Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson: A Diamond in the Rough Book Find

When I made a top ten list of novels that affected my life, the original #10 on my list was Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson. This is a book that I discovered in graduate school in Fairbanks, Alaska, thanks to fellow graduate students. The group at the time was obsessed with two works: Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson, and the movie The Big Lebowski by the Coen Brothers. It was a great group of artists to hang around with.

The "novel" is interesting because it's hard to describe. It can be called a collection of short stories, a collection of interrelated short stories, or an episodic novel. While several of these stories were written to originally stand alone, they're all focused around the same main protagonist, a man whose only name we know of is the profane nickname "F**khead." Based on Denis Johnson, and his early time as a struggling writer and drug addict, the main character in a series of stories (assumed to be chronological) shows the transition from completely wasted to slowly getting the life together by the end. It is an incredible work, very short, and very easy to read.

I fell in love with the language, the poetry, of the writing. It also turned out I had an encounter with Denis Johnson prior to Fairbanks, Alaska. When I was a nineteen year old undergrad at Coe College, Iowa, I took a film class taught by one of the greatest teachers I've ever had: Gordon Mennenga. This film class showed several clips from the movie, which can help show how I believe the book is supposed to be viewed as an episodic novel.

One of my favorite clips from the hundreds we viewed in the Intro to Film class was from Jesus' Son. It was vivid enough that I rented, watched, and loved the movie--but didn't even know it was based on a book until years later. This was a very pleasant surprise for me.