Jesus' Son - Denis Johnson BOOK REVIEW

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Пікірлер: 63

  • @zenape619
    @zenape619 Жыл бұрын

    My junkie aunt said this book's style was what her brain was like for her drug decade. She was always trying to piece together disjointed memories into a sensible picture.

  • @AngryNegativeHistoryProject

    @AngryNegativeHistoryProject

    Жыл бұрын

    Mark Lanegan wrote a autobiography of his drug/music years, but it was a true story. Is this book of this video based off true stories?

  • @zabe428

    @zabe428

    Жыл бұрын

    Please don’t refer to her as your junkie aunt. Unless you think she wouldn’t mind. But I think it’s not kind.

  • @zenape619

    @zenape619

    Жыл бұрын

    @@zabe428 she calls herself my junkie aunt. She's very open about her drug years. Her stories about hunting pills around Las Vegas are hilarious.

  • @rishabhaniket1952
    @rishabhaniket1952 Жыл бұрын

    I love Denis Johnson’s work so much, from Train Dreams to Jesus’s Son and feel a strong affinity with anyone who reads and likes his work. Reading Jesus’s Son was like walking through a fog where things seem so real but disappear as soon as you try to reach out for them.

  • @timkjazz
    @timkjazz Жыл бұрын

    Holy, Holy, Holy!!! Writing up a proposal/bid for a roof job and Cliff's review popped up. Immediately put the bid off to watch the review, "Jesus' Son" is the one book I always carry with me, tucked in my backpack. Bought this masterpiece after a review in Esquire magazine and was gobsmacked reading it, a prose masterwork on the same level as "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept" by Elizabeth Smart. Humor, tragedy, hallucinatory imagery, "Jesus' Son" is the book that I read at the perfect age and it became embedded in my psyche and has remained ever since. I never tire of reading it and recommend it to only readers that I think will be as impressed with it as I am. Thanks Cliff for the review, brilliant as always.

  • @cfor1950

    @cfor1950

    Жыл бұрын

    ChatGPT much?

  • @williampdozier
    @williampdozier Жыл бұрын

    Hell yes! Glad you made a review about this collection. This notification made my day

  • @nikkivenable73

    @nikkivenable73

    Жыл бұрын

    Your review of Jesus’Son and Tree of Smoke made me snag both for myself. I really love your channel❤.

  • @williampdozier

    @williampdozier

    Жыл бұрын

    @@nikkivenable73 🙏🏻🙏🏻

  • @WilliamsReptiles
    @WilliamsReptiles Жыл бұрын

    Cliff the last three books you've reviewed are books I've just finished. You're either a mind reader or I'm on the right track lol

  • @bighardbooks770
    @bighardbooks770 Жыл бұрын

    I met Denis a few times at AZ State University and he was very cool; indeed, a great GREAT writer. I really like his poetry, too. His "Incognito Lounge" was written in the bar on Thomas Road, Phoenix, AZ. The bar that has no windows ... ♠️🤠♦️

  • @AngryNegativeHistoryProject

    @AngryNegativeHistoryProject

    Жыл бұрын

    So this is a fiction book he's talking about?

  • @bighardbooks770

    @bighardbooks770

    Жыл бұрын

    @@AngryNegativeHistoryProject Clifford's referring to a collection of short stories

  • @FreyaVal
    @FreyaVal Жыл бұрын

    Nice evening (my time) to listen to your review! Thanks for uploading! ❤

  • @marcelhidalgo1076
    @marcelhidalgo1076 Жыл бұрын

    So glad you finally read/reviewed this

  • @boogieboots
    @boogieboots Жыл бұрын

    Nice shirt, Cliff. Always happy to see more Denis Johnson :)

  • @hbaird7258
    @hbaird7258 Жыл бұрын

    4:20 this is one of my absolute favorite passages from any book, ever!

  • @hihi6666hihittt
    @hihi6666hihittt Жыл бұрын

    I'm 4 min in and you've already got me convinced to read it. Thank you, sir.

  • @pisy183
    @pisy183 Жыл бұрын

    You don't even understand the influence you had on me. I always loved to read as a kid but lost it in the years. This month i read six book, it would have been unthinkable a year ago. Thank you. P.S. : Just finished The talented mr ripley, truly better than food. P.P.S: I'm sure you'd love the skin by curzio malaparte : rape, misery, poverty,war and the loss of dignity with the backdrop of a marvelous nature that couldn't care less for human actions. Sorry if my english is weird. Have a good coffee.

  • @BigPhilly15
    @BigPhilly1511 ай бұрын

    Your channel is incredible. I’ve been desperately mining KZread for REAL book channels and, after years of YA “booktubers,” I’ve found yours and 1 other adult, serious literary channels. Thanks.

  • @alex-gs5kr
    @alex-gs5kr Жыл бұрын

    awesome collection of short stories

  • @derkaderkamohamadallaackbarnut
    @derkaderkamohamadallaackbarnut Жыл бұрын

    I highly reccomend the movie. It is probably my favorite movie ever. They takes good quotes and combine the stories in a nice flow for a story told by an addict that may hae not been remembering his own stories correctly.

  • @Skeptic2006
    @Skeptic2006 Жыл бұрын

    Thank you. Loved this book.

  • @TheChur
    @TheChur Жыл бұрын

    Yes, I love this book!

  • @liamwhalen
    @liamwhalen Жыл бұрын

    I wonder if Denis Johnson was extremely cautious in the tales he wrote? Having descended beyond rock bottom and surfaced again, he may have been hesitant to present his lessons too directly. I could see that caution stemming from a protective ethic to not communicate lessons only those who have been where he has need to learn or from a sense of responsibility towards seekers who have their own paths to travel. There are many paths to journey on and guiding someone down a narrow but dangerous road they were not meant to travel could have been too much peril for him to speak more coherently to his audience. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about communicating a theory via literature. I may have done that as a matter of course at one point in my life, but I had definitely forgotten about it.

  • @FisherKing9633
    @FisherKing9633 Жыл бұрын

    Just finished the last book in James Ellroy’s LA Quartet, White Jazz. Highly, highly recommended, the whole series. Seems stylistically similar to Dennis Johnson’s books to me. More staccato. Maybe. Hope ya’ll are having a good day.

  • @Mikeypem

    @Mikeypem

    Жыл бұрын

    LA Quartet is so so good

  • @BookBuds
    @BookBuds Жыл бұрын

    New subscriber here. Just read Train Dreams and have this one on my list to get to next. Looking forward to it. Great video!

  • @royrose_
    @royrose_ Жыл бұрын

    This is the book that made me switch from almost exclusively non fiction to mostly fiction

  • @AngryNegativeHistoryProject

    @AngryNegativeHistoryProject

    Жыл бұрын

    Why is that? I read only nonfiction

  • @royrose_

    @royrose_

    Жыл бұрын

    @@AngryNegativeHistoryProject I guess I thought fiction could only be the certain things that I had read up to that point. This book didn’t fit into that mold and made me obsessively curious about what else I’d been missing out on.

  • @intertel_agent
    @intertel_agent Жыл бұрын

    one of my favorite books

  • @mjau65
    @mjau65 Жыл бұрын

    Love this writer. Angels and Nobody Move are great as well. Did not manage to finish Tree of Smoke though.

  • @ywhistlee
    @ywhistlee Жыл бұрын

    For the love of God please continue making videos..

  • @cyclonasaurusrex1525
    @cyclonasaurusrex1525 Жыл бұрын

    Thank you.

  • @fawzy76
    @fawzy766 ай бұрын

    It’s a beautifully written book. Train Dreams was great too. Gotta read his other stuff like Tree of Smoke.

  • @MatthaiosVaf
    @MatthaiosVaf Жыл бұрын

    In past videos I’ve seen a Jim Jarmusch book on your shelves. Just wondering what book is it that you have about him?

  • @donaldkelly3983
    @donaldkelly3983 Жыл бұрын

    Jesus's Son has million scenes burned in my brain, including the protagonist seeing the naked woman hand gliding as he removes copper wiring from an abandoned house. I think his fiction works better at short length, including novels like Angels, The Stars at Noon, and Fiskadoro. Long live Denis Johnson!

  • @geordiejones5618

    @geordiejones5618

    7 ай бұрын

    Fiskadoro is so underrated. It's a very well constructed story that I think gets overlooked when talking about great post apocalypse. One of my favorite protagonists ever

  • @jaredfernandez5849
    @jaredfernandez5849 Жыл бұрын

    Any chance you gonna be reviewing Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried?

  • @Lugbyz
    @Lugbyz Жыл бұрын

    Cliff’s collared t-shirts always look like they were hand picked from a surfer who happens to be a blacksmith’s closet.

  • @SammyOrb
    @SammyOrb Жыл бұрын

    Mr. Food, have you read Steppenwolf? Please do

  • @Chatterjee995
    @Chatterjee995 Жыл бұрын

    Please do a review of Cain's Jawbone

  • @hopefullyhigh
    @hopefullyhigh Жыл бұрын

    Also a dynamite lou reed song

  • @v.cackerman8749
    @v.cackerman8749 Жыл бұрын

    I wonder if his indecision throughout life had anything to do with his drug use. Even if he was indecisive before doing drugs, the substance abuse wouldn’t have made him think any clearer.

  • @Trixiethegoldenwitch
    @Trixiethegoldenwitch Жыл бұрын

    Being so embarrassed that you loop into action mode is pretty much my regular state of being.

  • @nielsdeleeuw2477
    @nielsdeleeuw2477 Жыл бұрын

    Cliff, after watching you for years I was wondering and maybe this doesn't add anything to the video and is totally random, but do you like Irvine Welsh as a writer? It was a question I wanted to ask for so long, because you also dig Easton Ellis and I haven't seen a review of that writer yet. I know Easton Ellis and Welsh are friends and like each others work very much. I am curious.

  • @TimDownsAnimation
    @TimDownsAnimation8 ай бұрын

    I read this book in college for a class on literature-to-film adaptations, and I was surprised to find both the book and film pretty close in quality. It's funny 'cause it's such a confusing book and yet all the sequences of events and dialogue and narration are pretty much just transferred straight to the screenplay and it carries with it the weirdness without making the movie completely inaccessible.

  • @benreadsgood
    @benreadsgood Жыл бұрын

    A thumbnail for the ages.

  • @ChrisFGoad
    @ChrisFGoad Жыл бұрын

    I was visiting my cousin. My uncle woke us up to take the dog to the vet. She was in labor. We sat and watched as my uncle named each one after books in the Bible. In sequence. At 1 a.m. there was a quiz

  • @VinnyContiello
    @VinnyContiello Жыл бұрын

    I can't remember the last review where Cliff didn't mention being on your death bed lmao

  • @bobcabot
    @bobcabot Жыл бұрын

    i didnt know! and i should, i know...

  • @Sthemingway
    @Sthemingway Жыл бұрын

    Watch the film adaptation. I'm curious to know how well you think Billy Crudup portrayed the protagonist.

  • @JarrodButali
    @JarrodButali3 ай бұрын

    In the movie? The guy with the knife in his eye is a cameo by the author Denis Johnson.

  • @jackjordan4832
    @jackjordan4832 Жыл бұрын

    You should read the Satanic Verses... if you like more difficult stuff

  • @irena7777777
    @irena7777777 Жыл бұрын

    Preferred Train Dreams.

  • @DeondreWaltenberger
    @DeondreWaltenbergerАй бұрын

    GTASA Chinatown Triads: "F***head"

  • @ferguscullen8451
    @ferguscullen8451 Жыл бұрын

    "Sexual Personae" has disappeared from that pile over your left shoulder... What can this mean?

  • @BetterThanFoodBookReviews

    @BetterThanFoodBookReviews

    Жыл бұрын

    It means I’m reading it. It’s phenomenal so far.

  • @ferguscullen8451

    @ferguscullen8451

    Жыл бұрын

    @@BetterThanFoodBookReviews Aha! Excellent

  • @acht2849
    @acht2849 Жыл бұрын

    Good voice, man. You can sing!

  • @stevegram9000
    @stevegram9000 Жыл бұрын

    Amazing book. This sort of writing makes total sense to me. I am curious. Do you know about B Traven? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_of_B._Traven