Where to Start with Denis Johnson: A Reading Guide

Denis Johnson (1945–2017) was the American novelist, short-story writer, and poet whose prose — hallucinatory, compressed, spiritual in a non-religious sense — placed him among the most distinctive American fiction writers of his generation. His collection Jesus’ Son (1992) is widely considered one of the greatest American short-story collections of the twentieth century; his novel Tree of Smoke (2007) won the National Book Award. Johnson spent years struggling with addiction and the experiences of that period saturate his fiction with a particular intensity of observation.

Where to Start: Jesus’ Son (1992)

The essential Johnson — and one of the most important American short-story collections of its era. The narrator of these eleven linked stories is never named; readers call him ‘Fuckhead,’ the self-designation he uses early in the first story. He is a young man in the American Midwest and Pacific Northwest of the 1970s, an addict and drifter moving through a world of emergency rooms, roadside accidents, psychiatric hospitals, trailer parks, and cornfields.

The stories are not coherent in the conventional sense. The narrator is unreliable — he is high, he is confused, he misremembers — and the events of one story do not always line up with the chronology implied by another. But the prose is extraordinarily alive. Johnson wrote this kind of fiction with a painterly eye for the vivid and specific: the sensory details that survive a blackout, the strange moments of grace that appear in the worst situations, the hallucinatory precision of experience remembered through the haze of intoxication.

The collection’s most famous story, ‘Emergency,’ in which the narrator and his friend Georgie have a night shift at a hospital that becomes increasingly surreal, is among the finest stories written in American English in the twentieth century. The final story, ‘Beverly Home,’ in which the narrator works at a nursing home for the disabled during early sobriety, is its quiet, devastating counterpart.

For readers who have not encountered Johnson, Jesus’ Son is the right place to begin: short, immediately gripping, and unlike anything else.

Tree of Smoke (2007)

Johnson’s Vietnam War novel — massive, multi-stranded, morally serious. Won the National Book Award. For readers who want to follow Johnson into a larger and more demanding form after Jesus’ Son.

Why Jesus’ Son Is the Ideal First Book

For a reader new to Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son is the ideal first book because it is his most celebrated and concentrated work, a slim collection of linked stories that distills his distinctive genius, the rendering of broken and marginal lives with a startling lyrical beauty and an unexpected grace. Jesus’ Son follows a drifting, addicted narrator through a series of encounters at the edges of American life, rendering this wreckage in prose of startling beauty and finding, amid the squalor and desperation, sudden moments of grace and transcendence. As an entry point, it offers the purest and most concentrated expression of Johnson’s gifts, the attention to the lost and marginal, the lyrical and visionary prose, and the discovery of grace amid the wreckage. It welcomes the newcomer with its brevity, its startling beauty, and its unforgettable power, offering a concentrated dose of Johnson’s distinctive vision. It is his best-known work and the one that best represents his gifts, so that the new reader encounters Johnson at his most characteristic. For the newcomer, then, Jesus’ Son is the natural and ideal starting point.

What to Expect as a New Reader

As a new reader, you can expect Jesus’ Son to be a slim, intense, and startling collection of linked stories, rendering broken and marginal lives in prose of unexpected beauty and finding grace amid the wreckage. You can expect attention to the lost and marginal, for the stories follow a drifting, addicted narrator through encounters at the edges of American life, among addicts, drifters, and the desperate. You can expect startling lyrical beauty, for Johnson renders this wreckage in prose of remarkable, often hallucinatory beauty, transforming the squalid and desperate into something luminous. You can expect moments of grace and transcendence, for amid the wreckage Johnson finds sudden, unexpected moments of beauty, mercy, and the sacred. You can expect a short but intense and unforgettable reading experience, concentrated and powerful. Expect, in short, a slim, intense collection of linked stories that renders broken lives in prose of startling beauty and finds grace amid the wreckage, a concentrated and powerful introduction to Johnson’s distinctive vision.

Going Deeper After Your First Book

Once Jesus’ Son has introduced you to Johnson’s distinctive vision, the reader who wishes to go deeper can explore his other fiction, which continues his attention to the marginal and broken, his lyrical and visionary prose, and his discovery of grace amid the wreckage, often on a larger scale. His other work includes his ambitious, acclaimed novel set during the Vietnam War, which applies his gifts to a vast canvas, and his further fiction, all marked by his lyrical power and his concern with grace and the marginal. Reading these after Jesus’ Son deepens your appreciation of Johnson’s distinctive gifts, the attention to the lost, the startling lyrical prose, and the discovery of grace amid the wreckage that mark his work. His characteristic concerns run through his fiction, and the reader who has been gripped by Jesus’ Son will find them, developed on a larger scale, in his novels. Building your reading journey through Johnson’s work is a matter of following his lyrical, grace-haunted fiction from his concentrated masterpiece into his larger works. The reader who begins with Jesus’ Son and continues through his work will find one of the most distinctive and lyrical voices in American fiction.

Reading Denis Johnson

Begin with Jesus’ Son — it is his most accessible and essential work. Read Tree of Smoke after for the scale and ambition of his longer fiction. Both are standalone.

For the full Denis Johnson bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the Denis Johnson author page on Editors Reads.

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