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Angels
‘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
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
209 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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10467 people want to read
About the author
Denis Johnson
62 books2,322 followersPoet, playwright and author Denis Johnson was born in Munich, West Germany, in 1949 and was raised in Tokyo, Manila and Washington. He earned a masters' degree from the University of Iowa and received many awards for his work, including a Lannan Fellowship in Fiction (1993), a Whiting Writer's Award (1986), the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from the Paris Review for Train Dreams, and most recently, the National Book Award for Fiction (2007).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 583 reviews
January 1, 2021
Misery can be of all sorts but it is always measured out generously… And Denis Johnson’s world is packed with weirdoes and crazies…
The heroine is a harassed mother of two little girls on the run…
The hero is an indifferent man of the gloomy past on the drift…
And the miserable are thrown together like trash carried by a muddy torrent after the thunderstorm…
And angels are far away up in heaven and they care least.
“The world was made in 1914. Before 1914 there was nothing. Eleven people are in charge of the world. They make up the news and the history books, they control everything you think you know. They wrote the Bible and all the other books. Most people are wooden people, controlled by remote control. There’s only a few of us who are real, and we’re getting fooled.”
The heroine is a harassed mother of two little girls on the run…
Jamie lay flat on her back on the green table. If she stared at the white acoustic tiles of the ceiling and kind of let her eyes go loose, the pattern would shift and the tiles would seem to draw down on her until she was inside of them. There was nothing else to do right about now.
She was the only woman in this row of tables. In the entire room, which was the size of a ballroom, there were four women and nearly fifty men, each stretched out on a green table with a green sheet, getting a good look at the ceiling.
The hero is an indifferent man of the gloomy past on the drift…
Bill Houston went, “Oooooooh!” – meaning to launch into a song, like a drunken sailor, but he faded off, forgetting what to sing. He wasn’t a sailor any more anyway. He was just a fool on the move, no less bitter than the wind. He was an ex-sailor, and an ex-offender – though he couldn’t, for the life of him, say who it was he had offended – and he was an ex-husband – three ex-husbands
And the miserable are thrown together like trash carried by a muddy torrent after the thunderstorm…
And angels are far away up in heaven and they care least.
April 12, 2024
QUEL POMERIGGIO DI UN GIORNO DA CANI
Denis Johnson aveva esperienza diretta di tossici e alcolizzati. E quindi di emarginati, reietti, marginali, outcast, homeless: dedito lui stesso al consumo, sia di alcol che di droga, si è liberato del primo a ventinove anni e ha rinunciato alla seconda a trentaquattro.
Qui racconta una storia che deve in parte all’uno e all’altra, che contiene situazioni e umori che urlano a stelle-e-strisce, per me confermandosi scrittore di razza con in più il talento di spiazzarmi sempre cambiando tono, registro, voce, approccio. Per esempio, non so se in questo caso si possa parlare di momenti lirici, ma il fatto che Johnson abbia esordito proprio come poeta si percepisce bene tra queste pagine.
C’è la famiglia – tre fratelli e una madre, i padri sono diversi, sono due, uno non si incontra mai, l’altro sì ma solo brevemente; c’è il tipico girovagare per gli States, quello che ha marcato e impregnato anche tanto loro cinema; c’è l’uomo in fuga dalla società che se solo le cose andassero in modo diverso potrebbe passare per eroe; ci sono alcol e pillole, sbronze e bottiglie a fiaschetta che spuntano fuori come funghi; c’è l’action, una rapina; ci sono le macchine, quelle con quei cofani immensi e cilindrate da TIR che però si guidano con un dito; ci sono armi, spari, sangue, violenza (ma con parsimonia); c’è la prigione; ci sono storie d’amore improbabili, nate da un barlume, che si sfasciano al primo raggio di sole, oppure durano oltre la pioggia. C’è, ci sono altre cose, Denis Johnson non si risparmia.
Dog Day Afternoon
Angeli è la storia di persone che scivolano impotenti nei loro incubi. Jamie Mays lascia il marito in un parcheggio per roulotte a Oakland, in California. Viaggia attraverso vari stati con le due figlie piccole su un Greyhound quando incontra Bill Houston. In un primo momento è scoraggiata dai suoi tatuaggi e dagli occhiali da sole argentati (a goccia, immagino). Ma la solitudine e la sua condizione di mamma single con doppia prole a carico e seguito li fanno avvicinare e diventare amanti. Dopo un periodo terrificante a Chicago, dove Jamie viene violentata, approdano in Arizona. Lì trovano la cosa più pericolosa di tutte, la famiglia di Bill: quando i tre fratelli si riuniscono, è solo questione di tempo prima che le cose esplodano. Mentre Jamie Mays va in tilt a causa di pillole e vino, i fratelli Houston pianificano ed eseguono una rapina in banca. Tutto ciò che può andare storto lo fa.
Camera-a-gas made in USA.
Ma sarebbe un errore credere che il libro si esaurisca qui. Nell’ultima lunga parte c’è il percorso di Jamie in manicomio, e, mentre io temevo per lei - il rischio di elettroshock scorre sotto ogni pagina - lei invece trovava una strada, forse non “la sua”, ma almeno una. E poi, agghiacciante e terrificante, la vicenda giudiziaria di Bill.
Questo romanzo d’esordio (uscito nel 1983 dopo una gestazione lunga dodici anni) è un misto di poesia e oscenità, déjà vu et jamais lu, un melodramma selvaggio, disperato e a tratti opprimente, i cui personaggi e le loro vicende non si possono mettere da parte.
Things to do in Phoenix, Arizona: rob a bank.
Denis Johnson aveva esperienza diretta di tossici e alcolizzati. E quindi di emarginati, reietti, marginali, outcast, homeless: dedito lui stesso al consumo, sia di alcol che di droga, si è liberato del primo a ventinove anni e ha rinunciato alla seconda a trentaquattro.
Qui racconta una storia che deve in parte all’uno e all’altra, che contiene situazioni e umori che urlano a stelle-e-strisce, per me confermandosi scrittore di razza con in più il talento di spiazzarmi sempre cambiando tono, registro, voce, approccio. Per esempio, non so se in questo caso si possa parlare di momenti lirici, ma il fatto che Johnson abbia esordito proprio come poeta si percepisce bene tra queste pagine.
C’è la famiglia – tre fratelli e una madre, i padri sono diversi, sono due, uno non si incontra mai, l’altro sì ma solo brevemente; c’è il tipico girovagare per gli States, quello che ha marcato e impregnato anche tanto loro cinema; c’è l’uomo in fuga dalla società che se solo le cose andassero in modo diverso potrebbe passare per eroe; ci sono alcol e pillole, sbronze e bottiglie a fiaschetta che spuntano fuori come funghi; c’è l’action, una rapina; ci sono le macchine, quelle con quei cofani immensi e cilindrate da TIR che però si guidano con un dito; ci sono armi, spari, sangue, violenza (ma con parsimonia); c’è la prigione; ci sono storie d’amore improbabili, nate da un barlume, che si sfasciano al primo raggio di sole, oppure durano oltre la pioggia. C’è, ci sono altre cose, Denis Johnson non si risparmia.
Dog Day Afternoon
Angeli è la storia di persone che scivolano impotenti nei loro incubi. Jamie Mays lascia il marito in un parcheggio per roulotte a Oakland, in California. Viaggia attraverso vari stati con le due figlie piccole su un Greyhound quando incontra Bill Houston. In un primo momento è scoraggiata dai suoi tatuaggi e dagli occhiali da sole argentati (a goccia, immagino). Ma la solitudine e la sua condizione di mamma single con doppia prole a carico e seguito li fanno avvicinare e diventare amanti. Dopo un periodo terrificante a Chicago, dove Jamie viene violentata, approdano in Arizona. Lì trovano la cosa più pericolosa di tutte, la famiglia di Bill: quando i tre fratelli si riuniscono, è solo questione di tempo prima che le cose esplodano. Mentre Jamie Mays va in tilt a causa di pillole e vino, i fratelli Houston pianificano ed eseguono una rapina in banca. Tutto ciò che può andare storto lo fa.
Camera-a-gas made in USA.
Ma sarebbe un errore credere che il libro si esaurisca qui. Nell’ultima lunga parte c’è il percorso di Jamie in manicomio, e, mentre io temevo per lei - il rischio di elettroshock scorre sotto ogni pagina - lei invece trovava una strada, forse non “la sua”, ma almeno una. E poi, agghiacciante e terrificante, la vicenda giudiziaria di Bill.
Questo romanzo d’esordio (uscito nel 1983 dopo una gestazione lunga dodici anni) è un misto di poesia e oscenità, déjà vu et jamais lu, un melodramma selvaggio, disperato e a tratti opprimente, i cui personaggi e le loro vicende non si possono mettere da parte.
Things to do in Phoenix, Arizona: rob a bank.
April 23, 2013
David Foster Wallace selected Angels as one of "Five direly underappreciated U.S. novels >1960." He wrote: 'This was Johnson’s first fiction after the horripilative lyric poetry of “Incognito Lounge.” Even cult fans of “Jesus’ Son” often haven’t heard of “Angels.” It’s sort of “Jesus’ Son’s” counterpoint, a novel-length odyssey of mopes and scrotes and their brutal redemptions. A totally American book, it’s also got great prose, truly great, some of the ’80s’ best; e.g. lines like “All around them men drank alone, staring out of their faces."'
I'd add that it's clear this is the first novel of a poet - one who'd been reading a lot of Robert Stone, Don DeLillo, and William Blake. Johnson seems less concerned with crafting an elegant narrative arc and generating momentum than creating short scenes shot through with memorable images and ensuring each sentence is exquisitely wrought. Especially in its first half, the novel moves along in fits-and-starts that might put off people looking for something more conventional, but I was won over by the local quality of the prose and the finely observed gallery of sadsack characters. When it comes time for the climatic bank scene, Johnson steps up and turns in an absolutely virtuoso piece of storytelling, narrating the event from various perspectives for maximum impact, surprise, and substance. The final sections are meditative and hypnotic, achieving a desolate sense of grace that I can't recall from other novels. Many details hail from a late 1970s America that's now vanished, but there's a bedrock foundation to the characters' struggles and the story's bleak settings that makes Angels feel something like timeless.
I'd add that it's clear this is the first novel of a poet - one who'd been reading a lot of Robert Stone, Don DeLillo, and William Blake. Johnson seems less concerned with crafting an elegant narrative arc and generating momentum than creating short scenes shot through with memorable images and ensuring each sentence is exquisitely wrought. Especially in its first half, the novel moves along in fits-and-starts that might put off people looking for something more conventional, but I was won over by the local quality of the prose and the finely observed gallery of sadsack characters. When it comes time for the climatic bank scene, Johnson steps up and turns in an absolutely virtuoso piece of storytelling, narrating the event from various perspectives for maximum impact, surprise, and substance. The final sections are meditative and hypnotic, achieving a desolate sense of grace that I can't recall from other novels. Many details hail from a late 1970s America that's now vanished, but there's a bedrock foundation to the characters' struggles and the story's bleak settings that makes Angels feel something like timeless.
January 13, 2021
Bill Houston was experimenting with his butane lighter, holding it upside down and trying to keep it lit. “The gas wants to go up,” he explained to her, “but then it has to go down before it can go up. It don’t know what to do.”
Like so much fluid in a cheap plastic Bic, our lives flow along paths equally perplexing and predictable. We don’t know what to do either, but to whatever depths we sink and however high we rise, most of it can probably be chalked up to circumstance. Wherever we end up and however we end up getting there, it seems the only thing we can count on is the whole mess going BOOM, and usually far too soon.
That’s what this book is ultimately about, or at least it was for me anyway.
Speaking as someone who hasn’t spent a single night in jail for at least eleven years, it's surprising how much I found myself relating to Johnson’s shady, criminal-minded characters. The (mostly) reformed Arthur Graham standing here today has come a long way since juvie hall, that’s for sure, but as a result of my own experiences – not to mention those of all the thieves, fiends, and hoods I’ve known along the way – I found the Houstons and their associates more than just a little familiar. From plasma bank patrons to public defense lawyers, a sorry bunch the lot of 'em, but not altogether without humanity.
Real people with real problems? You could say that. When you’re poor, your options are limited, and when your options are limited, it’s all too easy to take whatever cheap thrills you can get. When those thrills revolve around substances, sex, and whatever it takes to retain those scraps of solace in your otherwise miserable life, it’s all too easy to end up on the wrong side of the law. And unlike those born into the world of privilege, those who can afford the vices and pay the prices, it’s usually the Greyhound-riding, flophouse-dwelling dregs of society who get the raw deal. And that's no spoiler by any means — that's just real life.
As for the writing itself, Johnson blends a stark, subjective realism with some beautifully rendered imagery, at times quite nightmarish, the combined effect of which forces the reader into the shoes as well as the heads of his tragically human characters.
Like so much fluid in a cheap plastic Bic, our lives flow along paths equally perplexing and predictable. We don’t know what to do either, but to whatever depths we sink and however high we rise, most of it can probably be chalked up to circumstance. Wherever we end up and however we end up getting there, it seems the only thing we can count on is the whole mess going BOOM, and usually far too soon.
That’s what this book is ultimately about, or at least it was for me anyway.
Speaking as someone who hasn’t spent a single night in jail for at least eleven years, it's surprising how much I found myself relating to Johnson’s shady, criminal-minded characters. The (mostly) reformed Arthur Graham standing here today has come a long way since juvie hall, that’s for sure, but as a result of my own experiences – not to mention those of all the thieves, fiends, and hoods I’ve known along the way – I found the Houstons and their associates more than just a little familiar. From plasma bank patrons to public defense lawyers, a sorry bunch the lot of 'em, but not altogether without humanity.
Real people with real problems? You could say that. When you’re poor, your options are limited, and when your options are limited, it’s all too easy to take whatever cheap thrills you can get. When those thrills revolve around substances, sex, and whatever it takes to retain those scraps of solace in your otherwise miserable life, it’s all too easy to end up on the wrong side of the law. And unlike those born into the world of privilege, those who can afford the vices and pay the prices, it’s usually the Greyhound-riding, flophouse-dwelling dregs of society who get the raw deal. And that's no spoiler by any means — that's just real life.
As for the writing itself, Johnson blends a stark, subjective realism with some beautifully rendered imagery, at times quite nightmarish, the combined effect of which forces the reader into the shoes as well as the heads of his tragically human characters.
November 7, 2021
A dark, powerful and ultimately tragic tale of Jamie and Bill, who after meeting on a bus start up a friendship and begin a journey that I had a feeling was never going to have a happy ending. Right from the early stages you get a sense of what type of people they are - Jamie is trailer trash and quite vulnerable, who along with her two young daughters; one only being a baby, may be fleeing from her violent partner, whilst Bill has a confident swagger about him; but in the end is just a bit of a loser, having lived a life in and out of prison. There is much unpleasantness to everything from the bars, to the hotels, to the drugs, to the sexual violence and madness, and it's Jamie dragging her children around the dark seedy streets that I found particularly uncomfortable. As for Johnson's writing it's really good, and he handled the last third of the novel with some dignity and tenderness which helped take away the bad taste of the events before. As Johnson's first novel I was very impressed. It painted a realistic picture of two lost souls where the American dream is nowhere in sight.
May 6, 2013
First, an opening number: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq344k...
*****
Trying to forget your past is a futile as trying to dodge the rain drops when it goes from a drizzle to a downpour. Unexpectedly, the sky will just open up and you're fucked. I’m not going to lie, this book (the first half anyway) brought back an awful lot of unwanted memories for me.
What is it that protected me from turning into one of these sad sonsabitches? I grew up piss poor surrounded by a bunch of degenerates, why am I not chasing the dragon or locked up or living on welfare? Why do I not have 5 kids fathered by a bunch of different baby daddies? Why was I spared?
Allow me to digress for a moment (I swear, this will make sense later). I’m not much for computer games, but there is one game I love to play: two suit spider solitaire. See, this game is all about making the right decisions. And when you get stuck at the end with no more moves, you can simply go back go back go back and choose a different path. Maybe it will be the right one and maybe not, and if it’s not, hey, no biggie, you can keep choosing until you finally get on the right path, or you can give up and accept that you're just not going to win this round. It’s sort of a metaphor for life for me. Because I’d be lying if I said I haven’t made some pretty bad decisions along the way. But every day I wake up, I get the opportunity to make a different choice.
And that, folks, makes all the difference: having the courage and the conviction to make better, wiser choices. Johnson’s characters are all plagued by the same fatal flaw: the inability to change the course of the game. The Houston brothers are criminals and abusers just like their father. Jaime is a drugged out waste of life who neglects her children and herself. Save your pity though, because they are where they are because of their own stupid ass decisions, and I for one don’t feel sorry for a single one of them. And that’s all I have to say about that.
****
Endogenous vs exogenous. Internal vs external locus of control. Read Arthur's exceptional review for the other side of the argument.
****
DFW - 2 hits, 2 misses. Bring on the tie breaker.
September 25, 2020
Absolutely gutwrenching. Wow. What a superb debut novel. The style was somewhere between McCarthy and DeLillo. Pitch-perfect and painful and brilliant.
March 4, 2017
I would have put this book down after chapter one except for two reasons: I was reading it with a small group, and it was only 209 pages. I know it was Johnson's first novel, but if it's any indication of the direction of his work, I will not choose to read another one of his.
The quality of the writing, the imagery, and some beautiful sentences has earned it 3 stars from me. What I cannot deal with are the hopelessness of the characters and the bleakness of the story. Not my kind of book is putting it mildly, but the novel has won awards and is liked a lot by other reviewers, so don't rely on my opinion alone. Just be warned that despair is the order of the day in this one.
The quality of the writing, the imagery, and some beautiful sentences has earned it 3 stars from me. What I cannot deal with are the hopelessness of the characters and the bleakness of the story. Not my kind of book is putting it mildly, but the novel has won awards and is liked a lot by other reviewers, so don't rely on my opinion alone. Just be warned that despair is the order of the day in this one.
September 5, 2024
"..... something that people will tell themselves, something to pass the time it takes for the violence inside a man to wear him away, or to be consumed itself, depending on who is the candle and who is the light."
Halfway through Angels, I knew I just had to read everything ever written by Denis Johnson. Some writers are that special. This book made me gulp and sigh on nearly every page.
It does not really have a format. A lot of it is about Jamie and Bill Huston, a man and a woman who hook up during a bus journey when Jamie is on the run with her two kids. But it is mostly a bunch of scenes about the Huston brothers, their religious mother and their women. A heist gone wrong and Bill Huston's incarceration while awaiting the gas chamber are important events in the novel.
At times, I felt like Denis Johnson is such a good writer and he was showing off his mettle with all the beautiful prose, that I did not know much about Jamie and Bill Huston. Especially Jamie. The helpless and lost characters in Philip K Dick novels might have inspired Denis Johnson.
There is something beguiling about the fucked up working class people of the greatest country in the world. The characters are all alcoholics and drug addicts who live on impulse. I read up a bit on Denis Johnson. He was an alcoholic and drug addict himself. Angels is like a horror novel, written by a man who was once possessed by a demon, now sounding the fog horn for other men and women who are contenders to come under his malevolent influence.
Halfway through Angels, I knew I just had to read everything ever written by Denis Johnson. Some writers are that special. This book made me gulp and sigh on nearly every page.
It does not really have a format. A lot of it is about Jamie and Bill Huston, a man and a woman who hook up during a bus journey when Jamie is on the run with her two kids. But it is mostly a bunch of scenes about the Huston brothers, their religious mother and their women. A heist gone wrong and Bill Huston's incarceration while awaiting the gas chamber are important events in the novel.
At times, I felt like Denis Johnson is such a good writer and he was showing off his mettle with all the beautiful prose, that I did not know much about Jamie and Bill Huston. Especially Jamie. The helpless and lost characters in Philip K Dick novels might have inspired Denis Johnson.
There is something beguiling about the fucked up working class people of the greatest country in the world. The characters are all alcoholics and drug addicts who live on impulse. I read up a bit on Denis Johnson. He was an alcoholic and drug addict himself. Angels is like a horror novel, written by a man who was once possessed by a demon, now sounding the fog horn for other men and women who are contenders to come under his malevolent influence.
October 31, 2019
Angels makes for a vivid reading experience, the kidnapping kind - Terrible people are swarming and their rotted hands are seizing your heart in a cold, sharp squeeze. You've never liked any of them but you're pulled into their personal train wreck until the ends - plural - free you, gasping. It feels very much like a nightmare. But you don't forget.
TW - graphic rape, drug use, racist and homophobic slurs, racist rhetoric, suicidal ideation, graphic violence
TW - graphic rape, drug use, racist and homophobic slurs, racist rhetoric, suicidal ideation, graphic violence
March 20, 2017
The last chapter is a hard one. The characters are no "angels" and they continue down a slippery slope at a very rapid pace. This is not a story of redemption. I can only recommend to folks who don't mind gritty and unsavory characters. This book has multiple characters who all think they are leaving something horrible for something better but it's in direct contrast to this situation. They are self destructive and no one is stopping another from poor decisions. They encourage this behavior. Harsh and raw. Note: another read that influenced Donald Ray Pollock. On another note, thank goodness a parent didn't ask me what this was about while reading at my kiddo's ballgame....:crickets!
June 7, 2025
Death Is The Mother Of Beauty
"Sunday Morning" is a meditative poem by the American poet Wallace Stevens (1879 -- 1955) that celebrates the beauty of the physical world and its transience juxtaposed with themes of religion. Stevens tells his story through a beautiful woman gazing at the sea. The phrase "death is the mother of beauty" occurs twice in the poem. In stanza V, Stevens writes:
"She says, 'But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.'
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires."
In the following stanza, Stevens says:
"Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly."
On one level, Denis Johnson's first novel "Angels" (1983) could hardly be more different from Stevens' poem. Stevens and his character are erudite, highly educated, and well to do. The characters in Johnson's novel are drug users, alcoholics, and criminals all of whom are emeshed in poverty. They lack the rudiments of an education which would create interest in a writer such as Wallace Stevens.
Yet, there is a clear and often repeated allusion to Stevens' poem in "Angels". The final scene in Johnson's novel is set in a dismal prison in the Arizona desert where one of the primary characters, Bill Houston, is awaiting execution. The gas chamber in which Houston is to be executed bears the (unattributed) inscription "Death is the mother of beauty." Houston meditates on the meaning of this difficult phrase as he awaits his fate: and the haunting line becomes a way to get to think about Johnson's story.
"Angels" offers a gritty look at American low life in the 1980s. The two primary characters, Bill Houston and Jamie Mays, meet on a cross-country Greyhound bus from Oakland. Jamie has two small children and is fleeing her marriage in the hope of meeting up with her sister in Hershey, Pennsylvania. On the bus, she begins a relationship with Houston, an alcoholic ex-con and Navy veteran. The relationship takes the couple through the streets and bars of Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Phoenix and through much sleaze and violence. After Jamie is brutally raped in Chicago, she and Houston take the bus to Huston's family home in Phoenix. Huston, his two brothers, and another man attempt the heist of a large bank, in a scene reminiscent of many film noirs The heist goes awry and the four men are picked up. Bill Houston is tried for the killing of a guard. Jamie for her part suffers a nervous breakdown and is institutionalized. She works to become free of alcohol and substance addiction.
Johnson tells a story of grimness and sadness while showing as well an affection for his people with all their self-inflicted wounds. The book is less a cohesive novel than a series of interconnected vignettes. It succeeds in finding beauty in its characters and places through its writing. Like Stevens, Johnson is a poet who illuminates the lives he sees through writing and imagination. While in "Sunday Morning" Stevens saw the transience, beauty, and spirituality of life through the thoughts of a cultivated, beautiful woman, Johnson works to show these traits in the lives of his down and out characters.
Johnson is probably best known for his book "Jesus' Son" which I have read together with his late novella "Train Dreams". In many ways, the lurid beauty of "Angels" may capture Johnson at his best. I was glad to read this first novel and to think about it together with one of my favorite poems and poets.
Robin Friedman
"Sunday Morning" is a meditative poem by the American poet Wallace Stevens (1879 -- 1955) that celebrates the beauty of the physical world and its transience juxtaposed with themes of religion. Stevens tells his story through a beautiful woman gazing at the sea. The phrase "death is the mother of beauty" occurs twice in the poem. In stanza V, Stevens writes:
"She says, 'But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.'
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires."
In the following stanza, Stevens says:
"Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly."
On one level, Denis Johnson's first novel "Angels" (1983) could hardly be more different from Stevens' poem. Stevens and his character are erudite, highly educated, and well to do. The characters in Johnson's novel are drug users, alcoholics, and criminals all of whom are emeshed in poverty. They lack the rudiments of an education which would create interest in a writer such as Wallace Stevens.
Yet, there is a clear and often repeated allusion to Stevens' poem in "Angels". The final scene in Johnson's novel is set in a dismal prison in the Arizona desert where one of the primary characters, Bill Houston, is awaiting execution. The gas chamber in which Houston is to be executed bears the (unattributed) inscription "Death is the mother of beauty." Houston meditates on the meaning of this difficult phrase as he awaits his fate: and the haunting line becomes a way to get to think about Johnson's story.
"Angels" offers a gritty look at American low life in the 1980s. The two primary characters, Bill Houston and Jamie Mays, meet on a cross-country Greyhound bus from Oakland. Jamie has two small children and is fleeing her marriage in the hope of meeting up with her sister in Hershey, Pennsylvania. On the bus, she begins a relationship with Houston, an alcoholic ex-con and Navy veteran. The relationship takes the couple through the streets and bars of Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Phoenix and through much sleaze and violence. After Jamie is brutally raped in Chicago, she and Houston take the bus to Huston's family home in Phoenix. Huston, his two brothers, and another man attempt the heist of a large bank, in a scene reminiscent of many film noirs The heist goes awry and the four men are picked up. Bill Houston is tried for the killing of a guard. Jamie for her part suffers a nervous breakdown and is institutionalized. She works to become free of alcohol and substance addiction.
Johnson tells a story of grimness and sadness while showing as well an affection for his people with all their self-inflicted wounds. The book is less a cohesive novel than a series of interconnected vignettes. It succeeds in finding beauty in its characters and places through its writing. Like Stevens, Johnson is a poet who illuminates the lives he sees through writing and imagination. While in "Sunday Morning" Stevens saw the transience, beauty, and spirituality of life through the thoughts of a cultivated, beautiful woman, Johnson works to show these traits in the lives of his down and out characters.
Johnson is probably best known for his book "Jesus' Son" which I have read together with his late novella "Train Dreams". In many ways, the lurid beauty of "Angels" may capture Johnson at his best. I was glad to read this first novel and to think about it together with one of my favorite poems and poets.
Robin Friedman
November 11, 2016
This was Johnson’s debut novel and it’s well written and powerful. In Johnson’s short stories, the characters are often those who live on the edge of society. Junkies, alcoholics, and petty criminals populate these stories and Johnson chronicles their lives of quiet desperation with sympathy and insight. In Angels, Johnson again focuses on people living on the margins and while it’s far from an uplifting book, his characters come alive in all their flawed humanity. In the book, Jaime Mays, a woman with two kids in tow who has just left her trailer park and her husband, meets ex-con Bill Houston on a Greyhound bus. Born losers, they soon hook-up and their cross-country odyssey eventually ends in tragedy and madness. Johnson never sentimentalizes his characters; they are people who, when given a choice, always choose the worse one. The prospect of redemption hovers just beyond their grasp and there is an eventuality to their downfall:
“It was all right to be who he was, but others would probably think it was terrible. A couple of times in the past he'd reached this absolute zero of the truth, and without fear or bitterness he realized now that somewhere inside it there was a move he could make to change his life, to become another person, but he'd never be able to guess what it was. He found a cigaret and struck a match--for a moment there was nothing before him but the flame. When he shook it out and the world came back, it was the same place again where all his decisions had been made a long time ago”.
The dialogue rings true throughout the book and the writing is lyrical and filled with descriptive passages that burn brightly. The characters he introduces are well drawn and Johnson is able to lay them open with surgical precision and expose them at their core:
“He decided to go over a couple of blocks to Michael’s Tavern for something cold, and as he walked beside the road he felt his anger burning up in the heat of noon, and saw himself, as he often did when he was outdoors on hot days, being forged in enormous fires for some purpose beyond his imagining. He was only walking down a street toward a barroom, and yet in his own mind he took his part in the eternity of this place. It seemed to him – it was not the first time – that he belonged in Hell, and would always find himself joyful in it’s midst. It seemed to him that to touch James Houston was to touch one iota of the vast grit that made the desert and hid the fires at the center of the earth”
This isn’t a happy story, the characters are flawed and their decisions throughout the novel are bad. They are misfits living on the edge of society and filled with an emptiness that is always threatening to consume them..
“It was all right to be who he was, but others would probably think it was terrible. A couple of times in the past he'd reached this absolute zero of the truth, and without fear or bitterness he realized now that somewhere inside it there was a move he could make to change his life, to become another person, but he'd never be able to guess what it was. He found a cigaret and struck a match--for a moment there was nothing before him but the flame. When he shook it out and the world came back, it was the same place again where all his decisions had been made a long time ago”.
The dialogue rings true throughout the book and the writing is lyrical and filled with descriptive passages that burn brightly. The characters he introduces are well drawn and Johnson is able to lay them open with surgical precision and expose them at their core:
“He decided to go over a couple of blocks to Michael’s Tavern for something cold, and as he walked beside the road he felt his anger burning up in the heat of noon, and saw himself, as he often did when he was outdoors on hot days, being forged in enormous fires for some purpose beyond his imagining. He was only walking down a street toward a barroom, and yet in his own mind he took his part in the eternity of this place. It seemed to him – it was not the first time – that he belonged in Hell, and would always find himself joyful in it’s midst. It seemed to him that to touch James Houston was to touch one iota of the vast grit that made the desert and hid the fires at the center of the earth”
This isn’t a happy story, the characters are flawed and their decisions throughout the novel are bad. They are misfits living on the edge of society and filled with an emptiness that is always threatening to consume them..
April 8, 2017
Jamie and her kids should have just stayed in Oakland.
Denis Johnson writes some really dark stuff, even for noir. I tried to care about Jamie through her 5 year old Miranda and baby Ellen...but aside from one incredibly horrible interlude in Chicago, I could not connect with her. Some authors can write from the perspective of or about a character of the opposite gender, but sadly, Denis Johnson isn't one of them. At least for me.
I do know that he had struggles early in life - in his mid teens - that tie to some of what Jamie faced, but maybe I'm too cheery a bird to relate.
Bill had potential to grab me, since his brothers and mom rolled into the story, but when he went up the pipe, I was just glad to see him go.
Really powerful writing, but the only happy spot was noting that Stroh's beer is Shorts spelled backward. Too noir for me, over all.
Denis Johnson writes some really dark stuff, even for noir. I tried to care about Jamie through her 5 year old Miranda and baby Ellen...but aside from one incredibly horrible interlude in Chicago, I could not connect with her. Some authors can write from the perspective of or about a character of the opposite gender, but sadly, Denis Johnson isn't one of them. At least for me.
I do know that he had struggles early in life - in his mid teens - that tie to some of what Jamie faced, but maybe I'm too cheery a bird to relate.
Bill had potential to grab me, since his brothers and mom rolled into the story, but when he went up the pipe, I was just glad to see him go.
Really powerful writing, but the only happy spot was noting that Stroh's beer is Shorts spelled backward. Too noir for me, over all.
March 10, 2017
I keep a short list of books that I consider Great-writing-Painful-to-read. A cringe accompanied by pain on nearly every page. Powerful. Memorable.*** Angels. It touches on so many things. Squalor, drug use, alcoholism, rape, murder, and good old insanity. Too well done and Painful. ** Others on the list- for alcoholism Malcom Lowry's Under The Volcano will leave you in a fog for weeks. * Theodore Dreiser's An American tragedy forces the reader to truly feel the shame a murderer carries.* And last as well as the one I most want to completely forget, American Psycho. All on my list of books not to read again. I can't deny they are well written, but they are keeping bad company.
November 20, 2007
I got Denis Johnson and Dennis Cooper mixed up. Big mistake. One is a loathsome creep and the other is clearly the American prose master I have missed these many years, but intend to catch up on very soon. I see DJ just won the National Book Award.
To my ears DJ has the best ear for hardboiled dialogue since Raymond Chandler although it's clear he doesn't give a rat's ass about plot. But on this broke busted disgusted bum steer of a planet you takes em where you finds em.
To my ears DJ has the best ear for hardboiled dialogue since Raymond Chandler although it's clear he doesn't give a rat's ass about plot. But on this broke busted disgusted bum steer of a planet you takes em where you finds em.
July 28, 2024
Johnson's first novel Angels presents a grim picture of life in general, especially for those not born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Neither of our main characters, Jamie Mays and Bill Houston, come off as heroes or villains really, just losers on the edge, and the other characters Johnson presents come off the same way. Essentially, Johnson gives us here a tragic tale, one with no winners, people with limited goals and aspirations suffering through life.
Jamie and her two little girls, one only 3 months old, start the tale leaving Oakland away from a husband who cannot keep his dick in his pants. Jamie's goal? Find a relative that lives in Hershey, PA. After several days on the bus, she meets Bill, on his way to Pittsburgh. Bill, ex-navy, ex-con, and with three ex-wives, has a little money and wants to hit the town. Well, they kinda hit it off and end up in a grubby flop in the Burgh, but Bill's money only lasts a few weeks. He splits for Chicago, and after selling some plasma, she takes the kids on a bus to find him there...
Jamie. Pretty clueless, likes her wine and booze, just wanted to get out of her old relationship. Bill. Bit of a happy go lucky guy, who gets money anyway he can; some robberies earned him a stint in the big house. After Jamie gets brutally raped and put in a halfway house, the two manage to find one another and decide to head to Phoenix, where Bill has some family...
While not depressing per se, Angels tells a depressing tale, one with few notes of optimism. Dealing with life is hard, and sometimes, drugs and booze ease the trial, but in the end, usually just make things worse. Yet, I would not call this a morality tale; far from it. Johnson does not preach here, just presents a bleak, gloomy side of the American Dream. 4 dark stars!
Jamie and her two little girls, one only 3 months old, start the tale leaving Oakland away from a husband who cannot keep his dick in his pants. Jamie's goal? Find a relative that lives in Hershey, PA. After several days on the bus, she meets Bill, on his way to Pittsburgh. Bill, ex-navy, ex-con, and with three ex-wives, has a little money and wants to hit the town. Well, they kinda hit it off and end up in a grubby flop in the Burgh, but Bill's money only lasts a few weeks. He splits for Chicago, and after selling some plasma, she takes the kids on a bus to find him there...
Jamie. Pretty clueless, likes her wine and booze, just wanted to get out of her old relationship. Bill. Bit of a happy go lucky guy, who gets money anyway he can; some robberies earned him a stint in the big house. After Jamie gets brutally raped and put in a halfway house, the two manage to find one another and decide to head to Phoenix, where Bill has some family...
While not depressing per se, Angels tells a depressing tale, one with few notes of optimism. Dealing with life is hard, and sometimes, drugs and booze ease the trial, but in the end, usually just make things worse. Yet, I would not call this a morality tale; far from it. Johnson does not preach here, just presents a bleak, gloomy side of the American Dream. 4 dark stars!
June 10, 2012
This book has been on my to-read list for about a decade. Year after year it got pushed back and forgotten and now finally, finally, I have entered the world of Denis Johnson.
This is a quick read, I read it over two days. We start of with Jamie, a runnaway mother with two small children on a greyhound bus who despite being “done with men” hooks up with Bill Houston on the bus and together they journey down into the pits of life – drug use, alcohol, rape, robbery, insanity, murder, execution.
Johnson packed a lot into his compact book and I think the story could have been better embelished, the characters more fleshed out. Mrs Houton’s character particularly resounded with me, she reminded me of one of Yates’ pathetic characters; living in denial and with an air of pretence about her. She’s wonderfully insane.
Desperation. All the people in this book are bogged down with sadness and desperation.
The writing is wonderfully done. It’s rich with imagery and grit. I can feel the Arizona sun bear down on the character’s faces, I can taste the tequila and lemon on my tongue as they do shots in the car. I only wish there was more backstory and detail. Another 100 pages could’ve solved that.
This is a quick read, I read it over two days. We start of with Jamie, a runnaway mother with two small children on a greyhound bus who despite being “done with men” hooks up with Bill Houston on the bus and together they journey down into the pits of life – drug use, alcohol, rape, robbery, insanity, murder, execution.
Johnson packed a lot into his compact book and I think the story could have been better embelished, the characters more fleshed out. Mrs Houton’s character particularly resounded with me, she reminded me of one of Yates’ pathetic characters; living in denial and with an air of pretence about her. She’s wonderfully insane.
Desperation. All the people in this book are bogged down with sadness and desperation.
The writing is wonderfully done. It’s rich with imagery and grit. I can feel the Arizona sun bear down on the character’s faces, I can taste the tequila and lemon on my tongue as they do shots in the car. I only wish there was more backstory and detail. Another 100 pages could’ve solved that.
November 21, 2018
Another writer who died too young. The poetic tragedy of a bunch of losers who are destined to come to a bad end and don't care much about it until it's too late. I think David Foster Wallace included this on his list of the Ten Most Underrated and Unnoticed Books of the Late Twentieth Century - or something like that. The violence isn't vividly displayed because that's not the point - the truth is that there's relatively little - but the thoughts of the principal characters as they swirl in the currents before being sucked down the drain are strangely beautiful, this tension between inviting and avoiding a tragic end - or not really caring - really affected me. Great book.
July 19, 2020
The first I read by Denis Johnson was his story, Emergency. I was floored. The drive-up cinema screening in a blizzard that may or may not have been a military cemetery. The rabbit babies. “I save lives”. Floored. After, I read the rest of Jesus’ Son. Then came Train Dreams; McCarthy meets Magical Realism. Never has sparse prose taken readers so close to God or nothing. The same goes for Angels. Oh boy does he make your stomach turn. Johnson takes characters with nothing to lose then manipulates them until nothing turns itself inside out.
This is a book about Angels falling and rising—in that order. This is a book about redemption and forgiveness and it’s relationship to death. My copy is published by vintage contemporaries. The publisher could not be more appropriate. Angles was published in the eighties, but its content is contemporary. Its complexities are our complexities.
Here are some words from Johnson:
“The Highway Patrol kept the prison side of Route 89 clear of the seekers and desirers, the ones who had to be there, the ones who sought to know. But the dirt margin of the road in the town side was lined with campers and motorcycle and trucks, with their owners and the children and families of the owners, who placed their forearms and elbows on these machines and leaned on them quietly for support during the vigil. It was dark. The blue roof-lights of the police raked their faces. Everything about the moment conspired time keep them silent: the death of stars in the East where the sun prepared to rise out of Tucson eighty miles away, the deep emptiness of the pre-dawn heavens, the imperious stupor of the Arizona State Prison Complex across the road and over the squad cars parked in its shoulder and beyond a cultivated field of cotton, its sand-colored structures on fire with the orange light of numberless sodium arc-lamps, and over all of the dawn of execution day, the desert night’s dry foreboding, the negligent powerful breath of the day’s coming heat, the heat that burns away each shadow and incinerates every last particle of shit inside the heart. But at the hours it was still cool—in their hands some of these people cradled styrofoam cups of steam.”
This is a book about Angels falling and rising—in that order. This is a book about redemption and forgiveness and it’s relationship to death. My copy is published by vintage contemporaries. The publisher could not be more appropriate. Angles was published in the eighties, but its content is contemporary. Its complexities are our complexities.
Here are some words from Johnson:
“The Highway Patrol kept the prison side of Route 89 clear of the seekers and desirers, the ones who had to be there, the ones who sought to know. But the dirt margin of the road in the town side was lined with campers and motorcycle and trucks, with their owners and the children and families of the owners, who placed their forearms and elbows on these machines and leaned on them quietly for support during the vigil. It was dark. The blue roof-lights of the police raked their faces. Everything about the moment conspired time keep them silent: the death of stars in the East where the sun prepared to rise out of Tucson eighty miles away, the deep emptiness of the pre-dawn heavens, the imperious stupor of the Arizona State Prison Complex across the road and over the squad cars parked in its shoulder and beyond a cultivated field of cotton, its sand-colored structures on fire with the orange light of numberless sodium arc-lamps, and over all of the dawn of execution day, the desert night’s dry foreboding, the negligent powerful breath of the day’s coming heat, the heat that burns away each shadow and incinerates every last particle of shit inside the heart. But at the hours it was still cool—in their hands some of these people cradled styrofoam cups of steam.”
May 11, 2020
Wow, I wasn't expecting to love this. Picked it up because it was recommended by David Foster Wallace.
It starts off with two of the main characters meeting on a greyhound bus - Jamie with her daughters running away from her husband and Bill Houston who's a drifter full of swagger and getting by on petty crimes. They both weave in and out of each other's lives. Later on in the book, Denis introduces many other characters from Bill's family and I did not expect to grow so fond of them all. Don't get me wrong, none of the characters have any redeeming qualities. They don't have much going for them other than poverty, drugs and alcohol. They make very poor choices. They're nobodies.
Bill and his brothers get involved in a get-rich-quick scheme and that's when things take a turn for the worse.
Denis poses his characters to be just what they are. Nothing more, nothing less. The NY Times called Angels "a terrifying book, a mixture of poetry and obscenity." This is his first novel, having only published poetry prior to this.
At just over 200 pages, this book packs a bigger punch than many of the fatter books living on the bookshelf. I would recommend this book, but it's upto you to decide if you can handle it.
It starts off with two of the main characters meeting on a greyhound bus - Jamie with her daughters running away from her husband and Bill Houston who's a drifter full of swagger and getting by on petty crimes. They both weave in and out of each other's lives. Later on in the book, Denis introduces many other characters from Bill's family and I did not expect to grow so fond of them all. Don't get me wrong, none of the characters have any redeeming qualities. They don't have much going for them other than poverty, drugs and alcohol. They make very poor choices. They're nobodies.
Bill and his brothers get involved in a get-rich-quick scheme and that's when things take a turn for the worse.
Denis poses his characters to be just what they are. Nothing more, nothing less. The NY Times called Angels "a terrifying book, a mixture of poetry and obscenity." This is his first novel, having only published poetry prior to this.
At just over 200 pages, this book packs a bigger punch than many of the fatter books living on the bookshelf. I would recommend this book, but it's upto you to decide if you can handle it.
February 14, 2014
This was a great first novel and, considering it was published in 1977, it is was a remarkable achievement. The 3 brothers in crime and their misanthropic parents were nicely done and the bleakness factor was very high (especially for 1977). The characters jumped around a bit too much to keep the narrative, but the ill-conceived robbery was tragically comic. The psychotic breakdown of the girl was almost too much to take, but creatively rendered to its logical disgusting end. I was nauseous about 3/4 through the book, but the finale in the Arizona prison was calming and beautfiul in its reconciliation with the inevitable. The politics of the time were reminiscient of Gary Gilmore and the author was a "teacher" in an Arizona prison so he knew his subject matter. Overall Johnson is a very talented writer and I'll read up his later work to see how it matures.
October 17, 2020
Οι "Άγγελοι" του Τζόνσον δεν είναι ακριβώς άγγελοι αν και προς το τέλος του βιβλίου έχουν κάτι αγγελικό πάνω τους, λόγω της αισιοδοξίας με την οποία ατενίζουν το μέλλον. Είναι άνθρωποι κατατρεγμένοι, το λεγόμενο white trash, που ζουν, όχι ακριβώς στο περιθώριο αλλά κάπου εκεί ανάμεσα: γιατί θα μπορούσανε να γίνουν καλύτεροι αλλά οι αδυναμίες τους δεν τους αφήνουν. Και ο Τζόνσον σκιαγραφεί γλαφυρά αυτή την πραγματικότητα με απλή πρόζα που όμως είναι αρκετή για να απεικονίσει την σκληρή πραγματικότητα. Το βιβλίο είναι αρκετά δυνατό, με συναίσθημα χωρίς όμως να γίνεται γελοίο και αναδεικνύει το συγγραφικό ταλέντο του Τζόνσον.
May 25, 2015
Drogados. Bêbedos. Ladrões. Violadores. Assassinos.
Viagens de autocarro. Hotéis miseráveis. Prisões. Manicómios.
Marginais...
Com este "pacote" abandono qualquer livro às primeiras páginas (não por preconceito, mas por desinteresse), mas Denis Johnson não mo permitiu.
Não gostava das personagens nem do que faziam mas fiquei; prisioneira da escrita e fascinada com a forma como Denis Johnson transforma o horror numa obra de arte.
Não é um livro para guardar no coração, mas valeu a pena...aquele final...
Viagens de autocarro. Hotéis miseráveis. Prisões. Manicómios.
Marginais...
Com este "pacote" abandono qualquer livro às primeiras páginas (não por preconceito, mas por desinteresse), mas Denis Johnson não mo permitiu.
Não gostava das personagens nem do que faziam mas fiquei; prisioneira da escrita e fascinada com a forma como Denis Johnson transforma o horror numa obra de arte.
Não é um livro para guardar no coração, mas valeu a pena...aquele final...
October 9, 2023
In the words of Gwen Stefani: “This shit is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.”
This is the kind of book no mainstream publisher today would touch with a ten-foot pole. What’s in these pages contains stuff that is bound to offend someone (myself included), but I don’t care about all of that. Johnson had a clear vision and he went for it and he committed to it. This story is about the downtrodden and the “lowlifes.” The book is far from PC, but sometimes great literature has to offend once in a while.
Johnson’s works always contain compelling antiheroes (that’s his jam), but this debut novel may have taken it to a whole new level. I call this the “ultimate book on people who keep on making bad decisions.”
At first we meet Jamie and Bill, two ultimate screwups, who happen to meet on a Greyhound bus. These two loners make a connection and have no idea that this destined meeting will lead down a further path of destruction and danger. Jamie has walked out on her abusive husband with her two young daughters in tow. Bill has been married three times, a restless soul with an ongoing flirtation with crime. These two meet and we immediately figure out that nothing good can come from it.
There’s an early vibe in the book that lets you know that this ain’t going to be a book with a happy ending. This insistence on being in each other's lives, is going to be the downfall of Jamie and Bill and everyone around them. These characters, including all of the side characters, are more than rough around the edges; for most of us they’re the type of people we make sure to steer clear off. But Johnson doesn’t paint them as caricatures or cliches. We may not agree with their bad decisions/rationales, but we can empathize with them. And more importantly, we feel we understand them or at least where they’re coming from.
Johnson also enhances this story with his off-kilter prose. The way he can spin a sentence is like no other. I don’t know how he continues to do it, but his prose contains an unsettling vibe on its own.
The last 10 pages were absolutely masterful; so moving and so unbelievably gut-wrenching. It left me both tingling and numb (how does that work?). This novel was a ferocious ride that never once took its foot off the gas pedal. It’s violent, it’s troubling, it’s maddening, brutal and unforgiving. ANGELS is a monster “literally,” figuratively, intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.
This is the kind of book no mainstream publisher today would touch with a ten-foot pole. What’s in these pages contains stuff that is bound to offend someone (myself included), but I don’t care about all of that. Johnson had a clear vision and he went for it and he committed to it. This story is about the downtrodden and the “lowlifes.” The book is far from PC, but sometimes great literature has to offend once in a while.
Johnson’s works always contain compelling antiheroes (that’s his jam), but this debut novel may have taken it to a whole new level. I call this the “ultimate book on people who keep on making bad decisions.”
At first we meet Jamie and Bill, two ultimate screwups, who happen to meet on a Greyhound bus. These two loners make a connection and have no idea that this destined meeting will lead down a further path of destruction and danger. Jamie has walked out on her abusive husband with her two young daughters in tow. Bill has been married three times, a restless soul with an ongoing flirtation with crime. These two meet and we immediately figure out that nothing good can come from it.
There’s an early vibe in the book that lets you know that this ain’t going to be a book with a happy ending. This insistence on being in each other's lives, is going to be the downfall of Jamie and Bill and everyone around them. These characters, including all of the side characters, are more than rough around the edges; for most of us they’re the type of people we make sure to steer clear off. But Johnson doesn’t paint them as caricatures or cliches. We may not agree with their bad decisions/rationales, but we can empathize with them. And more importantly, we feel we understand them or at least where they’re coming from.
Johnson also enhances this story with his off-kilter prose. The way he can spin a sentence is like no other. I don’t know how he continues to do it, but his prose contains an unsettling vibe on its own.
The last 10 pages were absolutely masterful; so moving and so unbelievably gut-wrenching. It left me both tingling and numb (how does that work?). This novel was a ferocious ride that never once took its foot off the gas pedal. It’s violent, it’s troubling, it’s maddening, brutal and unforgiving. ANGELS is a monster “literally,” figuratively, intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.
June 22, 2017
Very occasionally I come across a book that has such an impact on me that I wonder how could it have taken so long for me to discover and read it. Sadly also, it was because of Denis Johnson's recent death that I uncovered it, from the forum in the TLS of The Guardian. In there a contributor wrote that it was more powerful than Train Dreams, and I was hooked in - how could it be?
The story is about Bill Houston, an ex-con living on his wits and petty crime in Chicago dreaming of the criminal big time when the novel begins. On a Greyhound bus he meets Jamie who with her two young daughters is escaping Oakland and her husband. They team up, and as nothing is going their way in Chicago they move to Phoenix where Bill's family are based. Johnson spends a wonderful few passages describing Bill's mother and his brothers. His life in Phoenix soon mirrors the Chicago days, until he and his brothers come up with a plan to get rich quick.
Johnson's writing of the harshness of life for Bill and the people he mixes with is extremely powerful. This is what I would call classic US noir. I have enjoyed similarly well-written books by Willy Vlautin, Joe Lansdale, Donald Ray Pollock, Jim Thompson and Urban Waite. First published in 1983, this was Johnson's first novel. An impressive start, though I recognise this is not for everyone. It is bleak and brutal with few if any lighter moments.
"As you stare into the vackyoom of his eyes. How does it feel." Poignantly Dylan plays on the radio in one of the novel's key scenes.
The story is about Bill Houston, an ex-con living on his wits and petty crime in Chicago dreaming of the criminal big time when the novel begins. On a Greyhound bus he meets Jamie who with her two young daughters is escaping Oakland and her husband. They team up, and as nothing is going their way in Chicago they move to Phoenix where Bill's family are based. Johnson spends a wonderful few passages describing Bill's mother and his brothers. His life in Phoenix soon mirrors the Chicago days, until he and his brothers come up with a plan to get rich quick.
Johnson's writing of the harshness of life for Bill and the people he mixes with is extremely powerful. This is what I would call classic US noir. I have enjoyed similarly well-written books by Willy Vlautin, Joe Lansdale, Donald Ray Pollock, Jim Thompson and Urban Waite. First published in 1983, this was Johnson's first novel. An impressive start, though I recognise this is not for everyone. It is bleak and brutal with few if any lighter moments.
"As you stare into the vackyoom of his eyes. How does it feel." Poignantly Dylan plays on the radio in one of the novel's key scenes.
January 25, 2016
Denis Johnson is a terrific writer and it is unfortunate that his masterpiece, "Angels", is overshadowed by 'Jesus' Son" - they are both splendid novels, but for me nothing beats the way this novel gets inside and tears you apart and it is subtle and sneaky about it. The story contains a group of misfits each one stuck in their own self-made prisons, either by addiction or childbirth or both, and the reader cannot help but feel she is looking over a great manmade rat maze with no end but death for the participating creatures that cannot see outside of the walls society, family, and their own choices, even without free will, have erected to make sure they never see another world, another way of being. The book comments on several important topics with great care, wisdom, and zero judgement: addiction, free will, capital punishment, motherhood, religion, rape, and the invisible traps set by families . . .
"Angels" is a short novel but nonetheless holds more within its covers than most door-stopper books. Denis Johnson is a writer of immense skill with a large, warm heart that tries to see the best in a world the seems to be conspiring against humanity. His works should be read and cherished even if one believes this optimistic line of thinking to be deluded.
"Angels" is a short novel but nonetheless holds more within its covers than most door-stopper books. Denis Johnson is a writer of immense skill with a large, warm heart that tries to see the best in a world the seems to be conspiring against humanity. His works should be read and cherished even if one believes this optimistic line of thinking to be deluded.
October 13, 2021
A novel of extraordinary power rendered in exquisite, muscular prose. It's incredibly bleak and often disturbing. But it's phenomenally well written and has one of the most emotionally distressing endings I've ever read. It's not often I shed tears at books but this one did it at the end.
Denis Johnson was a master craftsman who belongs on the same shelf with Cormac McCarthy and Donald Ray Pollock.
Denis Johnson was a master craftsman who belongs on the same shelf with Cormac McCarthy and Donald Ray Pollock.
December 13, 2022
Πρόζα εκπληκτικής δύναμης, για το περιθώριο, για ανθρώπους νικημένους (;), που οι ευκαιρίες τους πνίγηκαν σαν γατάκια που δεν τα ήθελε κανείς, για έναν κόσμο που γνωρίζει από πολύ κοντά
March 30, 2018
deliriously good
He got up and went to the counter. "One small order of French fries," he told the boy. They were the only customers in the establishment, and so the boy hustled to fill the order, rocketing around in his very own fast food universe, a tiny world half machine and half meat.
He got up and went to the counter. "One small order of French fries," he told the boy. They were the only customers in the establishment, and so the boy hustled to fill the order, rocketing around in his very own fast food universe, a tiny world half machine and half meat.
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