beautiful writing. i loved the story about the Elvis-conspiracy-obsessed poet :)

Two of the three stories are absolutely stunning. What an incredible author, recently departed, sadly. This is a collection I will be revisiting.

I've never read Denis Johnson before I picked up his posthumously published collection of stories. What a writer. I understand those who mourn the fact that the world will never see another one of his new stories, but his last work is brilliant. (And now that he's on my radar, I'm sure I'll find my way to some of his earlier work as well.)

I loved this one. Beautiful writing, strange turns.

These stories really are not my personal style for reading. I’m glad I tried something really different and out of my usual, but I definitely struggled to get through each story. I appreciate anyone that does love more of this style. It’s not bad writing, just really not my style. I’m not even sure how I’d describe it. Conversational, American folk? Reminded me of a few other books I’ve read but this was by far the most difficult for me because I couldn’t really personally connect with the topics either. But it was interesting.

The characters in Johnson's stories express themselves as though they realize an author is recording their ideas. In different hands this would be aggravating, a flaw... but not here. This is a book full of the sloppy, poetic, despondent, transformative moments that life offers when at its most magical.

3.5

These are Johnson's last 5 stories before he died. The first one which shares the title of the book is about a retired ad man and could be the epilogue to Don Draper. It's absolutely fantastic and one of my favorite short stories ever (it begins with a group of dinner party guests describing the loudest and quietest things they've ever heard. The results are surprising).

Next up we have an epistolary story of a man in rehab, who keeps coming back to the "hooks in his heart" that tie him to others. It's bleak yet hopeful and funny. Same goes for the third story, a jailhouse tale.

The fourth story is about how the main character ends up being a stand-in hospice carer for two other people he knows, as he reflects on those around him are dying. And the final story is about a poetry teacher and his adult student, how they become friends over the years, and how the student confides in the teacher that he's obsessed with a conspiracy theory about Elvis. The ending to that one is quite charming.

Themes of death, regret and remorse, of being ready to move on to the next "world", and still finding the magic and humor in the everyday. It's a pretty spectacular collection and I've already read the titular story a few times. I might end up putting this at a 5 if it really sticks with me. I do think this is the kind of collection you could keep coming back to, and finding new sentences and paragraphs that just jump out at you. I'll poach this quote as an example:

”This morning I was assailed by such sadness at the velocity of life—the distance I’ve traveled from my own youth, the persistence of the old regrets, the new regrets, the ability of failure to freshen itself in novel forms—that I almost crashed the car.”