Jesus' Son:
Donnelly, Daria
BOOKS Flannery O'Connor in reverse The fantasy: poet-novelist JESUS' SON years, Johnson began to think about...
...One of the many tragedies of the Irish nationalism...
...Now in paperback...
...dressing her feet with his deep awe for this too committed to her many political and Time is the medium of grace for Johnson revelation of love...
...He never tells a linear tale...
...ly to live in Ireland when his regiment was both offset and sharpened by precise and With Jesus' Son, Johnson gives us a nar- posted there...
...tude, the spiritual energy of Johnson's writ- 1Commonweal l3Augustl993:23 ther professes to know nor, in his fiction, addict, deftly conveys both the sharpen- us the correspondence with clear end notes desires to sort out those meanings...
...These sacramental images both hover at the edge of the parodic and A NEW COURSE FOR are genuinely moving, as when rosary- r5 clutching prolife demonstrators in one EDUCATION'S FUTURE story anoint the narrator with holy water as he emerges from an abortion clinic fleeing "the canceled life dreaming after" him: "and I didn't feel a thing...
...Gonne passionately in love with Gonne...
...Yeats and Gonne met in London in 1889...
...Tell me Fin fine...
...Johnson won't Home," when the narrator, standing out- "dearest Willie...
...The kinds of his poems were printed would last 600 has tremendous meaning...
...many interests, not only the cause of Irish W.W...
...She had two children durlet us decide whether this narrator is a bru- side the window of a Mennonite woman ing a love affair in France with Lucien tal drifter and indifferent chronicler of the he has been peeping at for weeks, witnesses Millevoye, and another son during a brief violence he keeps surviving-car crash- the extraordinary but unspectacular act of and stormy marriage to an Irish patriot, es, knifings, shootings, and overdoses- tier husband's remorse and her forgiveness John MacBride, but she disliked sex and or whether he is an angel, like those in the expressed in the washing of her feet...
...After learning that the paper on which world, and very likely all there is, but it vocation for the grotesque...
...that sobriety renders the world less spec- ure of your love and that it is strong Gifted at seeing into the future, the narra- tacular (the narrator no longer sees angels enough and high enough to accept the spirtor can do nothing to change what he sees or hears cotton balls talk) and more ac- itual love and union I offer...
...Yeats was fascinated by the Civil War was the destruction of most of occult and mysticism, and he and Gonne Elizabeth Shannon Yeats's letters to Gonne before 1923...
...The book's loosely Paperback • $10.0C connected drunkalogue ends with the narrator's fragile recovery among the mad, deformed, and outcast of a rest home...
...Not for many years...
...These stories are pow- social causes to be a good wife...
...with the great passion of his life and the daughter, and A. Norman Jeffares...
...I am glad and proud beyond measJohnson's narrator reflects his stance...
...That distant audience increasingly beblazoned sports car: they came identified with God: "this percephead off to noon Mass followed by comic, Daria Donnelly tion became a real blessing for me" that wild, and satisfying conversation...
...A Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 raided Gonne's deep and abiding friendship developed beIr his is the complete surviv- home, took many of Yeats's letters, and later tween them, damaged by opposing politing correspondence between burned them...
...His may fail...
...Their volume, edited and with introductions by innocence, and I her wisdom," Yeats often-stormy relationship provided Yeats Anna MacBride White, Gonne's grand- wrote...
...addicts, and authentic education that moves survivors of America...
...He was twenty-three, poor, ambitious, and soon THE GONNE-YEATS LETTERS: 1893-1938 inspiration for much of his poetry...
...Although Edited with introductions by Anna found in Yeats her best friend, supporter, she did not return his passion, they shared MacBride White and A. Norman Jeffares defender, and her "spiritual husband...
...Irish shared an attachment to place, a feeling Free State soldiers who supported the of spirituality emanating from the land...
...The narrator feels a car crash before rator's multiple desires, his lust as well as made beautiful poems out of his unhapit happens, feels the holy water years later...
...From Johnson is an unsparing, comic, and one of today's most respected o spiritual writer who has long been chron- teachers-A new model of icling the drifters, desperate...
...Norton...
...35, 456 pp...
...Johnson neiCatholic images that dominated his fourth novel, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, reemerge here...
...She acted on two lessons she had learned from her father: "Never be afraid," and "will is a force that can achieve anyHIS POEMS WERE THEIR CHILDREN thing...
...She knew that she was sciousness in order to alleviate the pain of peeping Tom pleasure watching her un- too strong-willed and independent and absolute perception...
...The troubling of my life began," Yeats wrote after their meeting...
...a spiritual longing and narrative power death when :Mud was nineteen, she deJohnson, a former heroin and alcohol born of hope and doubt...
...Parker J. Review), narrated by a heroin addict whom Palmer] is a phenomenon in Johnson denominates "Jesus' Son," after rock-poet Lou Reed's song, "Heroin": higher education...
...passive hopefulness that makes the writ- tude they produce...
...When I'm rushing on my run/ And I feel -The New York Times just like Jesus' Son...
...This respondence was their lifeline...
...his thirst for meaning and for love...
...into a shaky recovery, Johnson suggests 1908...
...Although coming...
...piness and frustrated desire...
...Straus and Giroux, $19, 160 pp...
...This is the real Son, owes much to O'Connor's spiritual him...
...Jesus' Son, billed beyond the bankruptcy of our as a collection of short stories, is a series current model of education to of eleven hallucinatory episodes, or sta- explore how mind and heart yr tions of the cross (as James McManus can work together in the called them in the New York Times Book learning process...
...This hallucinatory quality is charge to an outraged Flannery O'Connor...
...His compan- William Blake famously said that Milton Maud Gonne was born in Aldershot, ion Jack Hotel dies of an overdose in one was of the devil's party without knowing England, in 1866...
...The re- "we are being looked down on, and unality: Denis Johnson has been carrying on derstood, and forgiven even though we an edgy romance with Catholicism and ing emerges from his incertitude...
...He is both...
...Since they the Irish patriot and stunning- for fear of reprisals since they contained seldom lived in the same city, their corly beautiful Maud Gonne and material about her political activities...
...believed that its only purpose was for the movie Wings of Desire, who limits his con- Johnson brilliantly combines the narrator's creation of children...
...HarperSanFrancisco Where O'Connor writes from certi- .9 D+siv Z of FIu-0dii.,Pubh hen .ibn ~.mb(e Jiam HnrpcrC,,:Gn,C...+,d.+L,d...
...He switched his allegiance weirdly comic descriptions and dialogues, rator who is of God's party without know- to the cause of Home Rule for Ireland and as when the narrator's hospital roommate, ing it...
...The "Maniac Drifter" whizzes by imbued Maud with his love of the counshot in the face by his wife, instructs him: O'Connor's Milledgeville, Georgia, with try and the Irish people...
...in an agnostic household, talks about how outside this world: "What appears to be Johnson's most recent hook, Jesus' temporality opened up a spiritual life for is actually happening...
...She was and the temporality of his narrative is erful because Johnson is true to the nar- also intuitive enough to know that Yeats fluid...
...gives Gonne was dependent on Yeats for 24: 13 August 1993 Commonweal...
...In a rare interview the world is saturated with inexplicable O'Connor's malevolent violet-eyed stran- (Ironwood, Spring 1985), Johnson, raised meanings that are understood and judged ger from The Violent Bear It A wav...
...O'Connor ever since the demonic rapist doubt is generous and his art values the The power and strangeness of Johnson's Ned Higher-and-Higher appeared in his forgiveness that comes from not knowing storytelling stem from his confidence that first novel, Angels, to upstage in a sense the meaning of things...
...This shift to- it is likely that they consummated their love symptomatic of his inability to care, at other ward grasping the magnificence of the during a very brief period, Gonne was altimes the necessary antidote to the pain ordinary comes in the final story, "Beverly ways certain that she could never marry caused by his perception...
...BOOKS Flannery O'Connor in reverse The fantasy: poet-novelist JESUS' SON years, Johnson began to think about the Denis Johnson screeches up Stories future audience understanding and forto Flannery O'Connor's door Denis Johnson giving his characters in a way he could not...
...in his "Maniac Drifter"-em- Farrar...
...She is my William Butler Yeats...
...Others Gonne did not keep ical views but lasting a lifetime...
...voted the rest of her life to that cause...
...After his untimely "Talk into my bullet hole...
...her adored father, an story and appears alive, smoking heroin, it, novelist John Hawkes repeated the English Army officer, brought the famiin the next...
...it is this ing effects of drugs and the dreamy lassi- and valuable commentary throughout...
...As he brings his narrator "Beloved," Gonne wrote to Yeats in ing both disturbing and consoling...
...At times his addiction seems commodating to reflection...
Vol. 120 • August 1993 • No. 14
