
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
The year was 1988, and Denis Johnson was at a low point. He caught malaria on a reporting trip into the jungles of the Philippines and was nearly pronounced dead. The disease left him unable to write. His second wife left him. He didn't have enough money to pay his taxes. His publisher was waiting for a book that he hadn't started. But in the life of Denis Johnson, when things were at their bleakest, something good was usually waiting around the next corner. This time, what emerged from the chaos was his masterpiece Jesus' Son, a book that would tap into the zeitgeist of the 1990s and become a bible for Generation X and an American classic.
Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures tells the complete story of Johnson's fascinating life, his thrill-seeking trips into war zones as a magazine correspondent, his battles with addiction, his live-it-before-you-write-it style of fiction. It follows the arc of his tremendous body of work as a novelist, journalist, poet, and playwright, and in the process recovers the true stories from the hazy myths that one of our most beloved, yet enigmatic, writers left behind.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Epigraph
- Dedication
- Contents
- Prologue
- Chapter 1. International Matters
- Chapter 2. Blood on the Steps
- Chapter 3. Adult Education
- Chapter 4. From Nowhere in Particular
- Chapter 5. Berkeley of the Midwest
- Chapter 6. Introducing the Town Moron
- Chapter 7. Marriage Story
- Chapter 8. Crash Landing
- Chapter 9. Double Life
- Chapter 10. Adrift
- Chapter 11. Unpredictable Weather
- Chapter 12. A Place for People Like Us
- Chapter 13. The South Unit
- Chapter 14. Life on the Cape
- Chapter 15. Going up the Pipe
- Chapter 16. A Trip to Twicetown
- Chapter 17. Hiding Out
- Chapter 18. Looking for Zealots
- Chapter 19. Out of the Drawer
- Chapter 20. New Life
- Chapter 21. Reluctant Journalist
- Chapter 22. Just a Short Little Book
- Chapter 23. Knife in the Eye
- Chapter 24. Plot Is Character, Character Is Plot
- Chapter 25. Another Apocalypse
- Chapter 26. The Revelator in Repose
- Chapter 27. Death Is the Mother of Beauty
- Postscript
- Author’s Note
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index