The Largesse of the Sea Maiden: Stories by Denis Johnson (English) Paperback Boo

Description: The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson Twenty-five years after Jesus Son, a haunting new collection of short stories on mortality and transcendence, from National Book Award winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Denis JohnsonNATIONAL BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Dwight Garner, The New York Times • Maureen Corrigan, NPRs Fresh Air • Chicago Tribune • Newsday • New York • AV Club • Publishers Weekly"Ranks with the best fiction published by any American writer during this short century."—New York"A posthumous masterpiece."—Entertainment WeeklyNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • NPR • The Boston Globe • New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • BloombergThe Largesse of the Sea Maiden is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson. Written in the luminous prose that made him one of the most beloved and important writers of his generation, this collection finds Johnson in new territory, contemplating the ghosts of the past and the elusive and unexpected ways the mysteries of the universe assert themselves. Finished shortly before Johnsons death, this collection is the last word from a writer whose work will live on for many years to come.Praise for The Largesse of the Sea Maiden "An instant classic."—Newsday "Exceptional luminosity . . . hits a powerful vein."—The New York Times Book Review "Grace and oblivion are inextricably yoked in these transcendent stories. . . . [Johnsons] gift is to extract the beauty in all that brokenness."—The Wall Street Journal "Nobody ever wrote like Denis Johnson. Nobody ever came close. . . . Were just left with this miraculous book, these perfect stories, the last words from one of the worlds greatest writers."—NPR FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Denis Johnson was the author of nine novels, one novella, two books of short stories, five collections of poetry, two collections of plays, and one book of reportage. Among other honors, his novel Tree of Smoke won the 2007 National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize, and Train Dreams was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize. Review "These four stories rank with Johnsons best work, but the title story, a catalogue of singular moments related by a man who tells us hes passing through life as if it were a masquerade, ranks with the best fiction published by any American writer during this short century."—New York"A posthumous masterpiece . . . With this book, Johnson has only cemented his status as one of his generations greatest writers. . . . Each story in Largesse is weighted by an astonishing humanity, a generosity of spirit thats evened out by lyrical dissections of times passage and the mysteries of connection. . . . Heres an author turning toward the past, conjuring up the ghosts of those hes loved and lost, writing of wild experiences with affectionate abandon. Few have linked themselves between the reader and the page so intimately—so cosmically—as he does here."—Entertainment Weekly "An instant classic."—Newsday"Exceptional luminosity . . . hits a powerful vein."—The New York Times Book Review"Grace and oblivion are inextricably yoked in these transcendent stories, the testament of a writer who lived and worked on unusually close terms with death, until that great mystery finally stole him. . . . [Johnsons] gift is to extract the beauty in all that brokenness. . . . Though these are longer, fuller, rangier stories than the strobing fever dreams of Jesus Son, they possess the same incredible emotional density. They feel squeezed, to borrow Johnsons phrase, in the almighty grip of the truth."—The Wall Street Journal"Nobody ever wrote like Denis Johnson. Nobody ever came close . . . Were just left with this miraculous book, these perfect stories, the last words from one of the worlds greatest writers."—NPR "Johnson offers visions and sadness and laughter. But its the sentences—those adamantine, poetic sentences—that made him one of Americas great and lasting writers. Its the sentences that live on."—The Boston Globe "Johnsons fiction . . . overflows with creative energy, moving from one beauty to another with a mercurial, at times almost chaotic grace. Although his characters are often diminished and winnowed by their struggles with life, the narrative voice that describes their travails gives evidence of an imagination that is nearly boundless in its generosity and abundance."—Chicago Tribune "Sly, open-ended, and meticulously wise . . . Johnson, in all his work, aimed to locate the hidden, actual face of things. But the new stories build without those miraculous balls of hail, and their truths are necessarily deeper, and more precise. . . . [Johnson] is a writer whose ambitions were in their own way as broad and burgeoning as Dostoyevskys. He is for all time."—Rachel Kushner, Bookforum "A final gift from a master."—BOMB Magazine "Denis Johnsons posthumous collection winks from beyond the grave. . . . Johnson told aspiring authors to write as if ink were blood, because it is precious. So are farewells like this. . . . It is a vital addition to Johnsons oeuvre."—Time Review Quote "These four stories rank with Johnsons best work, but the title story, a catalogue of singular moments related by a man who tells us hes passing through life as if it were a masquerade, ranks with the best fiction published by any American writer during this short century." -- New York "A posthumous masterpiece . . . With this book, Johnson has only cemented his status as one of his generations greatest writers. . . . Each story in Largesse is weighted by an astonishing humanity, a generosity of spirit thats evened out by lyrical dissections of times passage and the mysteries of connection. . . . Heres an author turning toward the past, conjuring up the ghosts of those hes loved and lost, writing of wild experiences with affectionate abandon. Few have linked themselves between the reader and the page so intimately--so cosmically--as he does here." -- Entertainment Weekly "An instant classic." -- Newsday "Exceptional luminosity . . . hits a powerful vein." -- The New York Times Book Review "Grace and oblivion are inextricably yoked in these transcendent stories, the testament of a writer who lived and worked on unusually close terms with death, until that great mystery finally stole him. . . . [Johnsons] gift is to extract the beauty in all that brokenness. . . . Though these are longer, fuller, rangier stories than the strobing fever dreams of Jesus Son, they possess the same incredible emotional density. They feel squeezed, to borrow Johnsons phrase, in the almighty grip of the truth." -- The Wall Street Journal "Nobody ever wrote like Denis Johnson. Nobody ever came close . . . Were just left with this miraculous book, these perfect stories, the last words from one of the worlds greatest writers." --NPR "Johnson offers visions and sadness and laughter. But its the sentences--those adamantine, poetic sentences--that made him one of Americas great and lasting writers. Its the sentences that live on." -- The Boston Globe "Johnsons fiction . . . overflows with creative energy, moving from one beauty to another with a mercurial, at times almost chaotic grace. Although his characters are often diminished and winnowed by their struggles with life, the narrative voice that describes their travails gives evidence of an imagination that is nearly boundless in its generosity and abundance." -- Chicago Tribune "Sly, open-ended, and meticulously wise . . . Johnson, in all his work, aimed to locate the hidden, actual face of things. But the new stories build without those miraculous balls of hail, and their truths are necessarily deeper, and more precise. . . . [Johnson] is a writer whose ambitions were in their own way as broad and burgeoning as Dostoyevskys. He is for all time." --Rachel Kushner, Bookforum "The late Denis Johnson has a strong case for being the most influential American short story writer of the last twenty-five years. . . . The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is yet another terrific book of heart, humanity, and humor. Read and treasure it. It is a final gift from a master." -- BOMB Magazine "Denis Johnsons posthumous collection winks from beyond the grave. . . . Johnson told aspiring authors to write as if ink were blood, because it is precious. So are farewells like this. . . . It is a vital addition to Johnsons oeuvre." -- Time Excerpt from Book Silences After dinner, nobody went home right away. I think wed enjoyed the meal so much we hoped Elaine would serve us the whole thing all over again. These were people weve gotten to know a little from Elaines volunteer work--nobody from my work, nobody from the ad agency. We sat around in the living room describing the loudest sounds wed ever heard. One said it was his wifes voice when she told him she didnt love him anymore and wanted a divorce. Another recalled the pounding of his heart when he suffered a coronary. Tia Jones had become a grandmother at the age of thirty-seven and hoped never again to hear anything so loud as her granddaughter crying in her sixteen-year-old daughters arms. Her husband Ralph said it hurt his ears whenever his brother opened his mouth in public, because his brother had Tourette syndrome and erupted with remarks like "I masturbate! Your penis smells good!" in front of perfect strangers on a bus, or during a movie, or even in church. Young Chris Case reversed the direction and introduced the topic of silences. He said the most silent thing hed ever heard was the land mine taking off his right leg outside Kabul, Afghanistan. As for other silences, nobody contributed. In fact, there came a silence now. Some of us hadnt realized that Chris had lost a leg. He limped, but only slightly. I didnt even know hed fought in Afghanistan. "A land mine?" I said. "Yes, sir. A land mine." "Can we see it?" Deirdre said. "No, maam," Chris said. "I dont carry land mines around on my person." "No! I mean your leg." "It was blown off." "I mean the part thats still there!" "Ill show you," he said, "if you kiss it." Shocked laughter. We started talking about the most ridiculous things wed ever kissed. Nothing of interest. Wed all kissed only people, and only in the usual places. "All right, then," Chris told Deirdre, "heres your chance for the conversations most unique entry." "No, I dont want to kiss your leg!" Although none of us showed it, I think we all felt a little irritated with Deirdre. We all wanted to see. Morton Sands was there too that night, and for the most part hed managed to keep quiet. Now he said, "Jesus Christ, Deirdre." "Oh, well. Okay," she said. Chris pulled up his right pant leg, bunching the cuff about halfway up his thigh, and detached his prosthesis, a device of chromium bars and plastic belts strapped to his knee, which was intact and swiveled upward horribly to present the puckered end of his leg. Deirdre got down on her bare knees before him, and he hitched forward in his seat--the couch, Ralph Jones was sitting beside him--to move the scarred stump within two inches of Deirdres face. Now she started to cry. Now we were all embarrassed, a little ashamed. For nearly a minute, we waited. Then Ralph Jones said, "Chris, I remember when I saw you fight two guys at once outside the Aces Tavern. No kidding," Jones told the rest of us, "he went outside with these two guys and beat the crap out of both of them." "I guess I couldve given them a break," Chris said. "They were both pretty drunk." "Chris, you sure kicked some ass that night." In the pocket of my shirt I had a wonderful Cuban cigar. I wanted to step outside with it. The dinner had been one of our best, and I wanted to top off the experience with a satisfying smoke. But you want to see how this sort of thing turns out. How often will you witness a woman kissing an amputation? Jones, however, had ruined everything by talking. Hed broken the spell. Chris worked the prosthesis back into place and tightened the straps and rearranged his pant leg. Deirdre stood up and wiped her eyes and smoothed her skirt and took her seat, and that was that. The outcome of all this was that Chris and Deirdre, about six months later, down at the courthouse, in the presence of very nearly the same group of friends, were married by a magistrate. Yes, theyre husband and wife. You and I know what goes on. Accomplices Another silence comes to mind. A couple of years ago Elaine and I had dinner at the home of Miller Thomas, formerly the head of my agency in Manhattan. Right--he and his wife Francesca ended up out here too, but considerably later than Elaine and I--once my boss, now a San Diego retiree. We finished two bottles of wine with dinner, maybe three bottles. After dinner we had brandy. Before dinner we had cocktails. We didnt know each other particularly well, and maybe we used the liquor to rush past that fact. After the brandy I started drinking scotch, and Miller drank bourbon, and, although the weather was warm enough that the central air conditioner was running, he pronounced it a cold night and lit a fire in his fireplace. It took only a squirt of fluid and the pop of a match to get an armload of sticks crackling and blazing, and then he laid on a couple of large chunks he said were good, seasoned oak. "The capitalist at his forge," Francesca said. At one point we were standing in the light of the flames, I and Miller Thomas, seeing how many books each man could balance on his outflung arms, Elaine and Francesca loading them onto our hands in a test of equilibrium which both of us failed repeatedly. It became a test of strength. I dont know who won. We called for more and more books, and our women piled them on until most of Millers library lay around us on the floor. He had a small Marsden Hartley canvas mounted above the mantel, a crazy, mostly blue landscape done in oil, and I said that perhaps that wasnt the place for a painting like this one, so near the smoke and heat, such an expensive painting. And the painting was masterly, too, from what I could see of it by dim lamps and firelight, amid books scattered all over the floor . . . Miller took offense. He said hed paid for this masterpiece, he owned it, he could put it where it suited him. He moved very near the flames and took down the painting and turned to us holding it before him and declared that he could even, if he wanted, throw it in the fire and leave it there. "Is it art? Sure. But listen," he said, "art doesnt own it. My name aint Art." He held the canvas flat like a tray, landscape up, and tempted the flames with it, thrusting it in and out . . . And the strange thing is that Id heard a nearly identical story about Miller Thomas and his beloved Hartley landscape some years before, about an evening very similar to this one, the drinks and wine and brandy and more drinks, the rowdy conversation, the scattering of books, and finally Miller thrusting this painting toward the flames and calling it his own property and threatening to burn it. On that previous night his guests had talked him down from the heights, and hed hung the painting back in its place, but on our night--why?--none of us found a way to object as he added his property to the fuel and turned his back and walked away. A black spot appeared on the canvas and spread out in a sort of smoking puddle that gave rise to tiny flames. Miller sat in a chair across the living room, by the flickering window, and observed from that distance with a drink in his hand. Not a word, not a move, from any of us. The wooden frame popped marvelously in the silence while the great painting cooked away, first black and twisted, soon gray and fluttering, and then the fire had it all. Ad Man This morning I was assailed by such sadness at the velocity of life--the distance Ive traveled from my own youth, the persistence of the old regrets, the new regrets, the ability of failure to freshen itself in novel forms--that I almost crashed the car. Getting out at the place where I do the job I dont feel Im very good at, I grabbed my briefcase too roughly and dumped half of its contents in my lap and half in the parking lot, and while gathering it all up I left my keys on the seat and locked the car manually--an old mans habit--and trapped them in the RAV. In the office, I asked Shylene to call a locksmith and then get me an appointment with my back-man. In the upper right quadrant of my back I have a nerve that once in a while gets pinched. The T4 nerve. These nerves arent frail little ink lines; theyre cords as thick as your pinky finger. This one gets caught between tense muscles, and for days, even for weeks, theres not much to be done but take aspirins and get massages and visit the chiropractor. Down my right arm I feel a tingling, a numbness, sometimes a dull, sort of muffled torment, or else a shapeless, confusing pain. Its a signal: it happens when Im anxious about something. To my surprise, Shylene knew all about this something. Apparently she finds time to be Googling her bosses, and shed learned of an award I was about to receive in, of all places, New York--for an animated television commercial. The award goes to my old New York team, but I was the only one of us attending the ceremony, possibly the only one interested, so many years down the line. This little gesture of acknowledgment put the finishing touches on a depressing picture. The people on my team had gone on to other teams, fancier agencies, higher accomplishments. All Id done in better than two decades was to tread forward until I reached the limit of certain assumptions, and step off. Meanwhile, Shylene was oohing, gushing, like a proud nurse who expects you to marvel at all the unholy procedures the hospital has in store for you. I said to her, "Thanks, thanks." When I entered the reception area, and throughout this transaction, Shylene wore a flashy sequined carnival masqu Details ISBN0812988655 Author Denis Johnson Pages 224 Language English Year 2019 ISBN-10 0812988655 ISBN-13 9780812988659 Format Paperback Publication Date 2019-01-08 Short Title The Largesse of the Sea Maiden Imprint Random House Trade Paperbacks Subtitle Stories Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2019-01-08 NZ Release Date 2019-01-08 US Release Date 2019-01-08 UK Release Date 2019-01-08 Place of Publication New York Publisher Random House USA Inc DEWEY 813.54 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:141727094;

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