An American with an international upbringing, he published his first poetry collection at the age of 19 in 1969, and subsequently went on to earn an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop under the tutelage of Raymond Carver. It is not a painting, but a real person – a substitute, a golem.’ĭenis Johnson’s career, at least, can be parsed with some measure. I wind up with what the American painter Philip Guston said about his favourite Old Master: ‘in Rembrandt the plane of art is removed. But trying to write about him without recourse to abstract praise is harder, and risks overstating the obvious or descending into mystical adulation. The acclaim is in stark contrast with what lies between the covers: prose unlike any lens, of a sensory and psychological keenness beyond such critical gloss. Reading the plaudits on his books is surreal, like looking down the wrong end of the telescope – all those adjectives twinkling at irrelevant distance. This is a reason I love him, but also why he’s difficult to discuss. But what would you call his kind of writing?Īs a writer, Johnson is where the critics aren’t. Raw is what you might use to describe dead meat this stuff is alive. Entire novels have failed where the barest of his skits succeed in bringing people and their stories to life. Not all Denis Johnson’s narrators face the reader quite so directly, but the thrust and position here are broadly characteristic. (‘Steady Hands at Seattle General’ in Jesus’ Son) ‘Are you going to change any of this for your poem?’ ‘Once by each wife, for a total of three bullets, making four holes, three ins and one out.’

‘Well then, just tell them I’m overweight.’ Will you describe yourself for those people?’ ‘Someday people are going to read about you in a story or a poem. Talk Into My Bullet Hole: The Pocked Realism of Denis Johnson

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