Denis Johnson Has Died

RIP. This hits hard. Before my career as a programmer I was an aspiring fiction writer. Johnson was my Radiohead of writing: an artist working at a seemingly unattainable level of skill, and very nearly transcending the art, as far as my taste is concerned.

You don't exactly read Johnson for his plotting. The magic is in getting lost in the sentences, in the weird and painful beauty they open up. Jesus' Son is his most famous book, but his other works have that same characteristic: Turns of phrase and shocking ways-of-seeing that reveal the world's strangeness and fragility.

I think of it as the "cradling a baby mouse in your hands, feeling its heartbeat, knowing how easily it could be crushed" feeling.