Resuscitation of a Hanged Man Pts. 1 and 2

Pt. 1

I enjoyed Resuscitation of a Hanged Man immensely and have all sorts of margin notes that I have thought of applying in my own creative work. I had only read Jesus' Son of all Denis Johnson's work prior to this, and although I enjoyed reading a (somewhat) fresh take on the world of drug addiction, I was able to appreciate this novel much more as I think he is definitively a novel writer. I'm sure someone might disagree with me on that, but the sparseness of Jesus' Son, however fitting and effective it may be, pales in comparison with what Johnson does with the prose, dialogue, and mental landscapes and degradation in the amount of space that a novel likes this grants him. It was a great recommendation and I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.

In the beginning of my reading Resuscitation of a Dead Man, I was first drawn to the strength, the awkwardness, and the inherent characterization present in the dialogue. I think that it's a very modern (more accurately, contemporary or post-modern) approach to provide character's with quirky dialogue, and this can do great things for a piece when done well, but is often not. Since fiction has always been, and is still very much used to examine the actual world around us, it is interesting to see how dialogue has changed. In older literature, dialogue most commonly fit a character's class level as well as level of education. While that may still be true, Denis Johnson's piece is a great example of how that has disappeared as the primary focus in writing dialogue. A character can be extremely well-educated, but if the author's intent is to satirize or even mock that formal education, the character can be used to make silly generalities or masturbatory attempts at self-aggrandizing. Likewise, a character with no formal education can often provide great insight or prophetic observations. These are the sorts of paradoxes I thought of when reading Resusciation.

In the novel, Johnson presents an extremely paradoxical, although consistent, protagonist in English. His dialogue, especially in the conversations he has with Leanna, who has been placed in his life serendipitously multiple times, shows him to be an honest, strong, but confused man. Rather than establish his social class or his level of education, his dialogue and thoughts are used together to create a portrait of a man on the brink, who is searching for something to keep him from ending up on the end of a rope again, though he couldn't offer a single guess about what brought his search to Provincetown. Ostensibly, he has come for a job and, perhaps, a simple change of scenery. However, in his speech and his thoughts (told through a close third-person), he is obviously searching for much more. This is not a completely novel idea; many authors create this exact type of character with, literally, the exact same life experience and crossroads. However, quite often, this type of character and the subsequent uncertainty is overwritten. Their fear and insecurity is so blatant that they become a caricature, and the reader has no interest in connecting to the character.

Some early notes, but I'm looking forward to continuing on. Interesting and enjoyable read so far. More to come.

Pt. 2

To first follow up some of the first entry on Resuscitation, the dialogue continued to impress throughout, and I think was used in a very creative manner towards the end of the book to better depict the madness English is descending into (if he hadn't already). But that was the topic before, so I will move on with only that brief praise/appreciation.

Although introduced early on and leaned on somewhat in the first half of the book, the use of religion, conflict in faith, and all things related to such was extremely witty and engaging. So often I read authors like Denis Johnson, mostly contemporary authors, who deal with faith negatively or critically by making their character(s) or narrator "not a spiritual person," or someone who somehow drives this point home. I don't mind this. Personally, I am not a religious person, and I respond to people who express their issues with religion intelligently as well as religious people who counter those things intelligently. It is always engaging to hear motivated and interesting debate. However, the seemingly recent requirement in "edgy" or "underground" types of fiction to completely discredit religion and do it through stereotypes, be they religious or anti, has become tiresome. What I loved about Resuscitation is that faith is presented as something not black and white, not something good or bad depending on the perspective, but as something so total and powerful that the man who attempts to wield it goes insane. I'll talk more about the way Johnson did this through a third-close narrator, but the multiple conflicting manifestations of God shows how easily one can be consumed by the awesome task of trying to understand faith, destiny, and the one being that is meant to control all those things as well as the things that have come before them. By the end of the novel, I was slipping into that frame of mind with English, where events and coincidences can't be brushed off as just that, but rather, through the lens of providence and fate, they all mean or lead to something else.

Part of what made this novel so interesting was the voice used by the author to grant an insight to English's perspective, while maintaining the ability to see outside of his own paranoia and loss of reason when necessary. I love how seamlessly the narrator's voice slips back and forth between an honest, straightforward view of the world and the view that English has daily, a perspective that is constantly slipping deeper into a distorted one. One reason this is done so well is because the author trusts his audience to follow, to know the difference when a street is being described as it is and when a beach is being described as English sees it; and Johnson is right to trust us, because the steps English continues to make towards what we are meant to see as insanity are paced perfectly, and up until the end, we still think he might be able to hold on, and we're not quite sure he's going to pull the trigger until he does. The use of close-third also provides an interesting correlation to the fact that English is a private investigator, and actually comes to know the woman he ends up loving much as we come to know him, by spying, looking in from the outside, although in a very intimate and close way. I also think the relationship he establishes with Leanna is very well presented in this voice, as we see both her reasonable, though a bit erratic, behavior and discussions, as well as the way English sees them, as malicious and intentionally deceptive, which we are somewhat sympathetic to at first, but slowly grow to see it as another delusion created by his deteriorating mind.

So much of the way in which I am discussing English as a character may seem disrespectful or one-sided, but I do feel some understanding and, in a way, respect for him. He is intelligent, and the ideas he has and conclusions he comes to are complex, almost genius in a way, and it is difficult to entirely discredit them in a world that maintains a bit of surreality throughout. It also makes the leaps and brashness in his dialogue, whether in a discussion or in a "rant" or thought or other solo expression, more believable and not just the author placing his voice in his main character.