[APPLAUSE]
Are we going home?
Do you want to do a few questions?
Sure, I don't know.
Now I'm really lost.
They said to read for 30 minutes but that
seemed like it was short.
But I think now I can answer questions.
Like, for instance, you could say,
would you read another page?
Or half a--
Or you could--
I don't know, sorry.
This is an unusual experience for me.
I'm actually living over in Scottsdale so I've driven here.
And somehow without the plane ride and all of that,
it just doesn't seem like I'm really going anywhere
to give a reading.
So I haven't really arrived yet.
Anyway any questions?
I got lots of questions.
What's the difference between a nautical mile and a land mile?
I've asked audiences that all over the place
and I've never gotten a reasonable answer.
[INAUDIBLE] No, that's a kilometer.
Were you going to answer that?
1.1, 1.2.
Really?
Yeah.
Well, wait a damn--
He says 1.1, 1.2.
Do I hear 1.8?
[LAUGHTER]
It's on the waves.
Well, it's between those two.
It's on the waves, is that what you're saying?
So far I've asked the only question.
Yes?
Was "Jesus' Son" autobiographical or not?
Did you see what I did just then?
I do this all the time.
I put my ear against the m--
[LAUGHTER]
Was the question about "Jesus Son" being autobiographical?
Yeah.
About, I don't know, half of it might have happened to me
and I think all the rest of it happened to people I knew.
I don't think there's anything in there that
didn't happen to somebody.
It's all stolen.
It's either autobiographical or stolen.
Yes?
Do you play any role in the making up or adapting that
to a film?
Did you have a role in that?
The question was did I have any role in the adaptation?
I gave my remarks and they were very respectful
and made a lot of changes based on what I'd
said about their screenplay.
And then they had me write some material involving
the main guy and his girlfriend, because they
wanted more stuff about them.
But they didn't want to--
They felt they were too reverent of the material
to expand on it themselves.
So they asked me to write some stuff.
So that was about it, like three pages, remarks on three pages.
You were the guy with the knife in his head?
And I was the guy with the knife in his head in the movie,
if you saw that movie.
Or if you didn't, run out and rent it right away.
Yes?
One of my favorite lines has always
been, "Darkness, my name is Denis Johnson,"
from the early works.
Do you feel you're saying anything different [INAUDIBLE]
at this point?
[LAUGHTER]
No, I think that's what any serious writer's basically
saying, that line, every other line I've written
is just a translation of that one into some other language.
Yes?
I've heard that "Jesus' Son" then started out
as a series of poems?
Is this true or is it just a rumor and if so--
The question was did "Jesus' Son" start off
as a series of poems.
No, There was--
But one story in there, "Car crash while hitchhiking," which
I think is the first one in the book,
I had a lot of sort of poetic versey material about it
because I was trying to write a poem about it.
And eventually I did finish that poem.
I sent it off to a magazine and as soon
as it was down inside the mailbox where
I couldn't get at it, I realized that should have been a story.
And then I didn't think anything of it.
But they actually wrote and said we want to print this thing.
And I wrote back and said it should have been a story,
but I haven't written a story, and I don't
want you to print the poem.
And, of course, they were very angry.
But I think it worked out for the best in the end.
But that was the only one that had to do with poetry
to begin with.
Yes?
What inspired you to write noir?
What inspired me to write noir?
This one here?
I'm trying to remember how this all happened.
Well, actually it was if you read the first scene
in the book, it takes place at a competition
of barbershop choruses in Bakersfield, California.
And I actually went to such a thing.
And I was actually in a barbershop chorus, in fact.
And the guys in the chorus just interested me.
They were all kind of like sleazy musicians
even though they were insurance salesmen.
And they all gambled and whored and their wives went with them.
They interested me and I just wanted to write something
about people like that.
And Jimmy Luntz is one of the barbershop chorus.
Yes?
When you decided to do your Denis Johnson spin on noir,
were there any specific influences
like movies or literature that you used to kind of tackle
the genre, or was it just sort of like a pastiche of
[INAUDIBLE]?
I guess the question is how much studying
of other noir-type writing did I do before I wrote this.
I reread all of Raymond Chandler that I could, and read stuff
about these guys.
And Chandler, of course, had a lot to say
about writing, like have a guy with a gun
walk in if you don't know what to do, and other things too.
I wish I could remember some of his other wonderful advice.
In any case, I started reading that and then
because of the economy that was forced on the composition,
I got interested in Ernest Hemingway
and what he had to say about writing tight.
And then I started reading stuff that Chekhov had to say.
And probably another two weeks I would have evolved
past being able to write this.
I would have just gone to a monastery or something.
In any case, there was one novel a guy recommended to me that I
went out and found, it was called "Fast One"
by a writer named Paul Kane, K-A-N-E. He wrote in the 1930s.
He was a screenwriter.
This was his only book which was actually put together
out of things that he had published in "Black Mask"
magazine.
But it's a fascinating book, the way it's written.
There's no internal stuff at all.
You only see the people from the outside.
It's really because he was a screenwriter, he just did that.
It's really, really fascinating to read it.
Yes?
One of my favorite things you've written is a essay.
I think it's called "Looking for Charles Taylor?"
Oh, the small boys unit?
Yeah, the small boys unit?
Do you still do that kind of journalism?
No.
The small boys unit thing was written
about going to Liberia in '92, I think
I went there the second time.
And the question was, am I doing any more writing
of that kind of journalistic traveling war stuff and not
really.
I did one, I went to Northern Iraq a couple of years ago
and did an article for "Portfolio" magazine.
But that's the only thing I've done in the last probably 10
years of that kind of thing.
It just got old.
It was the same thing over and over again.
Figure out some way of getting into a place,
finding somebody to show you what's going on.
This person is risking their life
to get the word out about their cause, or their country,
or the plight of their people.
And then after two or three weeks
you just say, so long buddy.
Just flush him down the toilet and go home.
It just got old, it really did.
And I just couldn't do that sort of thing anymore.
Yeah?
Would you say something about the two different styles
you write in?
Like "Tree of Smoke" and "Angels,"
if you read from those you wouldn't get many laughs
from those.
Oh, I see.
I thought you were saying those two were
different from each other.
No, good, I'm glad you weren't saying
that because they're supposed to sort of go together, you know.
Well, I think there's a lot of funny stuff in both those books
too.
You don't see a contrast?
Well this, obviously, there's not
a lot of literature in there.
But even so, I enjoyed crafting it.
And I think there's some--
And in some ways, it's the most--
in that way it's the most literary novel
I've ever done because I'm conscious of other forms
and conscious of this genre and trying to get into it.
But I think by the time you get to the end,
it's not quite like it should be, doesn't end like a shoot
them up.
Was there a question I was answering, I forgot.
Is that it?
I don't know.
Oh, the two styles, funny and not.
It's all funny to me.
Yes?
Will you tell us what you're working on now?
The question was, what are you working on now?
Nothing, nothing.
I don't know what happened.
I woke up like about six months ago
and suddenly I just really didn't give a shit anymore.
And it's just been like that every day since then.
And it's not like writer's block,
it's like I just don't care.
Do you find that liberating?
Yeah, it is.
But I'm also kind of bored.
I'm waiting for the next chapter to start.
I have to buy a bulldozer or something
and get into construction.
I don't know what.
Yes?
Of the books that you do have out, do you have a favorite?
The question was, do I have a favorite book.
The ones I like are "The Incognito Lounge," "Angels,"
"Jesus' Son," and "Tree of Smoke."
I think those are all--
Could you read from a poem?
--fairly decent-- Poem?
I don't have a poem.
I do.
Right over here.
OK.
This book is called--
Oh, it's one I mentioned, "The Incognito Lounge."
It's got a picture of the incognito lounge.
[APPLAUSE]
This is the only town anybody ever heard of this book in.
I was here like 15 years ago and people were saying,
read a poem.
Well, anyway, I'm very glad to read a poem.
Let's see what--
OK, this one's called "On the Olympic Peninsula," which
is up there around Seattle.
Stranger, to one like you, here only the old people
feel like talking.
But abruptly, as if already in the midst of talk,
as if they sensed with you a kinship
and closeness to endings, and you aren't kind with them.
Stranger, here the sea doesn't obliterate, but just
lies there carved up into bays and inlets,
indolent or waiting.
In the towns, one hip bar, the lesbians
lean into sinister embraces, dancing together
and speaking just softly enough that you can't hear.
Your girl is gone and you are here
because you think maybe they have taken her from you,
into this establishment where the men stink like murdered sea
animals.
They have flying beards, black mouths,
they spill the beer into over their laughter,
so that you think of someone urinating on coals.
Sometimes you unexpectedly taste the inside of your own mouth,
choking as you kiss this bitter foreigner.
And you feel yourself forgetting,
even as you remember that you've gone strange,
and everybody else is happy and just
having good clean fun in a place where
the ocean is large and cares nothing
for men, that you are an image of blood, graven amid peace
and wine, a strange one, claustrophobic and heart
stopped among garden parks through which boys jog
perspiring in their red basketball shorts,
and in which toddlers in blue parkas on toy horses
rock themselves, already stupefied, toward oblivion.
[APPLAUSE]