Books

Already Dead - A California Gothic
by Denis Johnson

It took me ten years to read this book.
It wasn’t that it was difficult to read, or boring. I didn’t get distracted, or lose interest. To be perfectly honest, it scared me. And there was no logical reason for it. But there was something about it that just hit so close to home, both physically and emotionally, that I couldn’t get farther than the first few chapters before I’d put it down, shaken in a way I couldn’t fully articulate. It wasn’t until I moved to the other side of the country, as far as humanly possible from the fog shrouded edge of the world where I was born, that I could finally finish it. I’m glad I did, but it still haunts me.
As complex as Johnson’s novel is, as many other subjects as it addresses in its sprawling, sinuous 500 pages, it’s really about California, about its landscape, its aura, its allure, its promise, its deadlocked residents, their dreams and nightmares.