Rating: 
Summary: Karma to Burn
Review: At first, one is tempted to dismiss this collection as the gritty, alcoholic meanderings of a cooler-than-thou creative writing major, too tragically hep for his own good. The stories are written in a snappy, jazzy, breezy tone of disaffected "groovyness," drug addicts, vagabonds, social degenerates, minor criminals wandering the precincts of disjointed narrative structures, bars, motels, buses, low-income housing, mental hospitals, the desert highway, the swampy styx. What one realizes as soon as Mr. Johnson's stories start to work on you is that the veneer of Kerouacian frivolity is a judicious literary illusion, that these tales are not only painstakingly constructed, but on an emotional level, absolutely precious, a literary godsend! Even if your own young adulthood *wasn't* a delinquent calamity of drug- and sex-addled hedonistic breakdown, one can't deny the humanity of these outsiders, who, having no recourse to art and expression, must content themselves with pushing the boundaries of self-centered depravity. The code of the streets bodies forth in a vicious circle of parasitic drug running and heroin addiction, gasoline dreams of motel hopping and girlfriend-beating, all hemmed in by the usual humdrum bursts of rage and senseless violence. The more ambitious stories, like "Beverly Home," seem to owe their madcap, quirky sexuality to the textured silliness of a Philip Roth (and happily so). In the latter story, a part-time hospital worker is paid to physically "touch" patients who, owing to deformity, disease, and terminal mental illness, need to be anchored into reality with some vestige of affection and caring. In the after-hours, the narrator is compelled to stare into the windows of a Christian Mennonite couple who live near his bus-stop, praying for the day their Bible College austerity will permit them to actually have intercourse, with bizarre and emotionally disjointing results. The other stories, some no longer than six pages, transport the reader to the dope-sick worlds of their narrators with an immediacy and economy of affect virtually unrivaled in American short fiction. Certainly this is a book that deserves to be read by all. A minor classic that I'll be flipping through for many years to come.
Rating:
Summary: Great, original stories; Quick to read
Review: Jesus' Son is a loosely-tied collection of short stories about the underside of the Mid- and Southwest. In most of them, the narrator is a strung-out twenty-something hospital worker who is either always looking for drugs, or hanging out with people who already found them.Johnson does a great job intermingling beautiful language with tales of drug-addled losers who constantly fail themselves at every turn. His narrator's voice (always first-person) is genuine and engaging, never condescending. Where other authors struggle with matching less-educated narrators with their own writing skills, Johnson thrives, allowing his narrator to use subtly profound images without seeming authorially over-bearing. Perhaps the book's greatest asset is its originality. No one else is writing about these people, and Johnson writes with the perspective of someone who has lived (grown?) among them. His portraits of hospital orderlies and back-country heroin addicts are windows on a world most readers will never approach, and that is exactly what books like this are for. You can't really ask for much more in a short story collection -- interesting characters, original plots and settings, and varied explorations of a few themes, all drawn with subtly careful language. In taking some settings that we all have unquestioned stereotypes about -- the midwest and hospitals, for example -- and scratching the surface, Johnson provides us with stories that almost *have* to be interesting. What happens when you follow someone home on the subway? What happens when you hide in some bushes, and watch a married couple eat dinner, every night? Johnson imagines some great answers to these questions. In this way, he seems to have something in common with AM Homes, who writes about similar situations involving well-to-do suburbanites. But Johnson trades the soccer moms for people who escape easy type-casting, and thus, are mostly forgotten and ignored. The book is an incredibly fast read -- you can probably get through the whole thing in about 2 1/2 hours, maybe less.
Rating:
Summary: Hello, Cowgirl in the Sand...
Review: That Denis Johnson chose such an unorthodox, non-linear strategy for his little book "Jesus' Son" is as much a testament to his genius as any of the often Dylan-esque prose-bites. Look at it this way: it may be said that every life becomes over time a jumbled series of unhinged recollections that change a little each time we use them; we suffer our decaying memories and willfully correct them like bad little children when we see something wrong with them. How much worse for the career junky? The sense of the absurd is strong here. The taut syle employed is reminiscent of Albert Camus' "The Stranger" and James M. Cain's "The Postman Always Rings Twice." I admire most spare, non-judgmental, unsentimental writing and try to write that way myself. When done right, the ring of truth is everywhere and if you're looking for Hemingway's "one true sentence," you'll find veins bursting with them in "Jesus' Son." Go for it.
Rating: 
Summary: beautiful---
Review: i actually read JESUS' SON after finishing Johnson's newest book THE NAME OF THE WORLD. i was instantly enthralled in the world that he presented- not too different from the world the beats presented years ago. i must admit that at times i had difficulty following the stories, but it really didn't bother me too much. the stories are so incredible yet so real- quite a task to accomplish..
Rating:
Summary: Brilliance in a haze.
Review: Denis Johnson did not let me put this collection of stories down. I myself being far from a normal reader was enthralled by this book. After seeing the film I knew that I had to make this purchase, and I am far from let down. The whimsical dialogue, and the poetic tangents between story points make this book. One should not pass this one up. Denis sums up American life, which the everyday man knows. Sweet tales that frightened me and drew me closer to the characters soul.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning and Cohesive Collection
Review: Easily the best collection of Short Stories I have every read. Denis Johnson writes with an intensity, sparseness, and fearlessness that is unmatched in American Fiction. These stories revolve around a degenerate cast of characters wallowing through the drug culture of the late 20th century -- BUT the spirituality contained therein ultimately is life confirming and serene . . . without ever being preachy. A book that will keep you alive . . .
Rating:
Summary: It begins and ends here.
Review: If you, like me, are tired of the predictable, unchallenging and sedative nature of most popular literature then I strongly encourage you to find and read "Jesus's Son". How could I possibly express what I feel about this collection and not come across as ludicrously overwrought? I reluctantly admit that even though I had heard wonderful things about it I hesitated to buy it, put off by it's diminutive size. What realized when I finally did buy it and read it was that it is neither a word too long or a word too short. The length is perfect. I read it over two days and on the third day I read it again from start to finish. I wondered, and still do, at how Johnson could do so much in such little time and with a simple approach. Each successive story strengthens the ones before it, and every one is at once amusing, disturbing, and moving. Those words are used often to describe mediocre material but "Jesus' Son" constantly provokes each of those reactions in a very palpable manner. The prose is so flawless as to seem simple but there is nothing simple about it, such perfection could only be the product of carefully executed inspiration and genius. Denis Johnson is the best writer in America today, "Jesus's Son" is his most important work.
Rating:
Summary: The most powerful short story collection I've read
Review: These are stories you read and xerox and send off to friends, breaking all sorts of copyright laws, staying up way too late, reading and reading and then thinking, wait, they got Ethan Hawke to play the lead? Whatever you do, read the book before you see the movie. Maybe Mr. Hawke will shock everybody and pull off the acting performance of his life, but this book will not translate onto the screen. Denis Johnson's language, street-smart and lyrical and fierce, cannot be replicated in another medium. There are moments in this books so strange and beautiful and hallucinatory (as when the cotton swabs in the emergency room begin crying for help), they make you want to grab the highlighter and begin marking. People write "hallucinatory" all the time in reviews, and usually I have no idea what they mean, but Jesus' Son truly is hallucinatory. No, more than that, it is revelatory. I think it's the most important short story book of our time. I'm jealous of you if you're about to read it for the first time.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful new voice in short fiction
Review: If you're a fan of Johnson's manic, drug-fueled poetry, you know that he leans toward the comically surreal. His short fiction offers more of the same, but with an added plus of real, believable, fallible characters doing the best they can with what they've got. I was once told by my creative writing teacher that there are only nine stories in the world. My teacher obviously had never read Denis Johnson. He offers eleven fresh, inventive stories, each a successful reinvention of the form. If you like the grittier side of Raymond Carver and Andre Dubus, or Thom Jones or Larry Brown's "Big Bad Love," you'll see "Jesus' Son" as a Godsend.
Rating:
Summary: Generally brilliant, if slightly imperfect.
Review: A loosely connected collection of stories about a drugged-out low-life and his buddies, "Jesus' Son" is not the kind of book I usually read myself to sleep with... but I can't deny that the author is enormously talented. The stories seem random and fragmented, but they do manage to add up to a coherent whole, and this elliptical quality, I think, largely accounts for the book's power. Johnson manages to say a lot about the strange mystery of life in these pages, where comedy and tragedy frequently collide, lightning can strike anyone at any moment, and even the doomed can be saved. Even so, the author sometimes strains too hard with his prose, which can be pretentiously "poetic." The stories are also a tad uneven in quality. Still, I'd recommend this book to any serious reader of fiction.
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