Denis Johnson died this past summer at the age of sixty-seven. Many have said that he was the single greatest writer of his generation, and the praise is warranted. Johnson, in a class with Kafka, Babel, Hamsun, and Lowry, wrote impossible novels: a dream-writer whose vision blended plain-prose with the arabesque, comedy with violence, death…

I write in order that the ornery old bastard and toothless schizophrenic might be more welcome in my life. The man who calls three times a day to give voice to his shattered mind. I met him at Advanced Autoparts. I’d bought a brake light, put the new one in, was about to step into…

The first time I saw her, I made up a story about her, and it was all wrong. This was in the autumn several years ago, when, in my third-time’s-a-charm attempt at entering the Catholic Church, I stumbled into Adoration each evening at my Capitol Hill parish. Here, in the cool of the day, God’s…

This day, I call upon the heaven and the earth as witnesses: I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, so that you and your offspring will live. —Duet. 30:19 Once again, my state, North Carolina, has chosen to refuse life. This time in a hastily called emergency session of…

The summer before you died, I hid on the roof in Tollygunge. I walked part of the way home from Sudder Street and by the time I got to the apartment building where I was staying, the sooty red sunset had spent itself. Dusk sifted in the quarter’s dim air, and from the park by…