format: pdf
ISBN: 0060975776, 9780060975777
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Page: 59

Johnson's Jesus' Son is reckless. Jesus comes across a funeral procession, again a widow's only son. We see this same grace and love in the story from Luke. The misfits and sinners that populate his stories are lost, sometimes physically, but most often emotionally. Mine is that I'm not a big fan of short stories. Jesus didn't go looking for it in order to be a hero. I opened my journal to write down this incredible story and saw the last words I had written: asking the Lord to increase my faith. The underlying difference is that one is a prophet – a great one at that; and the other, the Son of God! Praising Jesus that Harry is His son, and one day soon he will realize it and be saved! Jesus could directly command the dead man to get up. The stories crash, the characters crash, the language crashes. Denis Johnson changed my mind with this, now one of my all-time favorite books, and showed how to braid narrative and use the lyric register (poetic language). It all seems so careless, so destitute, so…intense.