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Friday, February 28, 2014

Does Denis Johnson do interviews?

I've liked several Denis Johnson books I've read (Tree of Smoke an exception - he works far better in shorter, more condensed forms) and was glad to see new "story" from him in current New Yorker, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, if I can read the awful typography correctly, not a great title in any event - titls are not DJ's strength as a writer. I put story in quotes because this piece, as is so often the case in TNYer, appears to be a selection from a longer work: let's call it a piece of fiction, then, a profile of slice of life of a 60ish ad exec living in San Diego, twice divorced and now on 3rd marriage, returns to NYC to pick up some kind of advertising award, and finds himself much older than other ad execs and bit of an odd man out - in other words, this looks very much like a Don Draper 30 years down the road. The strength of the piece is Johnson's ability to create a vignette: it's a composition of short pieces, each a titled vignette, that when pieced together make, I believe, a full picture of the ad-man - it's a technique we saw in Mr and Mrs Bridge (those short vignettes were enumerated, not titled) - and it makes this piece of fiction a little frustrating because we get these very sharp snapshots but not the full portrait (that's what makes me think these must be part of a longer piece): character retreating to the men's room during the awards ceremony (a scene we've all seen in movies, btw - e.g., the recent ...in a World); a night of heavy drinking that leads to destruction of a valuable piece of art when idiotic owner tosses it drunkenly into the fireplace (reminds me of a scene in The Idiot) - art is a big theme in this piece of fiction, the ad man is something of a connoisseur as I believe Johnson may be. As a side note, Johnson is often characterized as someone who shuns the press and interviews, but that's not entirely the case - it's a defense he may have built over the years, but when he was just starting out I read his 2nd novel, Fiskadoro, and liked it - I was a books editor at the time - and easily call Johnson, who was then living on the Cape and working in his wife's art gallery (a source for this current fiction?) and we spoke for quite a while - and I hope I wasn't the one to turn him off interviews (I doubt it). He's gone on to do a lot of fine writing since that day, so - good for him. No need to do interviews - let the work speak for itself, or more accurately for the author.

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