jbstaniforth 's review for:

Already Dead: A California Gothic by Denis Johnson

2.0

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More two and a half, I guess? This is peppered with genuine moments of beautiful writing, and a few decent scenes. But it took me forever to read because I couldn't be bothered to give a damn about it's interchangeable sensitive tough-guy dude characters, virtually all of whom are written in the same love-and-violence voice, or the parade of exceedingly sexually available female characters. (Seriously, is there any female character here under the age of 60 who doesn't immediately go to bed with whichever man she encounters? So much so that it's almost written as a joke when one finally turns a man down. Lordy.) The plot meanders with less craft than lack of focus, and the language is overwritten and obscure a lot of the time (over and over I had to reread passages to figure out what was going on, or try to dig up crucial details the author apparently left out on purpose to make reading more of a challenge?). It IS pretty sometimes, but most of the time it's not and I came to resent Johnson for making me work twice as hard for nothing in particular. By two thirds of the way through I'd come to see reading this as a chore more than a pleasure, but having so loved Jesus' Son and also enjoyed Resuscitation of the Hanged Man, I wanted to see if Johnson could pull out of the spiral. He didn't, for me, this time around. This felt like a loose, unfocused first draft, and reading it therefore felt like a waste of time, though at least a waste with occasional fantastic passages.