Last Encounter with the Enemy (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction) [Paperback]

Greg Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 2004 | Series: Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction

Greg Johnson's latest collection of stories offers insights both subtle and startling into the workings of the human heart, from a child's-eye view of marital strife and a thoughtless betrayal of first love to the expansive reveries of complicated, conflicted adults looking ahead to new lives or back on past missteps and misfortunes. Johnson also delves into his literary roots with tales of imaginary encounters with Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, and Flannery O'Connor -- who, in the title story, engages in a fierce battle of wills with a precocious eleven-year-old boy. Through it all, Johnson demonstrates his gift for describing that telling detail -- a sentence, a gesture, a memory -- that instantly reveals a personality, as if illuminated by lightning.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"His best fiction gets under your skin, with ordinary situations that quickly slip into the uncanny, and low-voiced prose that packs quite an emotional punch." -- Diane Roberts, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Greg Johnson has the gift of transportation. Readers of Last Encounter with the Enemy will find themselves transported in time, place, and character... Though sometimes heartbreaking, each story in this collection is truly gratifying to read and experience. Last Encounter with the Enemy is a true pleasure trip." -- Amy Miller, Anniston Star

Review

"He rings a hundred changes on the emotional issues with which he deals, keeping them always interesting, always mysterious, changing and evolving before our eyes." -- Pinckney Benedict, Chicago Tribune Book World, reviewing a previous edition or volume

"Johnson's resonant short stories represent regional writing in the best sense of the term: The unique atmosphere and sensibilities of the author's native South color his prose, imbuing it with a special vitality." -- Charles Solomon, Los Angeles Times, reviewing a previous edition or volume

"Johnson offers keen observations on contemporary life." -- Elizabeth Ferber, New York Times, reviewing a previous edition or volume

"Johnson is a gifted storyteller and interpreter of the ties that bind -- in every sense of the word." -- Cathy High, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reviewing a previous edition or volume

"Johnson's prose is polished, penetrating, understated... [He is] an expert navigator of the human heart in all its vagaries." -- Michael Upchurch, San Francisco Chronicle, reviewing a previous edition or volume

"Johnson writes with... winning flair and affecting poignancy." -- Publishers Weekly, reviewing a previous edition or volume

"Johnson [is] among the best of his contemporaries. His masterful development of character and richness and preciseness of description bespeaks art and not artifice." -- Library Journal, reviewing a previous edition or volume

"Johnson is a storyteller of extraordinary gifts, not least of all an athlete's grace in making difficult tasks appear effortless." -- Bernard Welt, Washington Post Book World, reviewing a previous edition or volume

"Greg Johnson is clearly a writer to be taken seriously. He owns a keen eye for detail... is deftly ironic and highly literate." -- Chris Tucker, Dallas Morning News, reviewing a previous edition or volume

"Greg Johnson writes with uncommon clarity and beauty about the many faces of love and the price of living honestly and flat-out." -- Anne Rivers Siddons, New York Times Book Review, reviewing a previous edition or volume

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (March 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801878829
• ISBN-13: 978-0801878824
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,276,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing encounters with fate, face to face, January 15, 2007

By 

Warren Keith Wright - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Last Encounter with the Enemy (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction) (Paperback)

Greg Johnson's stories do what good stories should---pull you so totally into another time, place, and situation that the "real" world disappears. But they could not be less escapist. These people have a rough time, dealing with absent parents, mistaken relationships, sundered marriages, and surprise deaths. Some are granted momentary insights ("Marina," "The Reliquary"); some see too clearly the fates they consign themselves to ("Huswifery," "The Chinese Box"). But others triumph in their chosen destinies ("Graveyard Days," "The Haunted Woman"), or actually contrive an escape, such as the "Anonymous Girl," or the widow beset by what seems "The Poltergeist" of her dead younger husband---yet whose rational "solution" perhaps does not cover all the manifestations she endures.

The title story ingeniously honors the writer called "the peacock lady" by re-imagining her signature tropes---quirky keenly-observed characters, dramatic shifts of viewpoint, a burst of unforeseen violence---while being highly entertaining in its own right. One almost expects Flannery O'Connor's obnoxiously precocious visitor, an eleven-year-old towheaded boy, to be unmasked as a time-shifted Truman Capote---until he starts talking. (No wonder Johnson was named Georgia Writer of the Year not once, but twice.) Readers versed in Sylvia Plath will recognize the title "Double Exposure," and find, in this uncanny summoning of times past, "the rising of the dead almost painful." The words are those of Virginia Woolf, subject of an impish jeu d'esprit set during a car ride in 1936---in contrast to "First Surmise," which recounts a carriage drive with Emily Dickinson, whose progress proves eternal.

The two most striking tales portray quite different women. "Bitch" is the unspoken noun Miriam Freeman will not assign herself, depicted with brilliant hysteria while she Christmas shops for in-laws she loathes. And what on earth did Barbara Weston's husband mean by his dying word, "Oahu"? She prides herself on knowing, until a chance meeting at his gravesite rips certainty away. The cogent empathy and wit of these fourteen intense investigations leave one's vision widened and sharpened. Make this collection your first encounter with Greg Johnson's fiction, and it will not be the last.