BadTime Stories— Nobody Move by Denis Johnson (Part I)
“I’ll throw everything away for a woman like you.” — Jimmy Luntz.
There’s a reason Denis Johnson is called the writer’s writer’s writer.
The same reason he is in my top 3 writers.
The same reason I am the top writer in my top 3 writers.
Alright went too much with the flow there. But here’s how my list goes:
It goes Reggie, Jay Z, Tupac and then wo wo wo…. there goes another tangent in a totally different direction than the circle I was about to vent. Circumvent.
You see folks, there are people who ain’t half as good as this even when they are on twice as much as weed. Twice ‘their’ intake not mine, mind you, since I don’t need a plant any more than I need a cactus for toilet paper. I got my circuits covered organically for creativity.
But we were talking about Denis Johnson. The writer’s writer’s writer’s writer’s…
writer’s writer’s…
writer’s writer’s…
Writer.
If you want to have an idea of what the phrase actually means, lemme give you an analogy.
There are music bands with only a hundred people who know about them and follow them. But guess what, all 100 of them go on to form legendary music bands and become raging commercial successes….
…while the original Daddy band stays poor.
That’s what a writer’s writer’s writer is.
In short: Poor.
Anyways, Nobody Move is another poor setting (financially that, in every other way, it kicks as much ass as Denis usually does) that portrays the exploits of semi-thug semi-professional going through a semi-adventurous life with a semi-good looking face until he stumbles onto a stunner and tells her, and I quote:
I’ll throw everything away for a woman like you…
…exactly six hours after he has heard the same line delivered in a cinema theatre.
Or something like that, I can’t seem to remember.
But on which, the stunner says, and I quote again:
Jesus Christ.
…and walks away to her car. And this I distinctly remember, of course.
Obviously they go to bed later. (Circumstances circumvent usually. Unlike the tangent I drew above)
And then keep going to bed multiple times. That’s where I am at my journey currently in the novel and I’ll let you guys know if they go to bed again, and if yes, how many times exactly and why.
That’s the most crucial thing.
Not just in Nobody Move but any novel.
Rich or poor.