Angels: A Novel

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Summary: Powerful literature of the forlorn
Review: Beaten down and living for the moment, Denis Johnson's characters scrape out a wretched life of drugs and alcohol, pipe-dreams, and daydreams.

_Angels_ is a world of bus depots and scurrilous strangers, of people who can scarcely see past the haze of their cigarettes. It is a lonely world of randomness and drift. Some might say Johnson's characters aren't "3D", but that's because they're so richly flat. And when Johnson takes us into Jamie's descent into madness, it is a mind-bending trip.

Yet somehow, Johnson's writing left me exhilerated and happy. I enjoyed this book immensely and had trouble putting it down--I would rank it among the best I've read over the last five years.

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Summary: Not Quite Enough
Review: Denis Johnson is definitely worth reading, especially if you're looking to learn about writing. That said, my main concern with this book is that it sets things up and doesn't follow through completely. Bill Houston accidentally burns his hand playing with a lighter in the beginning of the book, this isn't mentioned after the fact. Jamie's descent into madness, while hinted at throughout the book, is about as well drawn as cheesy wallpaper. Jamie's kids are only present when it's convenient for them to be and are conspicuously absent, with no explanation of their location, the rest of the time. Where Denis Johnson has good ideas in this book, In "Angels", he rarely has a sufficient follow-through to keep pace with his imagination.

However, the quality of writing is phenomenal. Examining the work on a sentence-by-sentence level shows that it's the product of an artist well versed in the fineness and nuances of the craft.

Perhaps one of fiction's greatest duties is to open the eyes of the reader to other ways of life. "Angels" does that, and in abundance. It takes the reader through a novel filled with characters who run from their past, who are religious fundamentalists mixed with true-believer style mysticists, and winds everything up in a highly emotional end which speaks to the faults of human nature while highlighting the goodness humanity also contains. The end of the book is, in and of itself, worth reading the entire text for.

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Summary: Flannery O'Connor was reincarnated as this man
Review: Johnson is one of our greatest and most underappreciated living authors (yes, underappreciated, even though he has been lavishly praised by critics). He isn't just capable of writing a good book or two, he's a classic talent, and it's obvious from his very first novel. Angels reads like an epic poem - every sentence is carefully weighed and effective, and a sense of character emerges even out of shattered impressions. The flawed characters are still somehow endearing, and the sense of dark and cryptic religion, from occultism to by-the-book Christianity, underpinned by Bob Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone,' is powerful. This book should be read and enjoyed; eventually, also, reprinted and remembered.

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Summary: Beautifully written, but not a masterpiece
Review: Johnson really is a great writer, and he does have a wonderful imagination, but there is one thing that - in the books of his that I've read - he consistently fails to do: he can never seem to create three-dimensional characters. He either settles for grotesques, or coasts on the beauty of his images and the poetry of his writing.

While this makes for a book that is well worth reading, it also makes Angels something of an unsatisfying read. The ending seems tacked on, the scenes of death and redemption (I won't go into it any more) don't really have any emotional weight, because I never really got to know the characters; they just seemed like random drifters - the traits that they did have were more suited for a movie screenplay, where every person only needs to have one characteristic - e.g. the cowardly brother. Several scenes, in fact, seemed to come straight from the movies - the crime that goes horribly wrong, for example. Sometimes, his prose redeems these rather predictable plot developments, but sometimes it seems like I'm watching a bunch of cardboard cutouts moving across a screen. Just because Johnson writes about drifters and outcasts doesn't mean that he is exempt from having to create real human beings, and a plot that doesn't seem drearily derivative.

That being said, the man does have a way with words - there are phrases that I can still remember, several months after I read the book: the drunks who 'stared out of their faces,' for example. But I would start elsewhere if you want to read Johnson. I think his gift is better suited for fantasy (Fiskadoro) or the short story (Jesus' Son); in both these books, his inability to create original and convincing characters is less of an aesthetic flaw than in Angels, where he has to get the reader to believe his depiction of the real world for several hundred pages.

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Summary: Tuned to dispair
Review: Let me start by saying that Johnson is a phenomonal writer. I read this about a year ago and look forward to reading his other works and also this one again even though 'Angels' left me depressed. Despite the subtle humor, the hopelessness of the characters and the poor choices that they make wrap a dark cloud around the story. This is a very inventive and realistic novel but full of despair. I can see Johnson's influence in an emerging new crop of shock-lit writers such as JT Leroy. Close the blinds, get back under the covers and take a break from sanity for a few days.

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Summary: A novel that rewards multiple readings
Review: The tragedy and doom that follows the characters of Johnson's first novel, as well as Johnson's gorgeous prose, make for one of the most compelling of all contemporary novels. This and Resusitation of a Hanged Man prove Johnson as a major writer with a unique literary vision. I've read this book four times, and each time found new elements to appreciate. My favorite contemporary work.

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Summary: Great descriptions, no character development.
Review: This is the first and only Denis Johnson book I've read, and it wasn't a good one. I'd heard such great things about the author that I was very very excited to start reading this book. I was more than let down by this book. I didn't even finish reading Angels, and that's rare for me. Don't get me wrong, the man's a talented writer, but a horrible storyteller, and if you don't have both you're worthless to me. I've been told that Denis Johnson's short stories and poems are better than his novels, so I plan on checking out Jesus' Son. If you want to learn how to write reading Denis Johnson would probably be helpful, but if you want to say something ignore this book. Read Ask the Dust by John Fante for great writing, and great storytelling.

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Summary: Fine writing, sometimes confusing story.
Review: This is the first Denis johnson book I have read and probably will not be the last. The man can paint pictures with words, phrases and sentences. We experience the torrid nights in Arizona, the lonely bus rides across the country and feel the evil of men having they way with cast-away women. The sadness is most vividly revealed through the few children that dot the story.
I enjoy stories of people on the edge, desperate and without a clue of how to act beyond the first reaction and simplest action.
I did find parts of the story confusing as characters seemed to come and go without notice or explanation.
The ending is an excellent polemic on the death penalty.