Denis Johnson's prison story and a note on an unseemly element in Englander's novel

First, a note on the late Denis Johnson's posthumously published story in the current New Yorker, Strangler Bob - another one of the tough-guy, drug-addled, hard-luck stories for which DJ was well known. This one could have fit in well w/ his famous collection, Jesus' Son (see earlier posts), and it's one in a not very long line of American prison stories, which are always scary even horrifying (the scariest probably being Edward Jones's). If you can stomach these brutal stories it's hard not to be mesmerized, in a ghastly way, by the milieu: in this case the story is narrated by a contemporary, heroin-hooked adult looking back on probably his first imprisonment, when he was a scrawny young man, in his late teens. His account of the life on the block in a county holding cell somewhere in the Midwest rings true, at least to me - but it's so hard to know. Is it true because it's like other prison stories I've read? I have nothing against which to check its veracity except other stories and TV/movie depictions. Part of the fascination with prison stories is that writers as a group, in general, have little experience of this life, so we almost revere those who can tell it like it is from the inside - sometimes w/ almost too much reverence, see Norman Mailer and his protegee Jack Abbott. All told, this is a taut story w/ vivid characters and throughout w/ Johnson's smart, sharp language - a report from another country or so it seems. Second, a final note on Nathan Englander's contemporary Israeli espionage novel/love story, Dinner at the Center of the World. Was anyone else troubled by his use of (spoilers here) a female Israeli agent to capture the fugitive turncoat known only as Z - the Israeli woman poses as a young Italian living in Paris who meets Z seemingly by chance and begins a romance with him, eventually luring him to Italy (where they meet her supposedly wealthy Italian father, in fact another Israeli agent). It's one thing if we see this as a story of a lover betrayed - but are they lovers? In fact the young woman was assigned to have sex - over a period of some weeks - with a guy she'd never met, might not like at all, might detest - in other words she's prostituting herself on the orders of the Israeli secret service. Does this go on outside of the world of James Bond? At least in that world everyone knows they're faking it; here she has to pretend she's an innocent and in love. There's something terribly unseemly and sexist about this plot element, right? 

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