The narrator and protagonist of Jesus' Son is a young man called FH, which is short for a more obscene nickname given to him by another one of the disturbed, drug-addicted, but ultimately sympathetic characters of these linked stories. The reader follows FH through eleven short stories, most of which revolve around the wild situations FH gets himself into while high on drugs.
Poetic Prose
The use of poetic language abounds in these stories, which raises it from the level of a funny-but-shallow look at an addict's life to a true work of art.In the opening story, "Car Crash While Hitchhiking," FH takes rides (and drugs, and liquor) from strangers who pick him up on the side of the road, and he eventually ends up in a car accident along with the family giving him a lift. A story that seems bleak takes a more transcendent turn when FH rescues the baby from the wrecked car, and ends up in the hospital listening to a woman crying, whose shrieks sound like "diamonds were being incinerated."
Non-linear Plots
However, it is not just the lyrical language that has made this book a classic for college students interested in reading or writing fiction, it is also Johnson's innovative use of structure and plot. The stories in this book are linked and form a whole, yet they do not follow any real linear order. Within the stories, too, the structure is rather episodic and free-associative. Surprise and excitement emerge from this structure, as the reader starts a story having absolutely no idea where it might end.
For instance, the story "Work" starts off with the narrator describing a fight with his girlfriend, and then in a bar he meets an interesting character named Wayne, who takes FH with him on a "job" which involves tearing down the walls of Wayne's old house to take out the copper wire and sell it for money.
While FH and Wayne are tearing down those walls, through the window they see a naked woman hang-gliding, her red hair streaming behind her through the sky. The woman turns out to be Wayne's wife. The narrator states that it was like he'd "wandered into some sort of dream that Wayne was having about his wife, and his house." That is a fitting way to describe reading these stories: like wandering into someone else's dream.
Some Stories Great, Collection Uneven
However, like most story collections, even by a writer as prolific as Johnson (he is also a poet and novelist), not all stories in the collection shine with the same luminosity. Stories such as "Two Men" and Dundun," while entertaining and humorous, sound more like the wild stories one might hear issuing forth from any guy one meets at a bus stop. That is, they lack the artistry and depth of some of the best stories of the collection, such as "Car Crash While Hitchhiking," "Work," and "Beverly Home."
"Beverly Home" ends the collection, and it is probably the strongest story in the book. It follows FH's fragile life after being in rehab; he has a job as a newsletter writer at a nursing home, where all the patients are suffering or deformed in some way or another. FH fits right in; it is almost as if he's found his home at last. This story is also about his obsession with a Mennonite woman who he hears singing in the shower on his way home from work and who he spies on daily.
Through his work at the nursing home and, strangely, through his obsession with the Mennonite woman, the reader sees FH slowly find transcendence and acceptance. It is an optimistic and poignant ending for a character who seemed, throughout the book, destined for disaster. But throughout all the stories, if one reads closely enough, one sees a latent spirituality waiting to emerge. And so, the ending of the book is, as fiction students are told all endings should be, surprising but inevitable.
Contents of the book:
- Car Crash While Hitchhiking
- Two Men
- Out on Bail
- Dundun
- Work
- Emergency
- Dirty Wedding
- The Other Man
- Happy Hour
- Steady Hands at Seattle General
- Beverly Home
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