SEEK: REPORTS FROM THE EDGES OF AMERICA & BEYOND
by Denis Johnson
(Harper Collins) $24
Denis Johnson's latest book is a work of nonfiction, which comes as something of a relief. Since the release of Jesus' Son, a flat-out masterpiece, in 1992, Johnson's literary output has been shaky, consisting of one impossibly ambitious epic novel (Already Dead) and one inexplicably slight novella (The Name of the World). A poet at heart, Johnson seems uncomfortable with the stretching-out required of the novel form; he either loses his way, or never finds it. Conversely, he does his strongest writing when he bumps up against the conventional parameters of the short story and, more recently, feature-length journalism. Less, with Johnson, is infinitely more.
In his new collection of magazine-commissioned articles, Seek, Johnson is once again dazzling. His agitated, compressed prose throws sparks; wonderful metaphors burst and light up the page. These pieces should confirm Johnson as one of this country's finest writers, while proving him a trenchant and empathetic social observer in his own right. Whether describing a Rainbow "Gathering of the Tribes" in the Oregon national forests (where he hilariously/horrifyingly overdoses on psychedelic mushrooms) or relating the Kafkalike details of a hellishly bungled assignment in war-ravaged Liberia, Johnson maintains an electrifying balance between the interiority of memoir and the straight stuff of down-and-dirty reportage. This balance allows play for Johnson's rather exceptional gifts of depicting both states of being and states of the nation. Much in the fashion of James Agee's Depression-era classic, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Seek tackles end-of-the-millennium America with a wry eye and in language that is full of fear, trembling, courage, and compassion. RICK LEVIN
THE DANGER TREE
by David Macfarlane
(Walker & Co) $13.95
David Macfarlane builds his stories the way a painter builds a portrait: a light area built up here, a dark section carved out there, and a person emerges, three-dimensional in space and in character. The Danger Tree comes at its reader from all sides, jumping back and forth through generations, until finally at the end of the novel a unified family portrait has emerged, almost unexpectedly.
Macfarlane sets down a history of his mother's family, the Goodyears of Newfoundland. He focuses mostly on his grandparents' generation, portraying each of his mother's family members: six opposed brothers, one sister, their indomitable parents. The story occurs in the context of Newfoundland's history--tuberculosis epidemics, the controversial confederation with Canada, and especially Newfoundland's participation in the First World War. Macfarlane's is a storytelling family, and he adopts his family members' narrative structure for his novel about them: "They talked in great, looping circles.... One story led seamlessly to another, spiraling like drifting pipe-smoke, farther and farther away from the conversation's beginnings. Yet somehow, without so much as a where-were-we, the stories found their way back, hours later, to where they had started."
The way Macfarlane creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts is impressive. Taken individually, the multiple stories within each chapter sometimes seem to have little point: no beginning, no end. The portrait is clear, though, when all the parts are put together. Each character is well defined but not simplified, and every story has a purpose. Sometimes I resent people who are as technically skilled as Macfarlane, but in this case I'll forgive, because he isn't too snotty about it. LISA SIBBETT
LOST AND FOUND
I REMEMBER
by Joe Brainard
(Granary Books) $12
Artist Joe Brainard is perhaps best remembered for his sly pop-art appropriations of Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy comics character--Brainard reenvisioned her as an art muse, subjecting her to every imaginable erotic and high-art situation, bending all meanings to his sweetly devious vision. Through his collages, paintings, and drawings, Brainard harmonized linguistic and visual materials into a hybrid that questioned its subjects as it celebrated its subjectivity. He collaborated on and illustrated works by many of the New York School poets, such as Ted Berrigan, Frank O'Hara, and his lover Kenward Elmslie (on the excellent The Champ). His literary associations and tendency to include text and jottings in his visual works led to his I Remember poetry series in the early 1970s.
First published by the small New York-based Angel Hair Press as three chapbooks, the I Remember poems were reprinted as a single volume in 1975. Granary Press has reissued I Remember in a slim, artful volume with one of Brainard's own artworks gracing the cover. The work is a reflective river of memory fragments that all begin, "I remember...." They take on a listlike pace that sprawls and circles, gaining a ghostly weight. Memories float up like pieces of a Magic 8-Ball. The words take on an incantatory rhythm that is addictive, funny, and inspired. Brainard's mundane but universal memories of childhood and sexual awakening are delivered in modest, declarative sentences, by turns plain and dazzling; the poetry of his words becomes a living, evolving thing whose modesty and simplicity infuses the quotidian with soul. NATE LIPPENS
