Thoughts about the characters and the title of Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son

For some reason I'd never read Denis Johnson's collection of "linked stories," Jesus' Son (1992), not sure why except that I was underwhelmed by his massive and prize-winning previous work, Tree of Smoke - which goes to show that the super-ambitious projects tend to win awards, from critics generally afraid to call a brick a brick, while the more intense and focused works that achieve their goals completely tend to be written off or overlooked (by me, too). But Jesus' Son has remained on reading lists, and it came to my attention again when Johnson died earlier this year - too soon, too young. He was a really excellent writer and by all accounts a good if troubled soul (I interviewed him by phone once, and we had a great conversation - years later he had a reputation as averse to journalists and publicity, but that wasn't the case when he was starting out). I've read the 1st 4 or 5 stories in Jesus' Son and and impressed and overwhelmed - there are literally no darker works of American fiction, I would say. The stories, told by the same unnamed eponymous narrator, are of a small city somewhere in Iowa that seems to be populated entirely by drug addicts, alcoholics, dealers, thieves, tough guys, abused wives and girlfriends, and other low-lifes of various spectra. The stories involve, in no special order: a hitchhiker (the narrator) addled w/ an assortment of drugs who is involved in a fatal highway accident (he's an unharmed passenger); guys to survive by stealing SSI checks still arriving at the abandoned house of a dead man; guys who put together about $60 (a fortune) by stealing copper wire from a half-abandoned house; and so on. This milieu would be unbearable were it not for DJ's excellent and precise writing - he is a descendant of Hemingway and Carver, at least in this collection, not in all of his writing - and his wry self-deprecation; there's also the sorrow and edginess of wondering the extent to which these stories touch on DJ's own life or experiences. It can be easy to fabricate stories of crime and squalor, but something in these stories has the ring of authenticity and knowledge earned the hard way. Also, what are we to make of the title? Yes, it's a quote from Lou Reed's "Heroin," but there's also the hint at various points that the characters are looking for grace or salvation, though in all the wrong places; does the narrator see himself as one to provide mercy on others? Or is the title consciously ironic or delusional? 


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