Johnson, Denis. Jesus' Son. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993.

This is a reread, though it's been a good six years or so since I read it. I have to teach this book in two weeks, and I'm not too certain what-all I'll have to talk about in four 75-minute sessions. One I guess will be the reliability of the narrator, who spends at least half the book (which itself seems wrong to say, as chronology doesn't really work; the linked stories work actively against a temporal sequence...something else to discuss, I guess) high, and so we're never really able to know what's going on.

If there's one thing Denis Johnson does (and does well, I think) in these stories is end them with quick and dramatic turns. His final paragraphs work almost like voltas in sonnets. Sometimes they fold back in on the story, like the end of "Car Crash While Hitchhiking":

It was raining. Gigantic ferns leaned over us. The forest drifted down a hill. I could hear a creek rushing down among rocks. And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.

And sometimes the push the story to what I want to call an inarticulately profound meaning, as in "The Other Man":

First I put my lips to her upper lip, then to the bottom of her pout, and then I kissed her fully, my mouth on her open mouth, and we met inside.

It was there. It was. The long walk down the hall. The door opening. The beautiful stranger. The torn moon mended. Our fingers touching away the tears. It was there.

If I want to argue, though, that this ending pushes for meaning, I should probably try to figure out what that meaning might be. Any ideas? We've got two weeks to figure it out.