Already Dead - Softcover

Johnson, Denis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330371142 ISBN 13: 9780330371148

Publisher: Picador, 1999

Synopsis

‘In sustained breathtaking language of genuine poetic authority it depicts the collapse of the last American frontier. The characters inhabiting that frontier are strange, ghostly, complex figures – all believable, all recognizable – and it is Denis Johnson’s accomplishment here to have penetrated, understood and represented the extraordinary weirdness and richness of their minds. A grim tale of revenge snakes through it all, lending tension and momentum to this wildly beautiful story of a terminal landscape and its population of lost and drifting souls’ Patrick McGrath

‘Already Dead is California noir transcended by inspiration. It’s harrowing and hilarious, tough without trying to be, purely and beautifully written. There isn’t an American voice I love listening to more than Denis Johnson’s’ Michael Herr

‘Already Dead is a novel like no other, a wild ride through an imagination endlessly surprising and darkly profound in its apprehensions of our condition. From his fearsome inventions and singular voice, Johnson fashions religious art of the order of Brighton Rock and the paintings of Bosch and Breughel, yet shot through with revelations that startle us into laughter – even, though we hardly believe it’s happening, into something like hope. Already Dead is a novel to welcome and celebrate’ Tobias Wolff

‘Once Denis Johnson gets his hooks into you – it takes about two sentences – it’s pretty much impossible to stop reading’ New York Times Book Review

About this title

Review:

Denis Johnson is one of the few American writers who could legitimately be said to possess a visionary sensibility, a nearly Blakean appreciation of the territory of the human soul."--Newsday""Already Dead looks very much like Johnson's bid to hit the charts, with a bullet. . . . This new novel offers just about everything that thriller buyers look for: drugs, booze, sex, murderous violence, a soupcon of the supernatural and a large cast of enterprising psychopaths."--"Time"Murderers and dope fiends never sounded so poetic as they do in this tale of narcissistic, Nietzsche-obsessed antiheroes. . . . What makes this book hard to put down. . . is the operatic grandeur of Johnson's prose, which is sometimes beautiful and often hypnotic. The witch in the book isn't the only one who knows how to enchant."--"People""His most ambitious book yet. . . Denis Johnson is a master chronicler of wrecked lives whose dead-end journeys he delineates in excruciatingly beautiful prose.""Elle"Mr. Johnson writes beautifully, with energy and grace, as though his hands were on fire and his head caked in ice. . . . Every page boasts exhilarating flights of Mr. Johnson's prose.""--New York Observer"Johnson's prose conjures up a world that is as tangible as it is magical. He is an utterly brilliant and original talent, a novelist who reminds us just how wonderful fiction can be."--"Philadelphia Inquirer""Just as noir seems exhausted, Denis Johnson comes along with his new novel, "Already Dead." Although Johnson appears to have smashed the genre, only to reassemble its shards, the rich and strange result is greater than the sum of those parts.""Spin"Once Johnson gets his hooks into you'it takes about twosentences'it's . . . pretty much impossible to stop reading. . . .Johnson's splendid ear and eye still get you from episode to episode in style. . . And the sheer obsessive ambitiousness of this intricate, sinister comedy has a witchy, come-hither charm."--"New York Times Book Review

Book Description:

‘In a class with those great, dark sweeping novels of madness and decay, Moby Dick and Dracula’ Patrick McGrath

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0330371142
• ISBN 13: 9780330371148
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448