Because we live in a flavor-of-the-month world, it’s a rare thing to find a review of an “old book” without some kind of archival search. We were tickled to discover a wholly original and spirited take on Denis Johnson’s 1992 collection, Jesus’ Son in a Paste magazine column this week. The Idaho author had one of last year’s NWBL favorites with his Train Dreams novella and won a 2008 Pacific Northwest Book Award with the opposite-of-novella epic Tree of Smoke. Jesus’ Son snugs naturally into place on the broad Johnson spectrum, where the writer who started as a poet and also writes plays repeatedly wows with his versatility. So if Jesus’ Son has escaped you these past two decades—or if Denis Johnson has—it might be time to dig up this old book.
Borrowed Copy
A Collection of Memories
April 10, 2012
— posted by
Brian Juenemann