Rating: 
Summary: Already Dead
Review: An excellent book, but not really on par with Johnson's best work. I'd recommend starting with JESUS' SON, then ANGELS, the FISKADORO. Then if you're still interested, give ALREADY DEAD a shot. ALREADY DEAD is basically a modernized version of the epic poem, put into prose and supplemented with healthy doses of novelistic digressions and embellishments in stream-of-consciousness form. Johnson's gift for language is strong as ever here, with plot and structure as more of an after thought. If James Joyce had hailed from California instead of Ireland, he might have written this book instead of ULYSSES and FINNIGAN'S WAKE.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely wonderful book
Review: Anyone who says that this "might be the worst book I have ever read"... is definitely on crack... Johnson's style has only gotten more refined over the years... he is at the top of his game. This is a beautiful book.
Rating:
Summary: Art should break barriers. Denis is an artist.
Review: Anything Denis Johnson writes should be read with care. Some of our writers write with care. But there's nobody like him. Denis discovers the holy in the damned.
Rating: 
Summary: i pick up this book...
Review: at the times that i want to be fantastically bored. the characters are like the actors in an infomercial.
Rating: 
Summary: A book tht didn't excite me but still slightlly interesting
Review: Denis Johnsons Already Dead is a very not interesting read for me although it did have some exciting topics, from drugs, to witch craft and everything else that is evil in between. The only problem was that the murder,and violence didn't come about in a hair raising way but maybe for other people it might do a little more. Despite all that the characters are brought to you in a way that it seems like you have known them all your life. All in all though the book is alright not one of my favorites but definitly not the worst i've read.
Rating: 
Summary: Not His Best Work
Review: DJ is in Jesus Son at the top of his game, his prose angellic, his stories compelling and concise. Already Dead starts out strong but it is as if DJ has not yet mastered the long form. His sprawling plot twists into itself and the main characters like Fairchild and Van Ness become less interesting. Frankenstein is the only character who remains strong and original. Most people who have never read his other stuff might be impressed by his impressive turns of phrase, but unfortunatley Already Dead like Resuscitation of a Hanged Man turns out to be ill-concieved and at its best a beautiful mess. But I have faith DJ will turn out a simple novel similar to Jesus' Son, b/c poetic clarity and concise story telling is where his power lies.
Rating:
Summary: Reads like a first draft
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing supernatural noir
Review: From the introduction of Already Dead, Denis Johnson immediately hooks the reader in with his dark yet free-spirited yarn involving murder, drugs, and witchcraft. Johnson takes his writing to another level with Already Dead, creating a drugged-out, whacked EPIC (in every sense of the word), rather than just your average story, e.g. Rescucitation of a Hanged Man. Only Johnson could write a true epic containing marijuana, high-infidelity, and murder/violence galore. Those who panned the book are obviously too unintelligent to fully understand the book, blatantly presented with a measly two-sentence review of why they hated it with no points to back themselves up. A.D.'s characters display crude exteriors even though they maintain high intelligence. These characters are presented in as realistic manner as any. Every sideplot maintains an interesting and entertaining narrative, engulfing the reader with mystery. Already Dead is Johnson's best work to date, as well of 1997.
Rating:
Summary: Shades of Ken Kesey
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Shades of Ken Kesey
Review: 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.
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