Takes a train to cry: Denis Johnson's Train Dreams

Re-read Denis Johnson's novella "Train Dreams" and liked it more on 2nd go-round because understood this time through that the novel would not develop a plot in a traditional sense - as I think I noted in previous posts, it's quite unconventional for a novella. Most of the great novellas focus on one character or one action - that being the beauty of the form, its economy of expression, or compression, while allowing for a bit more play and development than the story form itself - but Johnson goes another route, this is a novella that's like a novel in miniature, spanning the scope of a character's entire life. At book group last night there was general though not universal enthusiasm for Train Dreams - two of us did believe that parts of it were a little too loose or sketchy: personally, I think he would have done better to focus on the one central action - the attempt to kill the Chinese worker, the ensuing guilt and flight, the death of wife and daughter by fire, and the expiation - and have left aside the sections about Grainier's later years of life, some of which - particularly the scene in town when he's stricken by sexual desire and the closing scene of the novella - are confusing. The central ambiguity of course is whether he daughter actually survived the fire and became a wolf-girl: obviously, that would not be possible, and the book seems firmly grounded in reality (if it were a fabulist story or an example of magic realism, we could accept the wolf-girl within the logical conditions that the novelist establishes) - so I think under the "logic" of Train Dreams the wolf-girl daughter is Grainier's fantasy and projection. Two stunningly beautiful scenes: walk through the hot ashes of the fire to find his burned cabin, and transportation of the wounded man by night. Also some extremely funny dialogue: man shot by own dog, and courtship of the widow. This novella simply imbued by death - and touched by hints of racism (against Chinese, against Indians) - and Johnson's point seems to be that these are the painful, ruinous consequences of man's attempt to control, simplify, or conquer nature.