Rating: 
Summary: Powerful fiction
Review: An oblique, perverse novel, "The Name of the World" strains credibility in its attempts to defy reader expectations--Johnson is not one to allow Event B to follow Event A; he'd rather throw in Event Z out of the blue, just for the heck of it--but the end result is nonetheless a strong, memorable, affecting book. It is not a "well-made" novel, though, and it may help to recall the willful craziness of "Jesus' Son," which made similar demands on the reader. Where the earlier book was a collection of interrelated stories, "The Name of the World" is one long first-person narrative, devoid of chapter breaks, which meanders all over the map--the basic strategy is more or less the same, though. It's a "mess," but I'm certain the mess is deliberate, and the narrative is hypnotically effective. Far from a failure, it strikes me as a book by a very confident writer at the top of his game.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Yet Realistic
Review: Denis Johnson does here what so many others have tried to write and failed: a coming-of-age novel for adults. And it's good--real good. He doesn't know how to close it, and it's essentially a short story--but then again, so is one's life.
Rating:
Summary: He drops the ball
Review: For the first nine-tenths, maybe, this novel is almost perfect; I got the sense that no _word_ could be replaced. The measured complacency of the prose gives a perfect sense of character; a sense of a man, in fact, who doesn't have a great deal of character, and is aware of it. It's seamless. I never questioned anything about the book - never found myself thinking of it as a novel, or of the narrator as a narrator; I just kept reading it. Near the end, though, it starts to fail. Its climax is so enigmatic - so self-consciously engimatic, it seemed to me - that it doesn't give any real sense of closure, and the small hole that this opens up is absolutley ripped open by the sudden, inexplicable developments on the last few pages (not to ruin anything; the narrator goes through a transformation which didn't seem believable or precedented to me). I think this novel's strongest trait, in the end, is its dignity. Johnson doesn't go overboard with the metaphors or the sense of religious longing; everything is very quiet, subtle and dark, but the sense of something greater still comes through. Again, though, with the right conclusion, it could have been overwhelming; as it is, it's just interesting.
Rating: 
Summary: Didn't Connect Like Most Denis Johnson
Review: I am a raving fan of Denis Johnson. But the pacing of this very short novel (there are no chapter breaks) is bizarre. It may have been intentional but the narrarator bored the pants off me except for a fairly exceptional (typical wonderful Denis Johnson) ending. I lost track of any possible point and plot for many pages and more than once. Still the writing at the end is worth the price of the book. But overall this experiment didn't work for me.
Rating:
Summary: Strong Story, Poor Resolution
Review: I had long been curious about Johnson's work and was interested in The Name of the World when it came out in hardcover. Call me cheap but it seemed like a lot to ask of me to shell out $20 for a 130-page book. But when the paperback came out, I immediately picked it up. And I'm pleased that I did.When reading The Name of the World, one honestly gets the sense that Johnson takes great care crafting each sentence. Each one is loaded with meaning. Johnson's got a great gift for understated humor as well. The only flaw I saw is that the story goes nowhere. Johnson brings the reader up to speed on events that transpire after the bulk of the story but he takes care of that long before the last page. The reader is then left with a story that just ends with little resolution. All-in-all, I would highly recommend The Name of the World and am planning on picking up something else by Mr. Johnson in the near future.
Rating:
Summary: Great Right Up To The Time He Lost Control
Review: Mr. Denis Johnson had quite a good book until the main character decided to digress and the story unraveled. Some Authors say they like to start their stories and let the characters develop on their own, others like to rigidly control these potentially wayward fictional constructs. Professor Michael Reed not only goes his own way, he hijacks the book leaving the Author and his story behind and unfinished. Were this felonious act even a moderate success it would be welcome, however our Professor is still recovering from personal tragedy, and coping with a group of people that minimally merit the description of bizarre. Middle aged Professors consistently seem to not only find companionship from their much younger students, they also seem to discover those who have activities that most folks would find a bit to the left of strange. An attractive young woman competing as a stripper to earn a few dollars to make budgetary ends meet is hardly shocking. But this lass is also a performance artist. Suffice to say that if it was found The National Endowment For The Arts have given this woman a dime, Congress would be burned to the ground. I realize that sounds extremely right wing, but that would be the reaction whether you agree with her conduct or not. The woman in real-life who slathered herself in chocolate in substitution for clothes would rate a PG or perhaps PG-13 to this woman's show. This co-ed's name is Flower Cannon; I wish I were making it up. The stretch of her name evoking flowers being forcefully dispersed by unnatural means fits perfectly with what ails the good Professor. It is also a tie that is the sorriest and lamest efforts for a writer of this caliber. When you read it you will groan or laugh depending on your mood. This book is very expensive in hardcover form. This would be less of an issue if the work were brilliant. However I expect more than six pages per dollar spent, and in reality more like two or three when the drivel is left out. Great beginning, poor transition, hideous end.
Rating: 
Summary: Oh boy - more navel gazing
Review: So unmemorable I'm not even sure I read it. Books about damaged college professors have begun to blur for me. Please, can these supposed writers of fiction just stop writing about the faculty of small liberal arts colleges? I can't remember what happened in which. There was a coed involved. And some drugs, I think. Or maybe that was The Corrections.
Rating: 
Summary: A brilliant and original voice
Review: The Name of the World is Johnson's best work of fiction since Jesus' Son, and it rivals the latter in the quality of prose as well as the depth of compassion and understanding toward its wounded protagonist. This is a sincerely wonderful work, heartfelt and thought-provoking. In typical Johnson fashion the story is presented in a fashion simultaneously funny, tragic and bizarre. It is especially pleasing to see that Johnson is willing to take a risk with a shorter format, resiting the likely temptation to produce a 400-page blockbuster that has been the artistic ruin of so many other great writers. Instead, he has given us a graceful and brilliant work that is no less compelling and relevant despite its relative brevity. It reminded me of some of the shorter works of Cheever and Greene (most notably Oh, What a Paradise it Seems and Dr. Fischer of Geneva, respectively), with its shorter format and exploration of a soul tormented, use of mordant humor and compassionate exploration of the human condition. An outstanding work, once again, from America's finest living writer of fictional prose.
Rating:
Summary: Writer's Exercise
Review: This is my first Amazon.com review. I was compelled to do so because of Denis Johnson's short novel. It is a quick read, one-sitting. This is my first introduction to the writer. While I enjoyed the underlying structure: expansion and collapse of the narrative I found the story itself very frustrating. We read of academic life and its random structural changes - money for some projects, not others. Very little interaction between professor and students. There is an elusive sprite who (surprise?) makes money as a caterer, art class model, stripper, artist, who is also part of a pseudo-new-age religon for the singing? The main character's introversion is severe throughout, but then turns to direct observation with the reader, as if we are the character's confident - it doesn't work. Ultimately, I feel like this work was an exercise by the writer that got him to another, better place - based on some passages I'd recommend the writing - avoid this example.
Rating:
Summary: The Bone Details
Review: This is very much novel as abstract painting (and Johnson is very much novelist as abstract painter), in that (as with Don DeLillo's last book, The Body Artist) here is a novel that attempts to get to grips with the passage of a human being through the many varied and difficult stages of grieving. This is serious. It requires thought and patience. Michael Reed is a college professor whose wife and child were killed in an automobile accident four year's previously. Over the course of a single summer, he develops an attachment with a student, loses his job and is forced to examine again the way he deals with - and his own place in - the world. Johnson's writing is both stark and beautiful (there is something terrible about a mind that has abnegated responsibility due to a conflict too great to be resolved), and the details accrete like so much hard bone: the novel is episodic, but each episode remains in your mind like freed and bleached shoulder blades erected in a pile. The Name of the World inhabits similar territory to The Sweet Hereafter (both Russell Bank's book and Atom Egoyan's film) and the aforementioned Body Artist (although The Name of the World succeeds - transporting you to a world where Joy Division's Atmosphere is the only soundtrack - where The Body Artist fails: yes, both deal in chilly abstraction, but Johnson's book attempts to achieve a kind of adult resolution, where DeLillo withdraws further and still further from the abstractions he chooses to create). Johnson is the kind of writer you champion knowing he isn't to everybody's tastes (he is difficult, at times, and unyielding, but that just goes to make for writing that makes demands upon the reader, challenging you to interpret what it is you are faced by).
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