Flagrant, self-destructive gestures A biography of Denis Johnson

Ted Geltner

Book - 2025

"Description: 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 was waiting was Jesus' Son. When that book hit the shelves of bookstores in 1992, Johnson finally unveiled to the reading public the stories from his life of two decades prior, when he had floated on the fringes of society, flirting with a life of crime and su...ccumbing to his addictions. The stories from those years would become the bones of his masterpiece. Jesus' Son would tap into the zeitgeist of the 1990s and become a bible for Generation X and an American classic. It's hero, known only as Fuckhead, would become the Holden Caulfield of the late 20th Century. And Johnson would reach the greatest heights of American literature. Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures tells the complete story of Johnson's fascinating life, his battles with addiction, his thrill-seeking trips into the war zones as a magazine correspondent, 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"-- Provided by publisher. more