Already Dead: A California Gothic: Amazon.de: Denis Johnson: Englische Bücher

From Booklist

Johnson's northern California is a gothic land peopled by the emotionally damaged, the walking wounded, veterans of wars and drugs and drug deals gone bad; it is a coast inhabited by real spirits and lost souls, madmen and hitmen. With his noir premise--a pot grower hires a drifter to murder his wife--poet and novelist Johnson weaves an intricate tale of the intertwined lives of more than a dozen denizens of Mendocino County, California. Shifting perspectives and jumps in chronology contribute to a hallucinatory narrative that parallels the borderline psychoses of a majority of the book's characters. Johnson's strengths lie in his lyrical descriptions of the Pacific Coast and the surprising depth he evokes in his character development. Nelson Fairchild Jr., whose first-person narration is the centerpiece of Already Dead, is a Nietzche-quoting paranoid, a grower of marijuana who really is being hounded by a couple of hired guns. Fairchild enlists the assistance of his partner, Clarence, for protection, while Navarro, a displaced cop, finds himself caught up in the insanity brought on by Fairchild's misdeeds. Throughout, the omnipresent scent of violence grows more and more pungent. Reminiscent of the work of Robert Stone and Jim Harrison. Benjamin Segedin -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

From Kirkus Reviews

A kinky jeremiad about drug culture burnout (and fallout), powered by amusingly feverish images of California-as-Armageddon, from the poet and author whose recent fiction includes Jesus' Son (1992) and Resuscitation of a Hanged Man (1991). Johnson's latest is composed of a series of linked narratives set along the northern California coast in 199091, and centered in the psychic unraveling of Nelson Fairchild, a 30ish rich boy marijuana-grower who has unwisely cheated a murderous colleague, and spends his generally stoned, panicked days simultaneously fleeing the hit men who pursue him and arranging his own hit on his wife (who controls their finances, and in any case has been supplanted in Nelson's lustful affections by his mistress Melissa). Johnson surrounds Nelson's ordeal with a garish jumble of variously related outlaws and misfits, including Carl Van Ness, a philosophical drifter who vacillates between the consolations promised by suicide (Johnson's title denotes Van Ness's passive mind-set) and the intriguing prospect of becoming Nelson's hired gun; Wilhelm Frankheimer, a gigantic acidhead merchant marine turned blacksmith; Nelson's gently delirious brother William, who lives in the woods and writes deranged letters filled with cosmic paranoia to the police; a cop named Navarro who's drawn into their increasingly bizarre dance of death; and several alternately lissome and lethal women who, when not fulfilling their men's erotic fantasies, are blithely double-crossing them. There's also an effective Grand Guignol appearance by Nelson Fairchild pŠre, the kind of venomous old man whom John Huston always played in movies. The book does move right along, despite its bulk, and the writing is frequently charged with energy and wit. But it contains a little too much of everything: fashionable despair (though Nelson's imagined ``demon'' has a gritty surrealism), New Age meandering, and fitful little explosions of overcalculated violence. A novel this one resembles, Charlie Smith's The Lives of the Dead, did it better. Johnson's attempt at a noir epic intermittently excites and teases, but doesn't satisfy. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

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2 von 2 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

Red Woods, New Age und Mord - was will man mehr? 7. September 2001

Von nebel_leben

Format:Taschenbuch

Dieses Buch ist nicht in "easy English" geschrieben, weshalb ich es trotz der spannenden Handlung erst nach zwei Wochen zu Ende gelesen hatte. Aus mehreren Handlungssträngen aufgebaut, musste ich leider oftmals Personen und Orte weiter hinten nachschlagen, da sie mir mittlerweile wieder entfallen waren. Trotzdem empfehlenswert, besonders wenn man bereits Nordkalifornien bereist hat - denn das ganze Buch lebt von der Mystik der Red Woods.

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Made Road Kill Out of Me... 24. Mai 2000

Von Michelle Rowe

One of the most tedious, convoluted, energy-sapping reads ever. Don't waste your time.

hellhound on my trail 10. Mai 2000

Von courtney J angermeier

When I read this book I found myself desperately feeling like my life resembled it far far more closely than I would have liked. Already Dead is a haunting and horrible journey where the sickening downward spiral of Nelson Fairchild's inner life is mirrored in his northern California community. Maybe it's more than that, maybe it's even that somehow Fairchild, through his possibly demonic counterpart Carl Van Ness, is at the center of this spiritual gyre that engulfs the whole coast. I don't think it's a coincidence that Van Ness's attempted suicide, which acts as a catalyst for all the later action in the book, is a drowning. The whole thing is like being pulled slowly but steadliy from beneath in a deep pool of your own cerebral juices; you can feel yourself pulling more and more of that sour liquid into your lungs as you read. So, while that might not sound like much of a reccommendation, I think any book that can make you feel that way, must be a great book. The aforementioned experience while not necessarily plesant, is not bereft of a certain ammount of humor or bemeusment as might be expected with your life flashing before your eyes; life is, after all, funny stuff. There's no denying that Already Dead is dark, that it's hard, that it does make you feel sort of dead, but it also sharpens the senses and gives a thread of clarity about what is eternal and vital; it helps you see what makes life worth the living. It does that in a very twisted way of course, but really, this is Denis Johnson, what else did we expect.

Edgy....

Some fiction tries to find the universals of what we know, find a path through which to say 'we are none of us alone' and touch the heart. Lesen Sie weiter...

Ver�ffentlicht am 28. M�rz 2000 von Kira R. Signer

a must read!

Johnson has an amazing grasp of language and metaphor. I disagree with those who have said the book it too long. Lesen Sie weiter...

Ver�ffentlicht am 23. M�rz 2000 von Joseph A. Isahack

if it's too long, you're too lazy!

This book has beautiful language all throughout...I was dragged kicking and screaming (albeit willingly) from the first page to the last. Lesen Sie weiter...

Ver�ffentlicht am 2. Februar 2000 von Nick Perdomo

too anyone who got to the end, i bow to you

I tried 3 times to finish this book, but i just can't do it. I'm a big Johnson fan but this book is just too long to sustain his ethereal style. Lesen Sie weiter...

Ver�ffentlicht am 19. Januar 2000 von Peter Lehu

Superior writing, Excellent characters

I loved this book. I bought it without having prior knowledge of the author or the subject of the story because I read two pages in the bookstore and loved the way Johnson told... Lesen Sie weiter...

Ver�ffentlicht am 30. November 1999 von Owen

Another work of excellence by a master of surrealist fiction

I, too, am bewildered, and more than a little amused, by the dismissive (and ultimately insubstantial) negative comments of other readers. Lesen Sie weiter...

Am 8. September 1999 ver�ffentlicht

Tough Guys

Not sure what Johnston was up to here. The similarities to Mailer's Tough Guys Don't Dance are huge: marijuana patches, seances, spirits, adultry, murder. Paying homage? Lesen Sie weiter...

Am 16. August 1999 ver�ffentlicht

I was "Already Dead" by the time I finished

Johnson at times has a poetic voice and something of a flair for atmosphere, but 448 pages of lowlifes doing drugs, practicing dime-store witchcraft and plotting murders? Lesen Sie weiter...

Am 24. Juni 1999 ver�ffentlicht

Already Dead: A California Gothic [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

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