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Rating: 
Summary: poetesque
Review: Denis Johnson is one of our most talented writers and poets today. He may be underrated, and younger writers like Rick Moody overrated. Johnson is able to get to the soul of matters, to the loneliness that inflicts his protagonists, to an almost Pynchonesque far-fetched series of events that bring novelty to this work--and all using readable prose, evocative images, and unfailing dailogue that strike me, at least, as authentic. Goobers. This man's for us and generations to come.
Rating:
Summary: poetesque
Review: It seems unlikely that anyone affluent and successful, or, to use a borrowed phrase, comfortable and powerless, would go in search of anything. Therefore Denis Johnson depicts characters in need, whose only true choices lie in how to fail, and they search endlessly for things, things as disparate as their own souls, meaning in the world, the love of another human being, a sensible ordering of their own thoughts. Their quests bear the taint of madness and of poetry - it is not surprising that they, his protagonists, not least Lenny English in this novel, cultivate ecstatic relationships with their gods, for such relationships blur all to readily into madness.
*
First and foremost Johnson is a poet. He prises moments and emotions from the depths of ordinariness and sets them wet and gleaming before our eyes. He gives us an insight into a human mind, its particular way of seeing (and avoiding) the world. Consequently, plot is of secondary importance, yet nevertheless this tale has twists and surprises enough to carry the reader steadily along, calmly swimming through events while waiting for the next unsettling insight, the next beautiful passage of prose.
*
It's also very funny. The humour can come from absurdity, or just from his ear for smart...conversation. He's read Kerouac and moved a long way on from there. In fact, Johnson is plain better than Kerouac.
*
If you like literature, then this novel is essential, as is Johnson's poetry, collected in "The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millenium General Assembly", and his short story collection "Jesus' Son".
*
It's interesting to compare what he's doing with the projects of other, perhaps more feted, contemporary American authors - say, Richard Powers or Don Delillo. For mine, Johnson has fathomed his own soul far deeper than either of these men, and he is not ashamed to expose himself, and he has sharpened his means of so doing. In contrast, Delillo's characters appear soulless, hiding from themselves and his readers; Powers presents people in fractions, their shiny sides open for view, with sneaky peeks at their libidos, and their darker sides miraculously forgotten or rationalised - both these writers of encyclopedic fiction feel almost cowardly when set beside Johnson's work, and neither of them can tell a joke; their prose is often laboured and stupidly erudite, with no hope of attaining the grace of Johnson's, yet their books are without doubt amongst the best being written today. So how good does that make Johnson? Most probably he is a god-forsaken genius. More people need to know about him. For the sake of the world, read his books and spread the word.
Rating:
Summary: The magical talent of a born poet
Review: It seems unlikely that anyone affluent and successful, or, to use a borrowed phrase, comfortable and powerless, would go in search of anything. Therefore Denis Johnson depicts characters in need, whose only true choices lie in how to fail, and they search endlessly for things, things as disparate as their own souls, meaning in the world, the love of another human being, a sensible ordering of their own thoughts. Their quests bear the taint of madness and of poetry - it is not surprising that they, his protagonists, not least Lenny English in this novel, cultivate ecstatic relationships with their gods, for such relationships blur all to readily into madness.
*
First and foremost Johnson is a poet. He prises moments and emotions from the depths of ordinariness and sets them wet and gleaming before our eyes. He gives us an insight into a human mind, its particular way of seeing (and avoiding) the world. Consequently, plot is of secondary importance, yet nevertheless this tale has twists and surprises enough to carry the reader steadily along, calmly swimming through events while waiting for the next unsettling insight, the next beautiful passage of prose.
*
It's also very funny. The humour can come from absurdity, or just from his ear for smart...conversation. He's read Kerouac and moved a long way on from there. In fact, Johnson is plain better than Kerouac.
*
If you like literature, then this novel is essential, as is Johnson's poetry, collected in "The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millenium General Assembly", and his short story collection "Jesus' Son".
*
It's interesting to compare what he's doing with the projects of other, perhaps more feted, contemporary American authors - say, Richard Powers or Don Delillo. For mine, Johnson has fathomed his own soul far deeper than either of these men, and he is not ashamed to expose himself, and he has sharpened his means of so doing. In contrast, Delillo's characters appear soulless, hiding from themselves and his readers; Powers presents people in fractions, their shiny sides open for view, with sneaky peeks at their libidos, and their darker sides miraculously forgotten or rationalised - both these writers of encyclopedic fiction feel almost cowardly when set beside Johnson's work, and neither of them can tell a joke; their prose is often laboured and stupidly erudite, with no hope of attaining the grace of Johnson's, yet their books are without doubt amongst the best being written today. So how good does that make Johnson? Most probably he is a god-forsaken genius. More people need to know about him. For the sake of the world, read his books and spread the word.
Rating: 
Summary: sometimes the paranoid are right
Review: Like _The Stars At Noon_, which I recently finished, this novel follows its protagonist on a descending spiral. While _The Stars_ was told entirely from the point of view of one of the more unreliable narrators in contemporary American literature, _Hanged Man_ reveals more by having important truths come out in the course of conversations between characters (as compared to _Stars_, where conversations were determinedly non-informative).Leonard English is haunted by a failed attempt at suicide. He has been left in limbo, feeling closer to god, further from life and not the least bit closer to any kind of truth. You become aware of his descent into paranoid delusion by other people's reactions to him because his own internal dialogue continues to make a sad sort of sense. He pursues the truth about the Truth Infantry, a missing artist and his girlfriend's sexuality with distracted doggedness. Many of the connections that he makes between the facts are borne out by information that is revealed to the reader and to Lenny, but that Lenny fails to share in any coherent way with anyone else. The consequences are not good. The prose in this book is unfailingly gorgeous. Denis Johnson has managed to get down on paper all those impressions that we have of the world around us when we are feeling terrible in that way that makes everything vivid, inter-related, menacing and beautiful.
Rating:
Summary: sometimes the paranoid are right
Review: Like _The Stars At Noon_, which I recently finished, this novel follows its protagonist on a descending spiral. While _The Stars_ was told entirely from the point of view of one of the more unreliable narrators in contemporary American literature, _Hanged Man_ reveals more by having important truths come out in the course of conversations between characters (as compared to _Stars_, where conversations were determinedly non-informative). Leonard English is haunted by a failed attempt at suicide. He has been left in limbo, feeling closer to god, further from life and not the least bit closer to any kind of truth. You become aware of his descent into paranoid delusion by other people's reactions to him because his own internal dialogue continues to make a sad sort of sense. He pursues the truth about the Truth Infantry, a missing artist and his girlfriend's sexuality with distracted doggedness. Many of the connections that he makes between the facts are borne out by information that is revealed to the reader and to Lenny, but that Lenny fails to share in any coherent way with anyone else. The consequences are not good. The prose in this book is unfailingly gorgeous. Denis Johnson has managed to get down on paper all those impressions that we have of the world around us when we are feeling terrible in that way that makes everything vivid, inter-related, menacing and beautiful.
Rating:
Summary: Cross-dressing psycho-sleuth assassin wannabe in search of
Review: The ostensible protagonist English is a sad case. Haunted by guilt over having been uncommunicative to his dead parents and not having "served" as a Vietnam vet he is desperate for love and connectedness in any way. His dike hotel "girlfriend" Leanna is his guardian angel. Cross-dressing and attending confession cleanse English spiritually. After he ends up in prison following his lame assassination attempt on Bishop Andrew his soul has been purged but his body still empty. He desperately tries to fill it with the prison industrial white bread, beef gravy and instant potatoes where more and more is never enough. We are all universal conspirators in English's plight only differing in our degrees of perception. A book like this makes me wonder if I'll ever find a fluffy best-seller "interesting" reading anymore.
Rating:
Summary: Strange, but good
Review: This novel is quite bizzare. Not just garden-variety modernist bizzare, either. Odd things happen. Nothing is predictable; problems are solved in the most impossible ways, and relationships undergo incredible, unbelievable contortions - I can't explain why it works, but after closing it, and after blinking a couple of time and thinking _Boy_ was that weird, I had a sense of having finished something very profound. I think that for once Denis Johnson is completley on top of his game. He's incredibly talented, and he always displays that talent, but his other novels sometimes take _effort_ to appreciate - if you know what I mean - but here, you really have the sense that he knows more than you, that he's holding all the cards, that he knows exactly where the story is going and what effect he wants it to have on you. I think the fact that he could make a cohesive story around such a group of oddballs with such an outrageous plot is testament enough to his ability, but it's also a very good read. That said, it is really, really bizzare, and doesn't _settle_ easily - which I guess is the point, since the vision it holds out is one without much comfort and with a great deal of horror and grotesquery - but I generally prefer books which are at least somewhat more human.
Rating:
Summary: This was a great book
Review: This was a great book, I liked it much better than "Angels" which most people think is Johnson's great novel. This book is quirky and wonderful, the absurdities in the book help to illustrate the serious, underlying themes.
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