How Denis Johnson Writes Great Prose (and How You Can, Too)
I suppose this is a series now.
I hate the miscommunication trope in fiction. If the central conflict in a novel can be solved by two people sitting down and hashing out a thing, but the conflict persists because they don’t, you will find me with steam coming out of my ears.
It’s lazy writing, in the macro sense.
However, in the micro, miscommunication between characters is one of my favorite devices. Within a scene, miscommunication creates mystery, micro-conflict, or comedy.
Denis Johnson utilizes miscommunication better than most in his work. In some ways, it’s a mastery of character that cannot be taught. It’s a unique ability for him to find the foolish or obscene and present it from an odd point of view in a way that creates laughter. Or, better yet, allows him to insert the truth of his characters using an economy of words.
I think this works relatively simply as a device.
It is an upended situation followed by a reverse.
So, when reading these excerpts, try to notice two things:
What is the upended situation the point of view character is trying to figure out?
How is everything reversed?
This example comes from Train Dreams, where POV character Robert Granier is trying to figure out how Peterson got shot by his dog.
“I don’t see how a dog shoots a gun.”
“Well, he did.”
“Did he use a rifle?”
“It weren’t a cannon. It weren’t a pistol. It were a rifle.”
“Well, that’s pretty mysterious, Mr. Peterson. How did that happen?”
“It was self-defense.”
Grainier waited. A full minute passed, but Peterson stayed silent.
“That just tears it then,” Grainier said, quite agitated. “I’m pulling this team up, and you can walk from here, if you want to beat around and around the bush. I’m taking you to town with a hole in you, and I ask a simple question about how your dog shot you, and you have to play like a bunkhouse lout who don’t know the answer.”
“All right!” Peterson laughed, then groaned with the pain it caused him. “My dog shot me in self-defense. I went to shoot him, at first, because of what Kootenai Bob the Indian said about him, and he slipped the rope. I had him tied for the business we were about to do.” Peterson coughed and went quiet a few seconds. “I ain’t stalling you now! I just got to get over the hurt a little bit.”
“All right. But why did you have Kootenai Bob tied up, and what has Kootenai Bob got to do with this, anyways?”
“Not Kootenai Bob! I had the dog tied up. Kootenai Bob weren’t nowhere near this scene I’m relating. He was before.”
“But the dog, I say.”
“And say I also, the dog.”
The upended situation (a simple way of saying: something is off, and the POV is trying to figure out what the hell is going on) in this scene is that Peterson claims his dog shot him in self-defense.
Granier asks him how on earth that happened. Granier operates from a rational point of view; dogs don’t think like men. Therefore, when Peterson describes his dog aping the actions of a man, he gets confused.
“But why did you have Kootenai Bob tied up, and what has Kootenai Bob got to do with this, anyways?” Granier says, still trying to rationalize the whole thing.
Then, the reversal. Peterson says, “I had the dog tied up. Kootenai Bob weren’t nowhere near this scene I’m relating. He was before.”
Peterson explains a few lines down that he went to smack his dog with the butt-end of his rifle and found that in the act, the gun discharged, hitting him in the chest.
The comedic character moment comes out of an upended situation (Peterson’s dog shot him in self-defense), followed by a reversal (Peterson’s dog, indeed, shot him). It makes it all the better that Peterson is embarrassed, and therefore coy, about it. So, while Granier tries to figure everything out, we sit back and laugh.
This may be my current favorite exchange in a Johnson book. It’s from his short story, Silences, a story in his collection, Largesse of the Sea Maiden.
Young Chris Case reversed the direction and introduced the topic of silences. He said the most silent thing he’d 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 hadn’t realized that Chris had lost a leg. He limped, but only slightly. I didn’t even know he’d fought in Afghanistan. “A land mine?” I said.
“Yes, sir. A land mine.”
“Can we see it?” Deirdre said.
“No, ma’am,” Chris said. “I don’t carry land mines around on my person.”
“No! I mean your leg.”
“It was blown off.”
“I mean the part that’s still there!”
“I’ll show you,” he said, “if you kiss it.”
The upended situation: Chris Case says the most silent thing he ever heard was an explosion.
Followed by a second odd thing: nobody in the room (of friends) knew Case was without a leg.
The reverse: Deirdre asks to see the blown-off leg, followed by the punchline.
“No, ma’am,” Chris said. “I don’t carry land mines around on my person.”
These sorts of situations manufacture character moments for the writer. They nearly build themselves. All you have to do is create the backward situation into which you thrust your characters, and then write your way through it.
The beauty of these interactions is that you, the reader, get a great sense of the characters because they are thrown off balance. The way humans respond to confusion says a lot about us. It’s the same in fiction.