
Denis Johnson Has Died - acdanger
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/26/530182989/denis-johnson-author-of-jesus-son-and-tree-of-smoke-dies-at-67
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grue2
RIP. This hits hard. Before my career as a programmer I was an aspiring
fiction writer. Johnson was my Radiohead of writing: an artist working at a
seemingly unattainable level of skill, and very nearly transcending the art,
as far as my taste is concerned.

You don't exactly read Johnson for his plotting. The magic is in getting lost
in the sentences, in the weird and painful beauty they open up. Jesus' Son is
his most famous book, but his other works have that same characteristic: Turns
of phrase and shocking ways-of-seeing that reveal the world's strangeness and
fragility.

I think of it as the "cradling a baby mouse in your hands, feeling its
heartbeat, knowing how easily it could be crushed" feeling.

