Bøger af Denis Johnson

Mellem rus og religion. Jesus’ søn er en visionær krønike om drømmere, misbrugere og fortabte sjæle. Det er historier, som fortæller om fortvivlende sorg og transcendens, om fortabelse og forløsning. Fortælleren af disse indbyrdes forbundne fortællinger er en ung, unavngivet mand, der er omtåget af sin afhængighed af heroin og alkohol, mens hans sind på én gang er mudret og gjort strålende klart af disse stoffer. I løbet af sine eventyr møder han mennesker, der virker lige så fremmedgjorte og forvirrede som han selv: syndere, afvigere, de fortabte, de forbandede, de desperate og de glemte. Af deres dystre, tilsyneladende tilfældige liv skaber Denis Johnson fortællinger med en hård og brutal skønhed. Jesus’ søn er et sandt mesterværk. Denis Johnson (1949-2017) er en af vor tids betydeligste amerikanske forfattere. Han skrev romaner, noveller, digte, skuespil og journalistik. Han vandt utallige priser, heriblandt den prestigefyldte National Book Award for romanen Træet af røg. Jesus’ søn blev første gang udgivet i 1992 og er hans mest berømte værk. Ved 25-års jubilæet for udgivelsen blev den af The New York Times kåret til det vigtigste værk i de 25 år. I dag står Jesus’ søn som en moderne klassiker.”Denis Johnson skriver så svimlende smukt; snart famlende, snart sprudlende uden nogensinde at miste det menneskelige drama af syne." - Ragnar Strömberg, Aftonbladet "Sproget er kendetegnet ved en knivskarp realisme, så intens, at den undertiden sprænges og eksploderer til en hallucinerende, poetisk rus." - Eva Johansson, Svenska Dagbladet "En prosa med fantastisk kraft og skønhed ... Vi genkender og finder en ny stemme her." - Philip Roth

A classic of Twentieth-Century American Literature from one of America's greatest living writers.

'A dazzling and savage first novel' New York Times Angels tells the story of two born losers. Jamie has ditched her husband and is running away with her two baby girls. Bill is dreaming of making it big in a life of crime. They meet on a Greyhound bus and decide to team up. So begins a stunning, tragic odyssey through the dark underbelly of America - the bars, bus stations, mental wards and prisons that play host to Jamie and Bill as they find themselves trapped in a downward spiral though rape, alcohol, drugs and crime, to madness and death. From the author of Tree of Smoke, winner of the National Book Award for Fiction

A literary thriller and love story set during the Nicaraguan revolution, from the National Book Award winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. • Now the basis for a major motion pictureSet in Nicaragua in 1984, The Stars at Noon is a story of passion, fear, and betrayal told in the voice of an American woman whose mission in Central America is as shadowy as her surroundings. Is she a reporter for an American magazine, as she sometimes claims, or a contact person for the anti-war group Eyes of Peace? And who is the rough English businessman she begins an affair with? The two foreigners become entangled in sinister plots and ever-widening webs of corruption, until a desperate attempt to escape the country brings their relationship to a crisis point.With his customary narrative brilliance, award-winning writer Denis Johnson brings a hellish landscape of moral ambiguity vividly to life.

Jimmy Luntz is an innocent man, more or less. He's just leaving a barbershop chorus contest in Bakersfield, California, thinking about placing a few bets at the track, when he gets picked up by a thug named Gambol and his life takes a calamitous turn. Turns out Jimmy owes Gambol's boss significant money, and Gambol's been known to do serious harm to his charges. Soon enough a gun comes out, and Jimmy's on the run. While in hiding he meets up with a vengeful, often-drunk bombshell named Anita, and the two of them go on the lam together, attracting every kind of trouble.From the National Book Award-winning author Denis Johnson comes Nobody Move: "does exactly what noir should do--propel the reader downhill, with its cast of losers, louts and toughs as they cheat, shoot, and exploit one another into fast-talking oblivion" (Jess Walker, The Boston Globe).

"A terrifying book, a mixture of poetry and obscenity. . . [the characters] are people who can't be ignored. Mr. Johnson has written a dazzling and savage first novel."--Alice Hoffman, New York Times Book ReviewThe most critically acclaimed, and first, of Denis Johnson's novels, Angels puts Jamie Mays--a runaway wife toting along two kids--and Bill Houston--ex-Navy man, ex-husband, ex-con--on a Greyhound Bus for a dark, wild ride cross country. Driven by restless souls, bad booze, and desperate needs, Jamie and Bill bounce from bus stations to cheap hotels as they ply the strange, fascinating, and dangerous fringe of American life. Their tickets may say Phoenix, but their inescapable destination is a last stop marked by stunning violence and mind-shattering surprise.Denis Johnson, known for his portraits of America's dispossessed, sets off literary pyrotechnics on this highway odyssey, lighting the trek with wit and a personal metaphysics that defiantly takes on the world.

"Perfection is not the basis of what I'm talking about," says a member of the Cassandra family, which forms the center of Denis Johnson's plays, Hellhound on My Trail and Shoppers Carried by Escalators Into the Flames. The character could be speaking for his creator, because human imperfection is one of Denis Johnson's specialties -- in his critically acclaimed novels, short stories, and nonfiction, and, now, in two brilliant new plays.These two works present a dramatized field guide to some of the more dysfunctional and dysphoric inhabitants of the American West: a sexual-misconduct investigator who misconducts herself sexually; a renegade Jehovah's Witness who supports his splinter Jehovean group by dealing drugs; the Cassandra Brothers and their father and their grandmother, thrown together at a family reunion/wedding/melee at their shabby homestead in Ukiah, California.When Shoppers Carried by Escalators Into the Flames was performed in San Francisco in 2001, the Chronicle said, "There's an enormous appeal in Johnson's bleak-comic vision of a semi-mythic American West." That appeal derives from the author's perfect vision of imperfection, embodied with such energy and courage in these marvelous pieces of theatre.

"Johnson writes with a fervor that can only be described as religious. Seek is scary and beautiful and ecstatic and uncontrolled...he elevates the mundane to the sublime; he boils things down to their essence. He's simply one of the few writers around whose sentences make you shudder." --Adrienne Miller, EsquirePart political disquisition, part travel journal, part self-exploration, Seek is a collection of essays and articles in which Denis Johnson essentially takes on the world. And not an obliging, easygoing world either; but rather one in which horror and beauty exist in such proximity that they might well be interchangeable. Where violence and poverty and moral transgression go unchecked, even unnoticed. A world of such wild, rocketing energy that, grasping it, anything at all is possible.Whether traveling through war-ravaged Liberia, mingling with the crowds at a Christian Biker rally, exploring his own authority issues through the lens of this nation's militia groups, or attempting to unearth his inner resources while mining for gold in the wilds of Alaska, Johnson writes with a mixture of humility and humorous candor that is everywhere present.With the breathtaking and often haunting lyricism for which his work is renowned, Johnson considers in these pieces our need for transcendence. And, as readers of his previous work know, Johnson's path to consecration frequently requires a limning of the darkest abyss. If the path to knowledge lies in experience, Seek is a fascinating record of Johnson's profoundly moving pilgrimage.

The acclaimed author of Jesus' Son and Already Dead returns with a beautiful, haunting, and darkly comic novel. The Name of the World is a mesmerizing portrait of a professor at a Midwestern university who has been patient in his grief after an accident takes the lives of his wife and child and has permitted that grief to enlarge him.Michael Reed is living a posthumous life. In spite of outward appearances -- he holds a respectable university teaching position; he is an articulate and attractive addition to local social life -- he's a dead man walking.Nothing can touch Reed, nothing can move him, although he observes with a mordant clarity the lives whirling vigorously around him. Of his recent bereavement, nearly four years earlier, he observes, "I'm speaking as I'd speak of a change in the earth's climate, or the recent war."Facing the unwelcome end of his temporary stint at the university, Reed finds himself forced "to act like somebody who cares what happens to him. " Tentatively he begins to let himself make contact with a host of characters in this small academic town, souls who seem to have in common a tentativeness of their own. In this atmosphere characterized, as he says, "by cynicism, occasional brilliance, and small, polite terror," he manages, against all his expectations, to find people to light his way through his private labyrinth.Elegant and incisively observed, The Name of the World is Johnson at his best: poignant yet unsentimental, replete with the visionary imaginative detail for which his work is known. Here is a tour de force by one of the most astonishing writers at work today.

From the award-winning poet and novelist?a must-have collection of his four previous books of poetry plus a selection of new, unpublished work.

A reissuing of National Book Award winner Denis Johnson's first two collections of poems

An epic in miniature: a gripping tale of a man's disintegration and his country's transformation, from the National Book Award-winning author of Tree of Smoke.

Ten stories narrated by a recovering alcoholic and heroin addict whose dependencies have led him to petty crime, cruelty, betrayal, and loss.

Denis Johnson's Train Dreams is an epic in miniature, one of his most evocative and poignant fictions.

"Træet af røg" er et gigantisk Vietnamkrigs-epos, der skildrer en gruppe menneskers indre dæmoner, drømme og visioner under en håbløs krig. Hovedfiguren er den forholdsvis uerfarne CIA-agent William "Skip" Sands, som er udsendt for at udføre psykologiske operationer mod Vietcong. Han er ansat under "Obersten", Francis X. Sands, som tillige er hans onkel. Skip har kun et vagt begreb om, hvad hans præcise funktion er, og har svært ved at gennemskue de egentlige motiver for CIA‘s engagement i krigen. Han holdes skjult i et stort hus midt i junglen, hvorfra han afventer ordrer fra højere sted, alt imens han lever under et alias og forelsker sig i sygeplejersken Kathy, hvis mand er blevet kidnappet og formodentlig dræbt. Som dagene og årene går, bliver den afsondrede tilværelse midt i junglen mere og mere surrealistisk for alle parter. Krigen går ind under huden på dem, og skillelinjen mellem information, fordrejning af fakta og virkelighed er sløret til ukendelighed."Træet af røg" skriver sig ind i traditionen for Den Store Amerikanske Roman, og Denis Johnson er af sine forfatterkolleger blevet sammenlignet med store amerikanske stemmer som Mark Twain, Walt Whitman og Joseph Conrad. Da romanen udkom i USA i 2007, blev den af anmelderne udråbt til "årets bog" i alle toneangivende aviser The New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle ... "En født klassiker" – New York Times"Nærmest umulig at lægge fra sig ..."– The New York Times Book Review"Den Gud, jeg ønsker at tro på, har en stemme og en humoristisk sans som Denis Johnsons."– Jonathan Franzen, forfatteren til "Korrektioner""En fantastisk kraftfuld og stilistisk gennemført roman." – Philip Roth, forfatteren til "En menneskelig plet"Denis Johnson (1949-2017) var en amerikansk forfatter, der har skrevet bøger i flere forskellige genrer. Hans samling af historier "Jesus‘s Son" bliver betragtet som en moderne klassiker. Med modtagelsen af National Book Award for "Træet af røg" er han slået igennem til et større publikum.

Twenty-five years after Jesus' Son, a haunting new collection of short stories on mortality and transcendence, from National Book Award winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Denis JohnsonNATIONAL BESTSELLER *;NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYDwight Garner,The New York Times*;Maureen Corrigan, NPR'sFresh Air*;Chicago Tribune*;Newsday*;New York *; AV Club *; Publishers Weekly';Ranks with the best fiction published by any American writer during this short century.'New York';A posthumous masterpiece.'Entertainment WeeklyNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYThe New York Times Book Review*;The Washington Post*; NPR *; The Boston Globe *; New York Public Library*;Kirkus Reviews *; BloombergThe Largesse of the Sea Maiden is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson. Written in the luminous prose that made him one of the most beloved and important writers of his generation, this collection finds Johnson in new territory, contemplating the ghosts of the past and the elusive and unexpected ways the mysteries of the universe assert themselves. Finished shortly before Johnson's death, this collection is the last word from a writer whose work will live on for many years to come.Praise for The Largesse of the Sea Maiden ';An instant classic.'Newsday ';Exceptional luminosity . . . hits a powerful vein.'TheNew York Times Book Review ';Grace and oblivion are inextricably yoked in these transcendent stories. . . . [Johnson's] gift is to extract the beauty in all that brokenness.'The Wall Street Journal ';Nobody ever wrote like Denis Johnson. Nobody ever came close. . . . We're just left with this miraculous book, these perfect stories, the last words from one of the world's greatest writers.'NPR

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson, author of the groundbreaking, highly acclaimed Jesus' Son.

He must find Michael Adriko - maverick, warrior, and the man who has saved Nair's life three times and risked it many more. But on this new level - espionage, state secrets, treason - their loyalties will be tested to the limit.

Tree of Smoke - the name given to a 'psy op' that might or might not be hypothetical and might or might not be officially sanctioned - is Denis Johnson's most gripping, visionary and ambitious work to date. Set in south-east Asia and the US, and spanning two decades, it ostensibly tells the story of Skip Sands, a CIA spy who may or may not be engaged in psychological operations against the Viet Cong -- but also takes the reader on a surreal yet vivid journey, dipping in and out of characters' lives to reveal fundamental truths at the heart of the human condition. 'A Catch-22 for our times' Alan Warner, Books of the Year, Observer 'The God I want to believe in has a voice and a sense of humour like Denis Johnson's' Jonathan Franzen 'An epic of drenched sensuality and absurdly chewable dialogue, as though Don DeLillo and Joseph Heller had collaborated on a Vietnam war novel' Steven Poole, Books of the Year, New Statesman

Jimmy Luntz owes money to a man called Juarez. Trouble is, Juarez isn't the most patient of men. And when he gets bored of waiting, he sends someone round to collect. Luntz doesn't actually plan to shoot the guy, but the way he sees it, it's shoot or be shot. Either way, though, Luntz is out of his league, and he knows it: nobody messes with Juarez -- or, at least, nobody messes with Juarez and lives to tell the tale. Against all the odds, however, it seems that somebody up there is looking out for Luntz, if only he can keep his cool. A story of mistaken identity, blackmail and murder, of bent judges, wronged alcoholics and colostomy bags, Nobody Move is No Country for Old Men as written by Denis Johnson. Praise for Denis Johnson's previous novel, Tree of Smoke, which won the US National Book Award 2007: 'A Catch-22 for our times' Alan Warner, Observer 'A heart-stopping reminder of what fiction can do' Sunday Telegraph

Twenty-five years in the making, a dark, indelible epic of the American empire in decline from the author of Jesus' Son, "one of the best and most compelling novelists in the nation" (Elle)

Hailed by the New York Times as "wildly ambitious" and "the sort of book that a young Herman Melville might have written had he lived today and studied such disparate works as the Bible, 'The Wasteland,' Fahrenheit 451, and Dog Soldiers, screened Star Wars and Apocalypse Now several times, dropped a lot of acid and listened to hours of Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones," Fiskadoro is a stunning novel of an all-too-possible tomorrow. Deeply moving and provacative, Fiskadoro brilliantly presents the sweeping and heartbreaking tale of the survivors of a devastating nuclear war and their attempts to breaking tale of the survivors of a devastating nuclear war and their attempts to salvage remnants of the old world and rebuild their culture.

Raymond Carver said of The Incognito Lounge, Denis Johnsons third and most widely acclaimed book of verse: The subject matter is harrowingly convincing, is nothing less than a close examination of the darker side of human conduct. Why do we act this way? Johnson asks. How should we act? His best poems are examples of what the finest poetry can do: bring us closer to ourselves and at the same time put us in touch with something larger.

And they wait - for the Cubans to come, for the Quarantine to be lifted, for the god Quetzalcoatl, the god Bob Marley, the god Jesus to return and build their kingdoms. From the author of

Part political inquiry, part travel journal, part-self exploration, "Seek" is a collection of essays by an award-winning novelist out to explore himself and his life in the company of those who live on the edges of society. His travels take him from hippy conventions to war-torn Liberia

Michael Reed is a man going through the motions, numbed by the death of his wife and child. But when events force him to act as if he cares, he begins to find people who - against all expectation - help him through his private labyrinth.

Provincetown, Cape Cod: the last outpost of civilisation, the end of the earth. In the confused aftermath of a failed suicide attempt, Leonard English - pursuing a vague vision of redemption and an even vaguer offer of employment - finds himself in a Cape resort populated by religious zealots and promiscuous transvestites.