“When I’m rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus’ son…”
from "Heroin" by the Velvet Underground
I haven’t talked directly about my MFA program in this medium, but I’m going to talk about one part of it now. The experience is just too big and in my face right now to have a proper perspective on what it is like for me. It’s encompassing a lot of my time and mental space. But as I’m also committed to keeping this Substack up to date with my life, I’m going to throw this in.
A lot of the writers I’ve written about on here for the past year have been in some way related to what I’m writing, direct influences on my own prose. There is usually some aspect of what I’m posting here that relates to my work—learning techniques and studying cultural boundaries other writers have created. Now, I’m getting so deep in the weeds I feel like I have to explain what’s going on. So let me back up.
Grad school
Going into grad school, I thought I would use the time to rewrite a manuscript that has been thoroughly rejected by my old publisher and every agent and small press to whom it was sent. I still believe in this book, a satire of the Reagan White House, a Venture Brothers-type take on your favorite ‘80s political figures, done as an alternate reality in which Harland Sanders, aka The Colonel, saves the world. I honestly thought people would be fighting over this one; instead, they were rejecting it before the pitch was done. But then, when I got to grad school, I was pushed another way.
My fiction instructor wanted to see what else I had. I honestly don’t remember how this conversation went. At some point, I sent her a zip folder full of unpublished and some unfinished stories.
“What are the three stories that all have a kid selling fake magazine subscriptions?” she asked.
“Those—well, I don’t know what to do with them—merge them all into one story, keep one and use the other two for parts, or write a better fourth one?”
“How much of this can you write?”
“That’s my crappy childhood—I can mine that forever.”
And so we went forth. And I wrote and wrote and wrote. 47,000 words later, I have a manuscript.
But here’s the problem with my childhood: it’s not A to B to C. I don’t remember how I got into many situations, I don’t remember the names of the important people, and in some cases, am unsure of the geography of where things took place. The stories take place in a 26-month period I only partially remember. And the rest of the stories are about how having lost time and PTSD as a result of what I do remember affect the rest of my life. Like many people with PTSD, it had a lot to do with my drug and alcohol use.
So the stories are short clips, scenes that I do recall that would go next to one another in a book, have the same narrator and the same world, but not have the same structure as a novel, but more like a book of short stories. One of the challenges is in ordering the stories. I couldn’t tell you what order the memories I do have are in.
“We could structure it like Jesus’ Son,” she told me.
“I haven’t read it,” I admitted.
Cue the WTF reaction. If you looked at any part of my bookshelf, you would assume I had read this one. I’ve read almost the entire canon of drug-influenced novelists and subculture heroes. I’m also a recovering drug addict. I’ve written two recovery books, and a lot of poetry and prose about drugs and alcohol. This is one that I always meant to read and never did.
The Book Review
I think like most other people think—Jesus’ Son is a perfect book. It’s a fast read, coming in under 40,000 words. It’s a bunch of stories with the same narrator, who’s not quite named but sometimes referred to as “Fuckhead.” It’s not always clear what is going on in his life—sometimes he has a job, sometimes he refers to a wife or a girlfriend, sometimes we find out his geographic location—but usually the stories are about what he is doing at the moment: looking for someone, avoiding someone, scamming to get drug money, finding drugs, or facing consequences from drugs. You know, standard drug addict stuff.
There’s a simplicity of addiction in that you only have one problem to manage. Nothing else really matters but getting your vice in front of your face one next time. Objectively, your whole life can be falling apart—you can be losing a job, jeopardizing relationships, destroying your health, and putting yourself in danger—and while it is happening, your only worry is “will I get another fix?” And this is the brilliance of Denis Johnson: capturing this mindset.
Where is the main character from? Doesn’t matter. What’s the main character’s real name? Doesn’t matter. Has the main character abandoned his wife and child/children? Doesn’t matter. Right now, all he’s doing is finding a way to get high again.
If you try to fudge-paste in all the missing information where it’s not necessary, that’s how you end up with A Million Little Pieces.
What you know of the narrator is the same you learn about someone after going to hundreds of 12-step meetings with them. There are people I’ve known for years but don’t know their last name. I could tell you about a prison riot they were in or the time they thought God was talking to them in a dumpster, but I don’t know what they do for a living. I know how to order for them at a diner, one hundred percent trust them to back me in a streetfight, but I’ve never met their spouse or children. If you don’t have folding-chair friends, this book is a good substitute for you.
From here: Spoilers for Everything
The Structure of Jesus’ Son
A character named Jack Hotel dies in one story and is alive in the next. So this is not in order, or the narrator is that unreliable, or there’s some complicated flashback/forward action going on. So it made me think—how are these stories arranged? What’s the chronological order?
Right now, you might be thinking, “what does it matter?” Well, it doesn’t. But I have an obsessive personality and poor impulse control. And I have an excuse that I’m working on a book of my own stories and I have no idea how to order them. So maybe, I thought, I would get good ideas while doing this—I didn’t, really, but I did the work anyway and now I’m going to share it.
I like “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” at the beginning. The narrator gets into a car, it crashes, people die, and when he emerges, he’s born into the world of the book. Where he came from is gone, what his name was is gone, where he was going doesn’t matter. He’s now an anonymous hitchhiker forever.
I’m inserting the fourth story, “Dundun,” next. This is the second appearance of Jack Hotel, and the most likely explanation is that it comes chronologically before he dies in the other story. But again, I can’t be sure. Also, the narrator is called Fuckhead for the first time and there is a note that he’s a few months older than the guy who just turned 21.
“Out on Bail” is the story in which Jack Hotel dies. So here it is. However, there’s a weird transition with a two-year gap in the story. So it’s possible Dundun happens in that two years, but I assume it doesn’t.
I honestly can’t tell where “Happy Hour,” the ninth story, should go, but I’m putting it here. The narrator is still aimless, but hanging out a lot of bars. I feel like he’s grounded more in other stories, so I’m guessing he’s on the younger side here.
“Two Men,” originally the second story, is next. And “The Other Man,” the eighth story right after that. Or may I be so bold to combine them into one story? I’d really like to mush them together, since the first one is called “Two Men” but only talks about one of them. I do like that, though, as a fractured junky narrative that doesn’t always follow its own path. He has a car and some friends and a little bit more history to himself and his surroundings than the previous stories.
“Dirty Wedding,” the seventh story, goes here. He says he’s 25 or 26, so it goes later in the collection. But yet, when he’s killing time, he does so by riding trains, which makes me think he doesn’t know people at bars yet, or is he in a new city? I have no idea. In the next story, he has a job, so I’m putting that after.
“Emergency,” my favorite, and was sixth, is now the last story before he starts turning his life around. He’s working in a hospital. By no means is he on the straight and narrow. But I’m thinking that maybe from bottoming out at this job he ends up where we find him next, and the next two stories are as we find them in the book.
“Steady Hands at Seattle General” is in the psych ward, detox, or rehab. Not sure which it would be—these things are all run differently in various cities and states. And who knows what services were available then? But for the first time, the narrator talks about what they want to do with their life, and the seeds of hope are planted.
“Beverly Home,” the last story, is the portrait of a man who is newly clean and sober. He references NA meetings. He’s attempting his first non-drug relationships. He dates two women, the second of whom describes how all her previous boyfriends died early. Maybe it’s a callback to the first story, in which he narrowly escapes death?
So there you have it. A new order for the book which changes the experience very little, if any. But I dissected this and felt it shouldn’t go to waste.
I doubt I’m the first person to think of this. Please pass on anyone else’s idea or come up with your own.
Bold!!!!
You made me fall in love with this book all over again, Bucky. Thank you! God, the lines in this collection. Just going from memory..."Your husband will beat you with an extension cord, but you were my mother." "I killed the mother but saved the child." "I like to ride the fast ones at night." And Dundun, how somebody took a stick, opened his skull, and stirred up his brain...I will love this book forever.