The Name of the World - Softcover

Johnson, Denis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0413771601 ISBN 13: 9780413771605

Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd, 2001

Synopsis

Michael Reed is a man going through the motions, numbed by the death of his wife and child. But when events force him to act as if he cares, he begins to find people who - against all expectation - help him through his private labyrinth. Poignant and beautiful, The Name of the World is a tour de force by one of the most astonishing writers at work today.

About this title

Review:

'To put the matter simply, Denis Johnson is one of the best and most compelling novelists in the nation' Elle 'Johnson's unique lyricism lights up his book's interior world... There's no doubt about the power of this writer's vision' Robert Stone, New York Times 'An utterly brilliant and original talent, a novelist who reminds us just how wonderful fiction can be' Philadelphia Inquirer 'How easy it is to forget, with all the trivia in print cluttering our lives, that words can be this supple, a vehicle for transcendent healing.' Los Angeles Times 'Johnson moves this sweet and thoughtful story briskly and with grace....his genius is accessible and it lights things up. His words move.' Boston Globe 'Spare and heart-scraping...There is no doubt that Denis Johnson is one of our most inventive, unpredictable and daring scribes of the extremes of destruction and redemption' Miami Herald

From the Back Cover:

The acclaimed author of Jesus' Son and Already Dead returns with a beautiful, haunting, and darkly comic novel. The Name of the World is a mesmerizing portrait of a professor at a Midwestern university who has been patient in his grief after an accident takes the lives of his wife and child and has permitted that grief to enlarge him.

Michael Reed is living a posthumous life. In spite of outward appearances -- he holds a respectable university teaching position; he is an articulate and attractive addition to local social life -- he's a dead man walking.

Nothing can touch Reed, nothing can move him, although he observes with a mordant clarity the lives whirling vigorously around him. Of his recent bereavement, nearly four years earlier, he observes, "I'm speaking as I'd speak of a change in the earth's climate, or the recent war."

Facing the unwelcome end of his temporary stint at the university, Reed finds himself forced "to act like somebody who cares what happens to him. " Tentatively he begins to let himself make contact with a host of characters in this small academic town, souls who seem to have in common a tentativeness of their own. In this atmosphere characterized, as he says, "by cynicism, occasional brilliance, and small, polite terror," he manages, against all his expectations, to find people to light his way through his private labyrinth.

Elegant and incisively observed, The Name of the World is Johnson at his best: poignant yet unsentimental, replete with the visionary imaginative detail for which his work is known. Here is a tour de force by one of the most astonishing writers at work today.

About this edition

• Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0413771601
• ISBN 13: 9780413771605
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144