Denis Johnson’s Desperate, Poetic Horrors

Denis Johnson wrote about some of the most unlikable characters in American fiction, and yet he always managed to make readers care what happened to them. This talent may have had something to do with many unlikable qualities in Johnson himself that, through the force of his dedicated and uncompromising talent, carried him through three marriages, nearly two dozen books of poetry and fiction, several plays and screenplays, and numerous darkly recurring periods of addiction. It would be fair to say that, throughout his adult life, he was either suffering from addictive disorders or engaged in 12-step programs to keep them at bay.