The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond by Denis Johnson
Irving Malin

Denis Johnson. Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond. HarperCollins, 2001. 238 pp. $27.00.

Johnson’s reports, which on the surface are journalistic pieces on Montana, Somalia, Liberia, and once-hallowed hippie retreats, confirms that his cosmic view is at the same time comic and bleak, angelic and demonic. His prose is hallucinatory; it captures those ever-expanding pockets of hell that are engulfing us. Almost every essay demonstrates that we live in bad-no, apocalyptic-times. Johnson seems always to find himself in confusing exotic locations. Two essays report from the Liberian civil war, in which secrets overwhelm official information and statesmen rule without proper procedures. A unit of small boys "are the soldiers Charles Taylor can trust implicitly . . . because they love him as their father." Taylor is a kind of ghostly ruler, speaking to interviewers in meaningless statements. Perhaps one of the most amusing reports is Johnson’s forced attempt-as the ten-year-old son of a diplomat-to become a Boy Scout in the Phillipines. His initiation is so bizarre that he becomes a kind of anti-Scout. He writes, "In fact, if this had been a real army, one with an enemy, I would have joined them and pinpointed this location on a map for their artillery." Elsewhere, Johnson writes about the FBI’s attempt to capture Eric Robert Rudolph, the killer of abortionists, and the North Carolina community that shelters and feeds him. Johnson views Rudolph as a survivor because he can find some kind of peace in the caves of Nantahala National Forest, where he hides. He quotes an anthropologist: "The cave is a maternal, matriarchal aspect of the world. . . . To return to the cave, even in thought, is to regress from life into the state of being unborn." The quotation seems to apply to Johnson. He wants to get out of this world-he seeks salvation-but recognizes that even if he is saved, he won’t know it. [Irving Malin]


Interview with Founder Board of Directors Funders Submission Guidelines Dalkey Archive Full Catalog Current and Forthcoming Titles Recent Titles Review of Contemporary Fiction Special Library Offer Special Backlist Sale Stores & Wholesalers Academics Libraries Reviewers Context Casebooks Author Interviews Links Dalkey Archive News Events Newsletter

The Review of Contemporary Fiction Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond by Denis Johnson Irving Malin Denis Johnson. Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond. HarperCollins, 2001. 238 pp. $27.00. Johnson’s reports, which on the surface are journalistic pieces on Montana, Somalia, Liberia, and once-hallowed hippie retreats, confirms that his cosmic view is at the same time comic and bleak, angelic and demonic. His prose is hallucinatory; it captures those ever-expanding pockets of hell that are engulfing us. Almost every essay demonstrates that we live in bad-no, apocalyptic-times. Johnson seems always to find himself in confusing exotic locations. Two essays report from the Liberian civil war, in which secrets overwhelm official information and statesmen rule without proper procedures. A unit of small boys "are the soldiers Charles Taylor can trust implicitly . . . because they love him as their father." Taylor is a kind of ghostly ruler, speaking to interviewers in meaningless statements. Perhaps one of the most amusing reports is Johnson’s forced attempt-as the ten-year-old son of a diplomat-to become a Boy Scout in the Phillipines. His initiation is so bizarre that he becomes a kind of anti-Scout. He writes, "In fact, if this had been a real army, one with an enemy, I would have joined them and pinpointed this location on a map for their artillery." Elsewhere, Johnson writes about the FBI’s attempt to capture Eric Robert Rudolph, the killer of abortionists, and the North Carolina community that shelters and feeds him. Johnson views Rudolph as a survivor because he can find some kind of peace in the caves of Nantahala National Forest, where he hides. He quotes an anthropologist: "The cave is a maternal, matriarchal aspect of the world. . . . To return to the cave, even in thought, is to regress from life into the state of being unborn." The quotation seems to apply to Johnson. He wants to get out of this world-he seeks salvation-but recognizes that even if he is saved, he won’t know it. [Irving Malin]

Search the full text of our books: