Jesus' Son

"Denis Johnson's most accessible and accomplished book, from start to finish, without a single sentence that misses the mark."—Los Angeles Times

"Denis Johnson's path as a writer—from poetry to the novel to the short story—is an untypical as his vision, but Jesus' Son may eventually be read not just as a moment in his evolution but as a distinctive turn in the history of the form. He is doing something deeply new in these stories, and the formal novelty brings us into a new intimacy with the violence that is rising around us in this country like the killing waters of a flood."—Atlantic Monthly

"Reading these stories is like reading ticker tape from the subconscious."—The Nation

"[Dennis Johnson is] a synthesizer of profoundly American voices: we can hear Twain in his biting irony, Whitman in his erotic excess, not a little of Dashiell Hammett too in the hard sentences he throws back at his gouged, wounded world. And behind all these you sense something else: a visionary angel, a Kerouac, or, better yet, a Blake, who has seen his demon and yearned for God and forged a language to contain them both."—Newsday

"In a world of predictable fiction, Jesus' Son is a point-blank godsend."—L.A. Weekly

"A work of spare beauty and almost religious intensity."—Entertainment Weekly

"Intense, vicious, and beautiful, these stories are fraught with a cutting wit purposefully juxtaposed against the too-big sentimentality of a drunk. Denis Johnson is an exquisite writer."—Mary Gaitskill