NP: Denis Johnson, the ecstatic, RIP Pt. II

[Smoke Teff]

Just started reading his posthumous story collection, *The Largesse of
the Sea Maiden*.

Want to just re-urge Plisters to (re)experience Johnson. He is one of
the only writers I can think of whom I consider P's equals in
whatyoumightcall fiction/prose of the ecstatic.

*Jesus' Son* might be the best story collection I know, and you can
read it in one sitting.

I invite you all to read the ending of Johnson's first novel,
*Angels*. This is one of my favorite moments of all fiction, rivalling
the last pages of Beyond the Zero.

Some background info (w/ spoilers): as Amazon summarizes, "Angels puts
Jamie Mays -- a runaway wife toting along two kids -- and Bill Houston
-- ex-Navy man, ex-husband, ex-con -- on a Greyhound Bus for a dark,
wild ride cross country. Driven by restless souls, bad booze, and
desperate needs, Jamie and Bill bounce from bus stations to cheap
hotels as they ply the strange, fascinating, and dangerous fringe of
American life. Their tickets may say Phoenix, but their inescapable
destination is a last stop marked by stunning violence and
mind-shattering surprise."

Houston, who's incredibly complex and human (who has struggled to
exercise the right mixture of consideration and intelligence in
predicting the consequences his actions will have for himself and
others), has, by novel's end, been roped into a half-baked bank heist
scheme that ends up with a dead police officer and Houston on death
row. The last pages of the novel follow him relatively closely as he
gets closer to the moment of his planned execution, as he waits
for...a last minute change of fate? some miracle pardon or stay of
execution? redemption, whatever that might be?

Okay, here's the ending:

He stood there handcuffed, shorn nearly bald, wearing only his white
underpants. It was chilly and he was shaking, but it wasn’t important,
even if they thought he was afraid. Two guards from CB-6 were present,
and he noticed them. Familiar faces. He nodded. There was a young
doctor from the clinic standing there, and a short gentleman reading
out loud. The warden. The Order of Execution. The door was open. There
was a hearse parked outside it in the early morning. Only one.
 The witnesses were already behind the glass. He couldn’t hear, and
shook his head. Was everything behind glass?
 The warden stopped reading. “Is something wrong?”
Wrong? He stood next to Brian facing the warden, the doctor, the two
guards. Every one of them was terrified. They were all scared to death
of what was happening. The warden’s voice trembled. “Do you have
anything to say at this time?” he asked Bill Houston.
 Bill Houston was floored by the question. “Is there something I’m
supposed to say now?”
 Everyone was confused.
 Brian said suddenly, “I want you to know I don’t think you deserve to
die. I think you been healed.”
 Nobody knew how to react. They all looked around. It was obvious even
the warden didn’t know if Brian had just broken a rule. “I really feel
that way,” Brian said defiantly.
 “Thank you,” Bill Houston said.
 They all stood there in a long silence. What was going on now?
 “What’s going on?” Bill Houston asked.
 The warden looked green and ill. “We still have a couple of minutes,”
he said. “I think we should wait, don’t you?” He glanced around
helplessly.
 Bill Houston whispered to Brian, “I don’t think I can stand up any more.”
 Taking him by the elbow, Brian helped Bill Houston into the gas chamber.
 A truth filled up the chamber: there was nothing left for him now.
The door had shut on his life. It said DEATH IS THE MOTHER OF BEAUTY.
He couldn’t hear a thing. He wondered if they’d put cotton in his
ears.
 And then there was a faint rattling in the pipe to his right, and the
sound of boiling liquid beneath him. He looked down at the length of
surgical tubing that ran from his chest to the door. There it goes. Up
that tube. Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. That’s all that’s ever
really been important. A visible vapor was curling up over his knees.
 He held his breath. Every rivet of metal was a jewel to him. He felt
he could hold his breath forever—no problem. Boom, boom. Even as his
heart accelerated, it seemed to him inexplicably that his heart was
slowing down. You can get right in between each beat, and let the next
one wash over you like the best and biggest warm ocean there ever was.
His eyes were on fire. He hated to shut them, but they hurt. He wanted
to see. Boom! Was there ever anything as pretty as that one? Another
coming . . . boom! Beautiful! They just don’t come any better than
that.
 He was in the middle of taking the last breath of his life before he
realized he was taking it. But it was all right. Boom! Unbelievable!
And another coming? How many of these things do you mean to give away?
He got right in the dark between heartbeats, and rested there. And
then he saw that another one wasn’t going to come. That’s it. That’s
the last. He looked at the dark. I would like to take this
opportunity, he said, to pray for another human being.






Casablanca Cafe, normally closed before six AM, was open early for the
execution. Fredericks looked in through the window, and saw that the
place was still empty. The crowd was still down by the highway. At
this moment they would all be looking toward the Death House, watching
the rust-colored pipe that rose ostentatiously above the little
building that was itself obscured by other prison buildings; and as
the chamber beneath it was voided by a suction pump, some would
believe they smelled the stench of rarefied cyanous vapors, like peach
blossoms. And they would be excruciated, amused, reassured, or made
pensive, depending on who they were.
 “Everybody’s still over by the show,” the waitress said. Her name was
Clair. Fredericks knew her name, but that was all.
 “Was it on the radio?” Fredericks asked her.
 “Just now. It’ll be on again in two minutes, I guarantee you.”
 “Can I have some Scotch in my coffee?”
 Clair brought him a pot of coffee, a fifth of Black Label, and a
white cup. In a few minutes, as they listened to the radio that sat
beside the cash register, the morning produced its soft light. William
H. Houston, Jr., had been put to death. Richard Clay Wilson’s sentence
had been commuted to life.
 “A lot of people got finessed this morning,” Fredericks told Clair.
 Clair stood by the window, holding aside its curtain delicately
between two fingers and watching the street. “Us, too,” she told him
now. “Everybody’s just zooming right out of town. The only ones who
made a profit on this deal was Seven-Eleven. They sold everybody
coffee.”
 “And you sold me Scotch,” Fredericks said.
 “Oh, call it a gift, okay? We don’t have a license.”
 Fredericks stayed a long time in Casablanca Cafe. For a while he
napped in the booth, his head thrown back, his mouth open, and he woke
feeling furry inside and disoriented.
 As he was paying for his coffee, at the instant he was putting one of
the free toothpicks into his mouth, he sensed the presence of someone
nearby, staring at him. The mood was palpable and real, but he knew
there was hardly anyone in the place, just a man reading a magazine,
which he held flat on the table beside his bowl of soup. Fredericks
looked around a minute before he saw the portrait of Elvis Presley on
the wall behind the cash register, almost directly in front of him.
Rendered in iridescent paint on black velvet, hovering before a
brilliant microphone, the face of the dead idol seemed on the brink of
speech.
 Fredericks stepped out into the terrible noon and stood by the road
with his hands in his pockets, his face shaded by the brim of a straw
hat, and chewed his toothpick, aware that he looked very much like a
country lawyer. He was still young, and it was completely possible
that soon he’d begin carrying out his original intention of getting
himself elected to something or other. But the truth was, he knew,
that he’d beenirretrievably sidetracked right at the start by his
stint as a public defender, and that he’d probably continue the rest
of his life as a criminal lawyer because, in all honesty, there was a
part of him that wanted to help murderers go free.
 Most of his clients ended up in Florence. He’d spent a lot of time
here. And he would be here a great deal more, in this town of bored
dirt consisting mainly of a prison shimmering at this moment in waves
of heat, a town that was always quiet except for the sounds of wind
coming across the desert and ropes banging against flagpoles—where
every evening the iridescent-on-velvet face of Elvis Presley climbed
the twilight to address all the bankrupt cafes.
 It was Fredericks’s understanding that the prisoners had a story:
that each night for months, at nine precisely, a light had burned in a
window in the town, where the men on one cellblock’s upper tier could
see it and wonder, and imagine, each one, that it shone for him alone.
But that was just a story, something that people will tell themselves,
something to pass the time it takes for the violence inside a man to
wear him away, or to be consumed itself, depending on who is the
candle and who is the light.
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l