(Images by The Drifter)
“All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it.”
– The Preacher, Ecclesiastes
“I don’t know just where I’m going / But I’m gonna try for the kingdom /
if I can.”
– Lou Reed, “Heroin”
When I was a graduate writing student in the Midwestern USA in the 1990s and early 2000s (I was a graduate writing student in the Midwestern USA for nine years) there was one book of contemporary fiction that was almost universally acclaimed by all the best students I came in contact with, from Kansas to Missouri to Iowa to Chicago and a few points not in between; and it was not Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, that son of Illinois.
The book was Jesus’ Son, by Denis Johnson.
Jesus’ Son is a collection of interlinked short stories with the same unnamed narrator (he has a nickname: Fuckhead) that rounds out at 160 pages. Infinite Jest is a novel that rounds out at over 1,000 pages.
It is my literary prediction, here and now, that Jesus’ Son, that slim, thin, small book, will last far longer than the fat, door-stopper tome of Wallace (and many other fat, temporary, door-stopper tomes that are currently seen as important literary works).
A triumph of brevity and concision, of saying the most in the fewest words (as opposed to piling on the words willy-nilly and ad infinitum), just like Edgar Allan Poe (the most famous American writer of all time, even more famous than Twain, although not while he lived) told American writers to do.
Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, a masterpiece that will be around as long as humans read, rounds out at 15,000 words. The book of Ecclesiastes is around 5,000 words.
In the old days, when Dickens and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy composed 1,000 page novels, these books were published one short chapter at a time, serialized over years.
A recent literary critic recently opined that probably no one has actually finished reading Wallace’s tome, however much they may claim to have liked it.
Wallace is a fascinating writer for other reasons. I’ll have more to say on him in future columns.
Denis Johnson died “suddenly,” at the age of 67, in 2017, of liver cancer, sort of in the manner of two of his heroes, Lou Reed and David Bowie.
Writer and critic William Giraldi said of Jesus’ Son that it’s about “transformative spiritual seeing,” that its sentences have “a deathless beauty that sings of possible bliss.” J. Robert Lennon said the book is about the main character and narrator’s “aspiration toward holiness.”
To some of us, that would sound odd, given the fact that the main character is a down-and-out, unemployed, couch-surfing heroin addict AND chain-smoking alcoholic who doesn’t even turn his friends in to the police when they commit murder.
But it isn’t odd. In fact the same could be said for many down-and-out addicts and alkies in the real world. And that is what Jesus’ Son is really about.
…
The stories in Jesus’ Son are set in Chicago, Seattle, Arizona, Iowa, and Missouri. Johnson went to college in Iowa and took classes from Raymond Carver, even though Carver was famous for not really teaching his classes much of the time because he was drunk in the bars with people like John Cheever instead.
And Johnson himself ended up being an alcoholic and drug addict for most of his twenties and thirties, until he supposedly cleaned himself up in later years.
He knew whereof he spoke, or wrote what he knew, which is what William S. Burroughs (and many others) said to do.
And Jesus’ Son is a collection of tales about the underbelly, and the underdogs, of vast America. They are the people nobody cares about, except God.
It’s about the losers, the lost, the law-fleers, the last-at-the-party people, the failures, the falling-apart ones, those who vote with their feet, the revelers, the hitchhikers, the road followers, the bus-riders, the drifters, the wanderers, the bar flies, the borderlines, the busted, the broken, the broken-down, the broken-hearted, the out-of-pocket, the homeless, the desperate, the derelict, the depressed, the disabled, the demented, and deformed, and defeated, the mad, the horrified, the hypomanic, the unemployed, the unable-to-be-employed, the collapsing, the incapable-of-handling-It, the addicted, the smokers and tokers, the insulted and injured, the drunkards, the hermits, the underground men, women, and children, the street peeps, the dispossessed, the outcasts, the outsiders, the invisible ones. And they are everywhere: especially in America.
And all these people are SEERS; and they all believe in Jesus – even those of other religions: because he’s the only one who can save them.
The only one. The only One. (“How high that highest candle lights the dark,” said Wallace Stevens.)
Johnson himself was a non-church-going believer in Jesus after almost dying from all his life experiences – many times.
…
Bob Dylan said of American pop music that it’s “not enough,” that it “isn’t serious and doesn’t reflect life in a realistic way.”
The “original vagabond” and scruffy Nobel prize winner said he vastly prefers folk music because “the songs have more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.”
Cast your eyes over the fiction best-seller lists in America today and decide whether all those popular, cookie-cutter books are more like pop music or more like folk music, in Dylanesque terms.
Then ask yourself which you prefer, and why.
You don’t have to answer to anyone but yourself.
It’s the kind of thought experiment hardly anyone in America ever tries, these days. And THAT is the reason why this country is in the position it’s in right now.
This is written from Chicago on October 17, 2025. There were flash bomb midnight door crashing ICE raids against children in my neighborhood just the other day.
And the persons ordering and doing all of it call themselves Christians (except for the biggest cheese of all, who seems to know very clearly that he isn’t a Christian, no matter how much he sometimes tries to pretend, when he thinks it will benefit him).
…
Harold Bloom, greatest literary critic in the English Language since Samuel Johnson himself, Bloom, a writer as great as Hemingway, and maybe as great as James Joyce, too, wrote of the real Jesus: “Even among Jews he seeks only a saving remnant” (meaning while Jesus lived).
Bloom wrote: “So complex is his stance as a teacher that he could not survive institutional review in the US of today.”
Comments from the Drifter on a contemporary heir of Denis Johnson:
There is a fiction writer writing out of the great state of Indiana right now who can match Denis Johnson in very many ways, and, in some ways, Christopher J. Ananias can overmatch Johnson, especially when it comes to the depth of individual characterization.
Ananias has published a dozen stories on Literally Stories UK, and a few on Saragun Springs (as well as other places on the internet), which contain the same kind of immediate power, the same kind of tragedy and sense of humor, the same kind of genuine, realistic sympathy for the underdog, as Denis Johnson.
From the heart of the heart of the country, Ananias has quietly created a fiction-writing style that is an original hybrid and fusion of Raymond Carver, Anton Chekhov, and Stephen King.
Carver’s etched prose, Chekhov’s wide-ranging human knowledge, King’s intuitions about everyday horror that is sometimes hilarious, sometimes not, are all present in the work of CJA.
His prose is some of the most imaginative and vital being written in America right now.
He, like Johnson, like the Drifter, has had his share of troubles, dead ends, and addictions.
And unlike so many of us, he has learned from them, deeply and profoundly.
Watch out for this writer. And read his work.
I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but I do know that this writer is a writer who deserves to gain the kind of audience he deserves to gain!
The corporate fiction-making machine these days latches on to a few “name” writers; and it pays them well to repeat themselves with the same cookie-cutter formulas; and it promotes what has already been done before (badly, and then badly again, many times); and it thinks the fat, fake-plot-driven, sensationalized, tv-influenced, Hollywood-rip-off, unrealistic (some fantasy writing is more realistic than much of what passes itself off as realism), novel is the way to go.
A writer like Ananias TELLS THE TRUTH, like Johnson, Carver, Chekhov, and like King (in his best work, which haunts practically all of us, whether we know it or not).
Ananias, like the Ananias who opened Paul’s eyes in the Book of Acts, is also a believer.
…
I offer just seven single-sentence examples of Ananias’ writing style. His work is filled to bursting with this kind of thing.
Like Denis Johnson’s, these sentences both do, AND do not, echo those of Raymond Carver. The notion, or magic trick, of both imitating, and NOT imitating, simultaneously, is how the best is written.
See Ernest Hemingway – Dashiell Hammett; William Faulker – Flannery O’Connor as examples; even as Hem did and did not imitate Twain; and Faulkner did, and did not, imitate Conrad. (Or as Shakespeare did, and did not, imitate Ovid and Plutarch. ETC…)
“This was the day I lost my soul and I suspect Stu did too, considering…”
– “Where Everything Got Broken,” Literally Stories
“Roger went overboard into an almost fervent spiel of religiosity.”
– “Eclipsing Indy,” LS
“I follow the funeral brigade into the cemetery.” – “The Footnotes,” LS
“Spanish moss dangles from the trees in a green veil of silence.” – “Still Speaking,” LS
“I took long walks into the insomniac’s night.” – “A Starless Street Corner,” LS
“The new neighbors invited me to a party, so I climbed the hollow staircase of the apartment house.” – “Potato Salad and Mixed Drinks,” LS
“Earlier, we stood around looking at this Ernie as he gave birth to the delirium tremens.” – “Our Lunatic Uniform,” LS
Thanks very much to the intrepid Eds. of Literally Stories: Leila, Hugh, and Diane.
Saragun Springs 
Hi Drifter
When I saw your column was about Denis Johnson I had to read it! The power and prose of Denis Johnson is a delight! Especially, in the way you describe it! Anyone who reads what you wrote here will immediately search Denis Johnson!
I always find your writing to be full of literary gemstones! Shiny and bright, flashing in the sun with water beading over it. When you take us to the alleys and low-rent bars that you and I have both visited in small towns and big cities of the Midwest. You make these places alluring! How you might say “The hell with it all” and go there.
I could see us sitting in “The Vine” drinking to our success, after we contrived some scheme to make money. The only schemes left to the down-and-outs like tearing copper from the walls and selling it to a fat man at the scarp yard.
The way you showed the brevity and genius of Denis Johnson was brilliant! Your understanding of literature is a real treasure to read. The things I have learned from you are like receiving a second education in literature.
How less can be so much more. That was a great comparison with the long wordsmiths of the past. I’m sure these works are brilliant, but I don’t know if I have the wind to handle such long works. I think that’s what draws me to short story writers like Poe, Chekhov, Carver, SK, and DJ.
What you said about E.A. Poe was also great. He may be one of the first modern writers to write an essay “On writing.”
The longest book I ever read was “The Stand” or the JFK “1963” book by Stephen King. In all fairness I’ve read “The Stand,” twice. So I’m not adverse to reading long novels, but I love to read and study short stories. Probably because that’s what I write.
Which brings me to this… I really appreciate you including me in this essay! These kind words and quotes of my writing are a wonderful tribute that in this life is rare. Something you might never hear. Thank you so much! I can’t say how much! Your support has brightened many a day when the writing seemed like Lazarus in his grave, before Jesus said, “Lazarus, Come Forth.”
That’s you! With all of your writing skills and life experiences, a true devotion to the arts and artist is exceptional! You never try to bring a writer down–always uplifting like how the wind finds the kite on a sunny April afternoon. You’re the bright shining light!
Christopher
PS
Those are great pics of those dogs! Out there play-fighting and snugged up on the couch, lol.
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Thank you, Christopher!
We have a LOT in common, so much so that it sometimes seems strange that we never came in contact until last year, almost one year ago from now in late October. But the Universe has a plan, I do believe, for each of us. Things happen when they happen because they were meant to happen then and not other times. (Even if it isn’t true, I won’t know it when I’m dead!)
It’s wild how you and Leila are short story writers and poets, and I am an essay writer and poet, and we are all photographers, often of animals! Thereby creating our own small movement in the American arts. Small movements in the arts are the best movements in the arts – always.
I will be writing more on your work in the future, not just in commentary and correspondence only but also in formal essay form.
Yes, the dogs! They are play fighting for sure, but sometimes it shades over into what looks like the real thing to most people. Although they never draw blood or injure each other, which means it’s play, very LOUD, snarling, howling play, but what can one expect from animals that are sorta like small wolves, and pit bulls? I do have to get between them sometimes when they go overboard. Been cut by fangs pretty bad once or twice, accidentally, or more than once or twice! Bandit is being peaceful in this one but she isn’t always so innocent! At all.
Carver always talked about how the short story is MUCH closer to poetry than it is to the novel. He said it so well in his original way that one almost forgot that E.A. Poe, the inventor of the modern short story, said the same thing himself a hundred and thirty some-odd years before Carver did.
Gerry said something awesome on Literally a while back, about how a great short story can sometimes take as long as a novel to write, because the language in it is that dense and meaningful, and that original.
Thanks again as always, it’s been a great year and looking forward to much more in the future!
Dale
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Hi Drifter
Yes indeed we do have a lot in common! it’s hard to fathom the universe’s plans. Like making wishes and flipping pennies into the wishing well.
it’s great that all three of us are into the photography of animals! I have some pics I’m working towards for next month.
It’s a crazy deal when you get between dogs even the friendliest of dogs when they’re fighting. They can forget who is who. Like you said “little wolves” and they have some big teeth. lol.
Carver’s work and thoughts on writing are incredible. I read his “So Much Water So Close to Home” today for the second time. A great story! He really connects the natural world into his stories. I like his short sentences that convey so much. Like you said about “Jesus’ Son” today.
That’s a great observation that Gerry made. I can see the lengths that it takes to write a good short story. It’s the dream to make one that stands the test of time. I think that’s what keeps me going. Plus it is a lot of fun and therapeutic also an escape pod.
Thanks again for considering my work and writing so graciously about it!
Christopher
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Hey Drifter
I got onto an excellent author, Paul Bowles. The story, “The Echo,” is a pretty good one. He is incredible at describing the world–the jungle of South America in this case. He does tension well too.
Christopher
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Hello Drifter
Like most children of my “social class” I thought that Jesus was for the people who worked at the Yard, visited Disney, went to college and attended church on Sundays. I was also unaware of social classes. Since I had no association with any of that Jesus stuff (other than my mother’s hate of it due to her upbringing by the Catholic Church) I thought God was theirs–I didn’t think that in a bitter way mind you, but it seemed to me like a Kiwanis membership.
The poor are usually too busy dying, killing, surviving or seeking food or a fix to Spread the Word, but the poor understand the actual message when it is delivered by the right people, who are seldom church employees. One thing the poor (neither all nor most because a great many are mean-stupid and belong down and out, sad to say) do have is a keen ear for Truth. Pain is a fantastic teacher, but not necessarily as a tool.
Great identification of Mr Ananias. He is top of the line in decoding the dirt under the grasping fingernails of the social order.
And your words are met in quality by those of your pictures. Bandit appears to have a profound understanding. Sometimes it is best to stay in bed until the shit blows over.
Great work again!
Leila
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Hi LA!
I know what you are saying. I spent years avoiding him, even though I knew I couldn’t, really.
Later in life I was struck by how many of the street-level down and out and homeless and addicted believe in him even though they aren’t part of formal church activities and far from it.
This was brought home to me very strongly one time when a black woman with one arm and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth outside a chicken restaurant in Chicago asked me for money.
I had a pocketful at the moment and I handed her a twenty dollar bill.
She looked stunned, then swung away from me and dropped to her knees and called out, “Thank you Jesus! Thank you Jesus! Thank you God! Now I can eat!”
She was so sincere, and so hungry, that I literally turned away with tears in my eyes, shocked and stunned.
I also found at several drug treatment facilities and other places that even folks in there like Muslims, who weren’t Christians, looked to Jesus as their “savior.”
Not in any churchified, I-am-above-you kind of way, just something where he was in the air.
And then I was surprised again at the Lac du Flambeau Indian reservation in northern Wisconsin when I, drunkenly in the bars, talked to a bunch of Native American alcoholic bar flies. I was again shocked to discover that they all had one main hero (him), even though they simultaneously said they hated white Christianity.
But Walt Whitman said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.”
Sometimes, or all the time, the contradictions are where the truth is, of course!
Thank you about the pictures, and the monochrome pack say thanks as well!
The D
PS
“I come not to bring peace but a sword.” – JC
“I come to cast fire over the earth – and how I wish it was already burning.” – JC
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Hi Drifter
Organized churches can be brave and stick to actual Christlike stances. There’s an immense formerly Methodist complex in the town north of here (Silverdale). Church, school, food bank, etc. A couple years ago they voted to “go it alone” with the Lord and rejected the long running anti homosexuality stance. They changed their sign to read something non denominational except making it clear they were still for Christ.
That is a good sign. It shows flexibility and a willingness to admit to fault and still retain conviction in faith.
Great stuff
Leila
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L
You are absolutely right to point out that there are some true Christians who do also actually go to church, unlike yours truly, for instance. And they are some of the most important sources of push-back against all the fake fraudster Christians around these days, too.
D
(PS
A good place to repeat my favorite John Wayne quote:
“The mountains have been my church.”)
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As wide-ranging & stirring as ever. Jesus freshly tigered, you might say. That whole paragraph beginning “It’s about the losers . . .” – acts as a kind of glorious coda to Marmeladov’s vodka-fuelled spiel about those who will be called come Judgement Day.
Geraint
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Dear Geraint
As usual, your knowledge of and intuitions about literature astonish.
There was a long paragraph about Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot in this essay which was cut just because it didn’t seem to fit here, but C & P also played a strong, silent role in this essay, and in that paragraph you mention, too! From the ages of around 15 to 35, if anyone asked me who my favorite writer was, the immediate answers were two: Dostoevsky and Melville.
When I was around 20, I had a dream where I was sitting in some sort of basement cavern in an unknown country around a candle-lit table with goblets of dark red wine and all sorts of things to smoke there, too. I was sitting around the table with those two, and we talked for hours. To this day, one of the most vivid and memorable dreams I’ve ever had in my entire life. It was so vivid that it still feels like it wasn’t a dream, as if it really happened.
Thank you so much as always!
Dale
PS: I watched a 20-minute interview with DFW the other day and I was shocked at how prophetic it was. It is my favorite thing by him, I like it far better than most of his writing.
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