James Altucher and The Reasons for Reading Denis Johnson’s “Jesus’ Son” Over 200 Times
The original version of this article was published at Bookshelf Beats. You can read the original version here.
About the interviewee: James Altucher is a successful entrepreneur, chess master, investor and best selling author. He has started and run more than 20 companies, and sold several of those businesses for large exits. He has also run venture capital funds, hedge funds, angel funds, and currently sits on the boards of several companies. His podcasts The James Altucher Show and Ask Altucher have been downloaded over 10 million times in less than a year.
He is the author of 15 books including the two Wall Street Journal best sellers Choose Yourself and The Power Of No, which he co-authored with his wife Claudia Azula Altucher. His writing appears in several major national media outlets and his blog has attracted more than 10 million readers since its launch in 2010. James is a Quora Top Writer and a LinkedIn Influencer.
“He asked me, ‘What did you buy?’ That’s when I said, ‘This is the best book ever. It will always be the best book ever,’ which still holds true.”
Gino: I read online that you’ve read Jesus’ Son by Dennis Johnson cover to cover over 200 times. Is that number accurate?
James: Probably more. At some point you lose count. It’s been 23 years since the book came out, and before the book came out, I had read all the stories several times in the individual publications.
Gino: I’m just amazed by that number. The most that I’ve ever reread a book was maybe three or four times.
James: It’s funny because I read it so many times and then I was reading an interview with Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote Fight Club, and he mentioned he has read Jesus’ Son over 300 times. Then another thing I noticed was there’s a book out right now, I forget the name, I think it’s called The Writer’s Bookshelf. They interviewed 100 writers about what’s on their bookshelves, and Jesus’ Son is the most popular pick.
Gino: It’s amazing that someone has read the book more than you. People’s intense love for this book speaks to the power of fiction and the power of one book. That you could read one book 200 times and take away a new lesson each time is a beautiful thing.
James: Yes, that’s definitely true for Jesus’ Son. It’s a small book, I think it’s only like 120 pages, but there are so many layers to the book that are worthy of study by writers. As well as being just a good, enjoyable read, albeit a little bit dark, there are so many lessons for writers. People always ask me, “What is the best book to teach one about writing?” They’re thinking of books like On Writing by Stephen King or Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury and those are all fine books. But really, Jesus’ Son. Read this book over and over and you’ll become a great writer.
Gino: That’s true. Books explaining the writing process are helpful and worthwhile, but I’m often most inspired to write when I’m reading lots of really good fiction. To jump back to Chuck Palahniuk for a moment, I was reading his review of Jesus’ Son for our interview and I think this quote really sums up the emotional experience of reading this book. He said of the narrator, “The point is he does things, terrible things — offensive things, and the reader is always being seduced by his sweet insights and vulnerability and then being shocked into realizing that when you love an addict, you love a part-time monster. A funny, pretty, charming monster.” This is so true. At times he will say something sweet followed by something depraved, making a complete change in tone from one line to the next. It’s a very interesting contrast.
James: Right. And he doesn’t really do that to shock the reader. He does a little bit, but what is interesting to me is that the writing style itself is a character in the book. Some of the stories are connected, some of the stories are not. So it’s hard to know if it’s a collection of stories or a novella of some sort.
Anyway, it’s so distorted and out of order and memories are lost and then picked up later in other chapters. Everything is in this haze of addiction until maybe the last two chapters. That haze, the jarring effects of being an addict, where you have to go from the normal world to the insane world, to the imaginary world and back and forth — that’s the style, the writing style of the book, without going off the deep end into the magical realism or anything like that.
“The writing style itself is a character in the book.”
Gino: Yes, I agree. In the chapter “Steady Hands at Seattle General” he describes the ashtrays and the vase in a hospital room as looking wet and scary. It’s very subtle but the way he describes it almost seems dreamlike. He plays with our idea of what reality is, what’s in the the narrator’s head, and what is being created by his drug abuse, and manages to do that without going overboard.
James: In that particular chapter, that’s the second to the last chapter I believe, he’s already starting to come out of the addiction, but not necessarily out of the drugs that they give you when you’re coming out of addiction, which are very hazy drugs. I love stories like “Emergency” where he’s in a hospital and totally on drugs in every way. Throughout the story, you never understand the timeline. This whole intense thing happens but then he says, “Oh, it may not be that time, it might be this other time.” So you have to adjust your whole feeling of the story. I’ve seen people do that where it’s garbage, where they don’t pull it off, and the readers are like, “Huh?” He pulls it off, because ultimately the story is about his inner life, and the outer life is just things you can hang on to along the way.
“Read this book over and over and you’ll become a great writer.”
Gino: Right. Is “Emergency” the story where a man comes in to the emergency room with a knife wedged in his eye?
James: Yes. A knife is in his eye and everybody’s panicking. Georgie, the main character’s friend, pulls the knife out of the eye when all the doctors are going crazy. Georgie is the most screwed up of all on drugs and solves the problem. And in the last line of the story, Georgie and the main character pick up a hitchhiker, and the hitch hiker says, “What do you guys do anyway?” Georgie says, “I save lives.” He is the most screwed up guy in the whole book probably.
Gino: I know from listening to interviews with you and your wife that you’re not necessarily into audiobooks. But if you ever want to check out the audiobook of this book, the actor William Patton narrates it and it’s really good. He has a very sad style narrating that adds a lot to the stories.
James: I’ve never wanted to listen to an audiobook but maybe now is a good time to start. I’ll have to check it out.
“Ultimately the story is about his inner life, and the outer life is just things you can hang on to along the way.”
Gino: Earlier you said that “Emergency” was your favorite story in the book. Obviously the entire book has influenced you and your writing, are there any other stories that stand out as favorites?
James: It’s hard to say. I like “Emergency”, “Out on Bail”, and “Work”. I like the first one, “Car Crash while Hitch Hiking”, which I didn’t at first like and is probably the only story that I made a switch on. I really like all the stories. I like “Two Men”. I like how he titled the story “Two Men” but he only talks about one man. Then much later he writes a story and starts off with, “I forgot to tell you about the other man.” I like these stylistic features of the whole book and how it’s weirdly connected. I like the one where his girlfriend has an abortion, “Dirty Wedding”. It’s all beautiful.
“It’s just this way for him to connect the fantasy life that he would perhaps like to be living with the real life that he’s in.”
Gino: Earlier we were talking about Denis Johnson’s ability to play with time, space, and place in theses stories. In the story “Work”, the narrator and his friend are breaking into a house and they see a naked woman paragliding down the river. Then they go to his friend’s house and he thinks that the naked woman paragliding is his friend’s wife. When he says, “That’s the woman we saw,” his friend doesn’t really respond. Then he has a line about how he feels like he somehow got stuck in his friend’s dream. I was just curious for your take on that story and that particular sequence. It seems to me like he was again playing with the reader’s idea of reality.
James: Yes. I think he deliberately leaves it open to interpretation. I think clearly the woman, his friend Wayne’s wife, is just beaten down by life and in his friend’s house. She’s not this fancy woman paragliding naked in the air. But there’s a connection because of her red hair and he said he’s fallen into Wayne’s dream. This is after, by the way, he’s taken heroin or whatever drug he takes at the very beginning of the story. Clearly, again, the style of the story is the character. So you’ll never know. You’ll just simply never know what is actually true. They may have never even seen that woman paragliding or she might not have been naked or whatever. It’s just this way for him to connect the fantasy life that he would perhaps like to be living with the real life that he’s in.
At the end of that story, he falls in love with a bartender because she keeps overflowing the alcohol. Then later on, an unknown amount of time passed and they meet during the very last few lines of that story. She thinks he’s hitting on her, then he says that her husband will beat her with an extension cord but he’ll never forget that she was his mother. So again, it’s this connection of something wonderful for him with something tragic.
“It’s this connection of something wonderful for him with something tragic.”
Gino: Yes, that sequence is so interesting. We don’t know if they even had a nurturing relationship. She was just pouring him drinks at the bar and that might have been their only connection. I love your interpretation that his writing style itself is a character. That’s something that I hadn’t even thought about that.
James: Well, if you look at every great writer, they all do that to an extent. Take Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow as an example. The book is almost unreadable because it’s so complicated and obscure in the writing style and yet that’s the same way as the plot and the characters. So it all kind of filters through right into the writing style. On total opposite end of the spectrum you have The Old Man and the Sea. The main character is this old man who for 60 years or 70 years was doing nothing but fishing. So it’s not like he has these huge internal dialogues in his head. He’s just very simple. And so the writing, the language, and the style are extremely simple. Then it becomes, like I said, like a character in the book itself. It really reflects the inner being of the old man or of the sea.
To find out more about James Altucher and Jesus’ Son, read part two of our interview.
Bookshelf Beats is a website run by Gino Sorcinelli. I interview people about books that change their lives, inspire them, and/or make them think differently. If you enjoyed this article consider subscribing to my Medium publication.
