Customer Reviews

Already Dead: A California Gothic

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Having read and enjoyed Denis Johnson's collection of loosely connected short stories, "Jesus' Son," I was excited to find a remaindered copy of his novel, "Already Dead" at the bookstore. I had pegged Johnson as a minimalist on the basis of "Jesus' Son," a relatively quick read, but this more recent offering ran to over 430 pages. It took some hundred pages to get a handle on the plot, but once the expository smoke had cleared and I had acclimated myself to Johnson's cast of quirky characters, the book began to take hold of my imagination. The story involves a young man, Nelson Fairchild, the scion of a wealthy North California family, who makes a pact with the "devil" (in the form of a suicidal but otherwise underdrawn phantom named Carl Van Ness) to kill his wife, Winona, who stands between him and his inheritance. Other characters, including John Navarro, a police officer transplanted from the killing fields of L.A. to bucolic coastal Northern California, and Clarence Meadows, Fairchild's partner in a marijauna farm, weave in and out of the narrative haze, but with limited impact on the reader. The conclusion is less than satisfying, but I remain impressed by Johnson himself. As a stylist he demonstrates an uncanny grasp of contemporary idiom, which includes a killer vocabulary (he added both "jactitation" and "trigetour" to my humble lexicon). "Already Dead" appears to owe something to another author whose locus is the American West Coast, Ken Kesey, in the epic sense of "Sometimes a Great Notion" and in the surreal, stream-of-consciousness of both that novel and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Kesey's muse burned out early; I hope that Johnson will continue to develop as an artist, next time in the service of a more powerful story.

I had no intention of writing anything about this book - having just finished it I wondered what others thought of it. The two short bewilderingly negative reviews of this book surprised me, but notice that they had little to back up their view. Even the person who loaned me this book did not think it was great, and while it was certainly not as impressive as Jesus' Son (which stunned me in its brevity and impact), it held my attention throughout, even, as another reviewer wrote, you knew - to some degree - what would happen. Hell, just read the title and you know what'll happen. Perhaps the fact this book requires a bit of effort from the reader is what put off the reviewers that gave it such a low rating. But what good book doesn't? Yes, the chgaracters are in various states of mental crisis, alcohol and drug effects and after-effects, and real and imagined paranoia; so when do those ingredients make for bad noir? Johnson allowed me to feel different ways about the characters throughout the book depending on who described them, including one who appears for only a few pages (and a bit later as first a lifeless corpse and then a slightly less lifeless one) and another who never appears at all, which makes me wonder if ALL of the characters' take on that guy is completely off-base. There's dialogue worthy of the better bits of McGuane, long rambling letters that read with great panic fever, and hilarious bits about Nietzsche, who should always be good for a laugh, but is seldom used to excellent effect. More spiritual than Angels, and longer than Jesus' Son, if you love the way Johnson writes than the more the better.

I, too, am bewildered, and more than a little amused, by the dismissive (and ultimately insubstantial) negative comments of other readers. How can one read this book and not be impressed? Agreed, this was not Johnson's best work, but it should be obvious to any thoughtful reader that this is a gifted writer, and that this novel--like each of Johnson's in its own way--is unique and thought-provoking and, yes, compelling. Those who are "bored" with this novel should probably not tax their poor brain cells too much. For them, a little friendly advice: Stick to Grisham or Clancy. "Already Dead" is neither "Jesus' Son" nor "Angels" nor "Fiskadoro"--but then, asking him to repeatedly crank out more of the same is a little like complaining that Dylan refuses to keep re-writing "Like a Rolling Stone." Johnson takes huge risks with each outing and obviously intentionally avoids the mainstream--and admittedly this novel is not perfect. But it undoubtedly ranks among the top five or six literary works of 1997-98. An excellent work: simultaneously funny, bizarre, stunning, off-beat, and hallucinatory--in other words, typical Johnson.

When I read this book I found myself desperately feeling like my life resembled it far far more closely than I would have liked. Already Dead is a haunting and horrible journey where the sickening downward spiral of Nelson Fairchild's inner life is mirrored in his northern California community. Maybe it's more than that, maybe it's even that somehow Fairchild, through his possibly demonic counterpart Carl Van Ness, is at the center of this spiritual gyre that engulfs the whole coast. I don't think it's a coincidence that Van Ness's attempted suicide, which acts as a catalyst for all the later action in the book, is a drowning. The whole thing is like being pulled slowly but steadliy from beneath in a deep pool of your own cerebral juices; you can feel yourself pulling more and more of that sour liquid into your lungs as you read. So, while that might not sound like much of a reccommendation, I think any book that can make you feel that way, must be a great book. The aforementioned experience while not necessarily plesant, is not bereft of a certain ammount of humor or bemeusment as might be expected with your life flashing before your eyes; life is, after all, funny stuff. There's no denying that Already Dead is dark, that it's hard, that it does make you feel sort of dead, but it also sharpens the senses and gives a thread of clarity about what is eternal and vital; it helps you see what makes life worth the living. It does that in a very twisted way of course, but really, this is Denis Johnson, what else did we expect.

I read this book for the first time ages ago, during the year that my book THE YEAR OF YES takes place. My male roommate (and sometime crush) threw it at me and yelled "Oh My God! It's The Best Book I've Ever Read!"

This made me both suspicious and intrigued. Zay often loves books I subsequently determine to be just too guy-ish for me. Big on the existentialists, and Beat poets, both of which I like, but in much smaller doses.

In any case. I opened Already Dead, and had a hard time, as other readers have said, for about the first 100 pages. Despite a whole lot of gorgeous writing, it took me forever to read. However. By the time I got to page 101, I found my entire brain reformatted into the universe of the book. To me, that means a book is definitely worth it. The book has a lot to do with altered states of consciousness - drug-related, paranoia related, blood-loss related and even witchcraft-related (it's a California gothic, after all, and there's a coven of blonde witches), and that's how you feel as you read it. Much has been made of Johnson's fantastic short story collection Jesus' Son, and it's deserved. Already Dead drops you deeper into Johnson's strange, wonderful, technicolor world. Just when you think you're going to drown, it sends down a rope to bring you up. Just the first paragraph...stunning.

''Van Ness felt a gladness and wonder as he drove past the small isolated towns along U.S. 101 in northern California, a certain interest, a yearning, because he sensed they were places a person could disappear into. They felt like little naps you might never wake up from -- you might throw a tire and hike to a gas station and stumble unexpectedly onto the rest of your life, the people who would finally mean something to you, a woman, an immortal friend, a saving fellowship in the religion of some obscure church."

It's fabulous. I mean, come on. There's a 6 foot nine inch tall guy named Frankenstein in this book, and his scene making love to the protagonist's tiny mistress is one I may never forget. I'd also recommend -in conjunction, if you'd like a few days of Northern California alternate lifestyle immersion - T.C. Boyle's Budding Prospects (Boyle is a brilliant writer. This isn't his best book, plot-wise getting a bit derailed, but it's absolutely worth a read, particularly in the company of Already Dead.)

Everything characteristic of Johnson is here - the poetic style, the originality, the brilliantly and efficiently sketched characters, the eccentric and engaging themes, the vision of transcendence - but it's just not a polished work. It's extremely long, meandering and often losing the thread of the plot; disturbed by meaningless shifts in the method of narration (from first to third person to retrospective documents), marred by far too much stream-of-consciousness rambling, such as a series of letters written by a lunatic which hold no interest at all; the characterization, also, doesn't feel concrete, and the most important characters (Van Ness in particular) have a weak presence in the narrative, and their motiviations are often unclear, while minor characters recieve huge amounts of attention and then are suddenly forgotten. The themes also seem a bit too overt at times, and Johnson verges on self-satire, in one episode in particular which bears a suspicious and unflattering resemblance to his earlier 'Angels,' and in another passage which annoyed me unreasonably, where he makes referrence to a specific album by the Violent Femmes, which seemed entirely personal and unrelatable.

I'd always wondered why his other novels were extremely short. This would explain it.

How can you not love a novel that contains the above line of dialogue? This is a staggering, intricate, hilarious work of fiction. Even the incidentals (Red the fat horse, Navarro's conversation with Doc Schooner in Nelson Senior's house, Clarence driving in the dust storm, the whole Whitehorn episode near the end) are both funny and moving. Me anyway, I was floored. By the way, I came across the Bill Knott poem that gives this novel its plot and it is a source of wonder to me to see how one gifted writer can both celebrate and extend the work of another. Already Dead is a book for the ages.

Denis Johnson gives us, in Already Dead, a fascinating look into the dark side of the human condition. Criminals. Land owners. Drifters. Cops. Three dogs. ... Denis Johnson attacks interesting questions with stylistic prose and subtle humor. The book is sometimes frightening. Sometimes scarey and always entertaining. The book is generally dark and explores our emotional and psychological darkness fearlessly.

If you might like a thriller that emphasizes literary brush-strokes and has a strong story then you may find this work to your liking. Those looking for quickly moving populist fiction may find it tedious, however... Johnson does tend to linger on the personal point of characterization.

I read, and re-read this book in the last year. After the first read, I was puzzled. How can one read a book so late into the night, when I should have been sleeping, so many times and not feel satisfied at the end. I found the answer in the second reading. The quality of Johnson's prose is astounding. Descriptions, metaphors, similes fighting eachother for supremecy page to page. I'm not a critic, so excuse me if I only sing this novel's praises.
'Already Dead' more than lives up to its title. Each character is doomed in one way or another. The privilege we have as readers is to absorb the mood, the nuance of the characters, the multi-demensional context and the quality of the writing.
This is a big book. It drags at times and while there will be moments when you will search in vain for a plot. But the story and the writing provides the will to finish this novel.
Neat and tidy? No.
Juicy plot? No. But such is life.

Not sure what Johnston was up to here. The similarities to Mailer's Tough Guys Don't Dance are huge: marijuana patches, seances, spirits, adultry, murder. Paying homage? Except the setting is the west coast instead of the east. The results are the same; is this the point? Really enjoyed it though. Amazing that he took more pages than Mailer!