R. Dean Johnson's Blog, page 2

Denis Johnson: Front Row, Center

To say Denis Johnson was at the 2016 Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon isn’t quite enough. He wasn’t just there. He was sort of everywhere—popping into workshops, sitting in at presentations, mingling at receptions, and going to readings, so many readings, and usually sitting front row, center.

I have a picture of him at Padgett Powell’s reading, [image error]which you might think makes sense, one big name writer honoring another. But Denis didn’t discriminate. If you were reading, whether he knew your name or not, he was listening.

I know because about a week before the Padgett Powell reading, Denis was at my reading. He didn’t know my name, I’m certain, even if we share the same last name. Maybe he was there to hear my talented and better-known co-readers, David Caplan and Frank X. Gaspar. It was exactly two weeks before my debut novel, Californium, was to be released, and it was the first time I’d be reading from the novel, my uncorrected proof in my hands, a room full of people, and Denis Freakin’ Johnson shuffling into the room and sitting about five feet away from me, front row, center.

I read what I hoped was a funny chapter, the one where a group of high school boys are [image error]trying to come up with a name for their punk band and running through a list of possibilities: Atomic Anarchy, Gone Fission, Second Thoughts, Screaming Mimes, The Variables, Solve for X, Los Punks, and ¿Habla Anarchy?.  To my relief, people were laughing in all the right places, including Denis. After the reading, he even had a suggestion for a band name: Dowager Orgy.

At the time, it was one of the most affirming moments of my writing career. Denis Johnson didn’t just listen to my work, he reacted; he engaged in it. It was better than any blurb or review I could ever hope to get because it was a gut-level reaction, it was positive, and it was Denis Johnson.

I haven’t had a lot of time for reflection, for hindsight. This was all still less than a year ago. But even before I learned of Denis’s passing, I understood that what is more important about that day is all the days I saw Denis, at all those other events, being a generous writer and a gracious person. A lot of people will, and should, praise Denis’s talent in the coming days and weeks. I hope, if they had the pleasure of meeting him, their experiences weren’t unlike mine. Of course I hope my writing can someday be worthy of being mentioned in the same conversation as his, that universities might pair our books in Johnson seminars, but it’s more important to me, a much better goal, that I try to be the kind of writer Denis was when I met him—honest, engaged, and sitting front row, center.

A tease of The Journal (Winter 2017)

To say there’s a bit of sex weaving its way through this latest issue of The Journal (issue 41.1) would be too crass, too sh[image error]allow, and only somewhat near the mark.

Poets Miguel Murphy (p. 18) and Adam Day (p. 66) are turning sex around (yes, all puns intended), turning it sideways (literally, you’ll see), making it new yet familiar, painful yet pleasurable, and you’ll be conflicted, unsure if you should be smirking or feeling guilty when it’s over. Then you’ll go back for more, wondering if you should but unable to stop yourself.

And don’t think you can slip away into some prose when someone starts reading over your shoulder. Kathryn Nuernberger’s nonfiction (26) will turn on you in pleasing ways as well, bring even more meaning to what the French call, “the little death.”

There’s much, much more to be loved in this issue but this is, after all, just a tease.

Just Kids by Patti Smith

Review by Jennifer Spiegel Who isn’t listening to audiobooks these days? I was late, as I am to many trends, as I was with Patti Smith. I think I only “discovered” her in the nineties. Actually, I …

Source: Just Kids by Patti Smith

Californium by R. Dean Johnson

The Live Oak Review

Review by Paul Fuhr

(Plume Books, 2016)

There’s a moment midway through R. Dean Johnson’s Californium (Plume Books, 2016) where the novel’s teenage protagonists are comparing the logo of their new punk band to the iconic ones from the legendary bands before them: “Pretty soon, all we’ll need is the top part. Like how people know it’s the Dead Kennedys just by seeing the tomahawk or the Clash when all they see is the guy bent over, smashing his guitar.” It’s a moment that speaks to how emblems, symbols and patterns embed themselves in our consciousness and stay there, triggering instant recall upon seeing them. This is also true of Johnson’s writing: the longer you stay steeped in his words (SoCal, circa 1980), the longer it stays with you and the faster you identify with it. Johnson’s characters—Reece, Keith and Treat—join forces against the headwind of adolescence through the shared…

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DikNixon announces fall campaign stops

If you’d like to hear a bit of Californium: A Novel of Punk Rock, Growing Up, and Other Dangerous Things live this fall, you may be in luck. DikNixon (in the guise of my readings, book signings, and presentations) will be hitting the west coast and a few points in between.

The complete (so far), fall 2016 Terrorize Your Neighbor Tour is below. A few events are still pending, and I’ve already confirmed a few more dates for spring, so if there isn’t a bookstore, university, or library near you on the list, there may be soon. Watch for updates.

If I know you, it would be great to see you at an event (and no, you don’t have to buy a book. It’s always great to see friends, old and new, at readings). And if I don’t know you, come say hi (you don’t have to buy a book either, but I’m assuming that’s what would bring you to the event in the first place).

Terrorize Your Neighbor Tour, Fall 2016

Sep. 17, Berea, KY – Presenting at Berea Writers Circle Meeting, 1:30pm

Sep. 21, St. Louis, MO – Reading at Subterranean Books, 6:30pm

Sep. 23 Lawton, OK – Reading at Cameron University, TBD

Oct. 4, London, KY – Presentation and book signing at Laurel County Library, 5:00pm

Oct. 8, Long Beach, CA – Reading at Gatsby Books, 3:00pm

Nov. 5, Frankfurt, KY – Reading and book signing at Kentucky Book Festival, TBD

Dec. 9, Portland, OR – Reading at Late Night Library, TBD

Californium on Fernando Pessoa’s “to-read” list

Fernando Pessoa never visited the United States, so he never made it to California. At least, not physically. A writer so ahead of his time — post-modernist before there was post-modernism — he surely would have found a novel set in a time and place beyond his own experience attractive. He would have laughed at early eighties So Cal culture (as we all should); he would have delighted in characters who are trying to understand their place in the universe (even if that universe is high school); and he definitely would have liked punk rock (in principle, and maybe in practice as well). And if nothing else, he’d have been intrigued by the cover. It’s a pretty cool cover.

 

That Day My Novel Came Out and I Was Where?

Long before I had a book deal or even an agent for my first novel, Californium, back when it was just a manuscript, I knew, well I believed, it was a book somebody would want some day. So, even then I’d think about that day Californium would be published, and where I’d be.

Today, July 19, 2016, is that day. Am I giving a reading at some bookstore in New York City? That always seemed like the right thing to do even if in all my trips to New York bookstores (two), I’d never caught a reading. But no, that’s not the plan.

Will I be at a launch party tonight in Hollywood, perhaps at the World Famous Whisky a Go Go (it shows up in the novel) where a lot of old So Cal friends, and a So Cal punk band or two, maybe Social Distortion or The Offspring, will play? Nope.

Perhaps I’m giving a reading somewhere near the university where I teach, maybe the public library or the local arts council, something low key, but nice, and still a celebration? Not that either.

Where am I on this day, that day, the day I’ve long dreamed about? Lisbon. No, my novel has nothing to do with Portugal, or Europe, or anything historical beyond the early eighties punk scene set down amidst California’s growing military industrial complex (in a funny way, I promise). This is the third week of a teaching assignment with Disquiet International and Bluegrass Writers Studio Low-Res MFA program. I committed to it before the pub date was set.

I’m not complaining. A little over a week ago, I got to read from Californium at Livraria Ferin, a landmark bookstore in Lisbon where, should you choose, you can read from Fernando Pessoa’s desk (it’s tall like a podium because, apparently, he liked to write standing up). I had the honor of reading with David Caplan and Frank X. Gaspar. And over these past few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of attending so many other great readings around this historic city—Padgett Powell, Molly Antopol, Maaza Mengiste, John Herrin, Mikhail Iossel, Chanan Tigay, Annie Liontas, Arthur Flowers, Sabina Murray, Afonso Cruz, and National Book Award Winner, Denis Johnson (who I am blatantly name-dropping here because he came to my reading too and laughed at all the right places, which may be the most authentic kind of positive review I could ever hope for).

The post-launch readings and book signings will be waiting for me back in the States, and I’m excited for them all. But for now, on this day, to be in Pessoa’s city; to daily walk by Bertrand Chiado, the oldest bookstore in the world; to be among all these writers whose work reminds me of why I do this in the first place; it all seems more than appropriate. Maybe it should have been the plan all along.

It’s pub day, I’m in Portugal, and other than really looking forward to getting home to my wife and kids in a few days, I couldn’t be more thankful.

 

The Secret Last Line

You know how you sometimes hear those apocryphal stories about writers and writing: Ernest Hemingway’s wife leaving his entire manuscript on a train; Sherwood Anderson writing the bulk of Winesburg, Ohio, in the middle of the night and naked; Alice McDermott basing an uncompleted novel on one of my short stories?  Some are completely false (like the thing about Alice McDermott; I just really like her). But some are based in fact and a few of those happen to be completely true.

Here’s one I know is true: The very last line of my novel, Californium, is not the line with which I originally intended to end the book. I was struggling with exactly how to word that line and my editor at Plume solved my dilemma by striking it completely and ending on the penultimate line. I didn’t know things like that actually happened, and I wasn’t sure my editor was wrong to do it, so I got a second opinion from my other editor at Plume, and then my agent, and all agreed that the second-to-last line was the better line and the very last line should go.  At this point, it was hard to argue with people who had taken such care with my manuscript and, frankly, helped me make it a much better book than I ever could have written completely on my own, so I agreed and the last line was lost to history. Well, almost. I still have it saved on a draft of the novel.

I’m never going to sneak into bookstores and pencil in that last line so people will know what it was. BUT, I am willing to reveal it to anyone who reads Californium, who cares to know, and (here comes the marketing pitch) who has bought Californium by July 31, 2016. (I know, to completely lose my soul I just need to add that operators are standing by and if you’re not completely satisfied you can send the book back at no cost and keep the steak knives as my gift to you). But, it would be kind of cool to know, wouldn’t it? Sort of a director’s cut of the book?

If you’re interested, I promise I won’t send the last line and spoil everything until after you’ve read the book. So if you think you’ll want to know, all you have to do is this:

Buy Californium by July 31, 2016
Save your receipt
Either attach a dated receipt or a selfie with the book to r_dean_johnson@yahoo.com by September 30, 2016, and I’ll give up the goods

That’s it. You’ll help preserve a very minor part of literary history, and you’ll be able to say, “Thank God that guy had good editors” Or will you?  Maybe my instincts were right at first. Decide for yourself, then feel free to email me exactly what you think.

From the “How Cool Is That?” file:

I’m giving a “two weeks before it’s released” reading of CALIFORNIUM, which really isn’t a thing. The thing is that I’m reading with David Caplan and Frank X. Gaspar. The other thing is that the reading will be at Livraria Ferin, a bookstore  in the Baixa-Chiado neighborhood of Lisbon. So, two things. Super cool things.

Big thanks to Jeff Parker of Disquiet International for setting this up and letting me read with two great authors.

 

Errors

This spring they’ve been adding up:

Soooooo many typos. In emails and manuscripts. On Facebook and Twitter. Maybe because I’m left-handed. Perhaps because I’m a four-finger and two-thumbs typist. Probably because I’m forever in a hurry and rushing through things without proof-reading well enough.
There was that bike crash I had right before AWP. The one where I broke my left wrist and pinky finger, got a concussion (which only added to the typos), cracked my mandible, added three manly new scars to my face, and made me miss AWP.
Like, a month ago, my essay “Errors” came out in the journal, Salt Hill , along with a lot of other excellent work (I’m really digging the story “Bald Bear” by Becky Mandelbaum), and I really should have thanked Jacob Collins-Wilson, the nonfiction editor at SH) and mentioned all of this a lot sooner, like, a month ago.