I like Denis Johnson’s work; there seems to often be something slightly off-kilter about it, a ‘slant’ view of the American world he inhabits.
Or should I say inhabited.
For some reason – presumably thanks to the contemporary edge to his stories – I had always assumed that he was still alive, and it was only with Sea Maiden that I realise this is not the case. Indeed, he died in 2017.
This shock is probably the one thing I will take away from this collection, rather than the stories themselves. That and the last two sentences of the penultimate story in which he says, first, that he was obviously alive when writing the stories but, second, that he might not be when I came to read them.
Which was sadly – and poignantly – true.
Ian Gouge - Writer 