The Name of the WorldDenis JohnsonHarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022, 2000The Name of the World by Denis Johnson is essentially about a washed up college professor, Michael Reed, aimlessly wandering through life four years after the death of his wife and daughter. He has seemed to have lost his lust for life and is just going through the motions. What ensues is a very fluid and unique storyline.At first it is hard to get used to the writing style of this piece. It is told in the first person, from Michael’s perspective. The story follows him and whatever stream of consciousness his character ends up on. From the beginning he explains his position at the school and how he doesn’t really care for it. This takes us to a dinner party, then on a brief journey to a skate park and so forth. This is how the book goes. For the most part it follows a linear storyline, a few times some backtracking is required to fully explain a situation and Michael takes us briefly back in time. At first this can be a bit jarring; the absence of chapters for example makes it one continuous story not broken down into segments. Each small part of the story bleeds into another. However, this makes much more sense when you realize that this is Michael’s character. He is essentially a tumbleweed going wherever the wind takes him in his small sad life, although he has not allowed it to take him too far out of his town.For example, he develops a strange obsession with a student from his school, Flower Cannon, which he meets early on in the book. After running into her a few times elsewhere, he sees her at the supermarket and decides to follow her out of the store. This leads him to a religious gathering to which she goes to “just for the music,” and then back to her place, where the core action for the story takes place. At one point in the book he loses his job, and without anywhere else to be he packs up his home, waiting to find out where that is.The most interesting thing about this book was that the characters that came into Michael’s life seemed to be more like projections from his mind and of himself than of actual people in his life. More often than once he questions whether or not Flower is real or a “ghost.” He seems to believe she may be the ghost of his daughter or what she could have become if she was not killed in a car crash when she was five. Eventually, due to his interactions with Flower he is able to accept what happened, and the he needs to allow himself to “break.” After their final encounter he never hears from her again.This is a book that leaves much up to the reader’s interpretation. During the course of the story, one could argue that for the most part, Michael Reed seems completely sane; it’s everyone around him that isn’t. However, if one was to argue for the point that he is not completely sane and is spiraling into madness, there is a lot of evidence to prove that theory as well. The biggest being his uncertainty towards everything and the questionable sanity of others around him.It is a quick read, but not an easy one. The story moves quickly from one thought to the next. If one thought is missed the reader may find her or himself lost in the maze of the main character’s mind.
The acclaimed author of Jesus' Son and Already Dead returns with a beautiful, haunting, and darkly comic novel. The Name of the World is a mesmerizing portrait of a professor at a Midwestern university who has been patient in his grief after an accident takes the lives of his wife and child and has permitted that grief to enlarge him.Michael Reed is living a posthumous life. In spite of outward appearances -- he holds a respectable university teaching position; he is an articulate and attractive addition to local social life -- he's a dead man walking.Nothing can touch Reed, nothing can move him, although he observes with a mordant clarity the lives whirling vigorously around him. Of his recent bereavement, nearly four years earlier, he observes, "I'm speaking as I'd speak of a change in the earth's climate, or the recent war."Facing the unwelcome end of his temporary stint at the university, Reed finds himself forced "to act like somebody who...The acclaimed author of Jesus' Son and Already Dead returns with a beautiful, haunting, and darkly comic novel. The Name of the World is a mesmerizing portrait of a professor at a Midwestern university who has been patient in his grief after an accident takes the lives of his wife and child and has permitted that grief to enlarge him.Michael Reed is living a posthumous life. In spite of outward appearances -- he holds a respectable university teaching position; he is an articulate and attractive addition to local social life -- he's a dead man walking.Nothing can touch Reed, nothing can move him, although he observes with a mordant clarity the lives whirling vigorously around him. Of his recent bereavement, nearly four years earlier, he observes, "I'm speaking as I'd speak of a change in the earth's climate, or the recent war."Facing the unwelcome end of his temporary stint at the university, Reed finds himself forced "to act like somebody who cares what happens to him. " Tentatively he begins to let himself make contact with a host of characters in this small academic town, souls who seem to have in common a tentativeness of their own. In this atmosphere characterized, as he says, "by cynicism, occasional brilliance, and small, polite terror," he manages, against all his expectations, to find people to light his way through his private labyrinth.Elegant and incisively observed, The Name of the World is Johnson at his best: poignant yet unsentimental, replete with the visionary imaginative detail for which his work is known. Here is a tour de force by one of the most astonishing writers at work today.**
What do You think about The Name Of The World (2001)?
I hate when I read a book, and at the end, I feel like I simply didn't get it. This book was about a depressed college proffesor who half-heartedly struggles to get his zest for life back. As I read that sentence, I wonder why I picked up the book in the first place. The plot and characters seem like they've already been done a million times. The main character dispassionately finds himself in a series of random events that hang together very loosely. He rambles his way into a better life situat
—Karson
The protagonist of this slim novel, Michael Reed, is currently a history professor in a Midwestern college. His wife and young daughter have died in an auto wreck. He’s somewhat numb. He meets a young (20ish) woman who is, well, exotic. Her ‘name’ is Flower Cannon. He’s drawn to her but not sure exactly why; maybe sexually but not exactly. The plot gets a little dreamy. He winds up with her ‘at her place’ which is like an abandoned school away from anywhere else. She asks him, unexpectedly, “Would you like me to tell you the story of my name?” It’s the name of the world. The Name of the World. This book is exquisite. It’s also written without chapters, so one scene just morphs into another. Before you know it, you’ve run out of pages. Our protagonist actually meets many more people although the oxymoron Flower Cannon is the key to the story and whatever profundity is intended. And he also has many more jobs than college professor. He once worked, prominently, for a conservative legislator. This makes some people wary of him. But when asked directly what he thought of his former employer, Reed offers, “I had stayed with the Senator at first in the hope of having influence, later in the hope of being there on the day of his defeat, finally in hope of gathering evidence to bring him down. But he was clean, and it wouldn’t be fair to omit saying that he was even a good man. It’s just his principles were small and his horizon was November.”And of government in general: There’s a perfect stillness at the center of Washington….It’s natural to talk about it in paradoxes…. Everything in the world is going on there, but nothing’s happening. It’s all essential, but it’s all completely pointless. The motives are virtuous, but whatever you do just stinks. And then you retire with great praise.I don’t know if I understood the allegory correctly. And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. That would require more plot spoiling than is decent.But it’s about a whole lot more than government. We are taught that mankind was not made for close confines. And much more.Denis Johnson, for me, is either hit or miss. I really liked Tree of Smoke but thought Fiskadoro was complete (and intentional, shame on him) gibberish. So this was a surprise, random hit for me. But I like it when I feel an author is speaking directly to me, as Johnson is here, when he writes:My habit when I’ve been humiliated is to go out and buy a book.
—Tony
This was my first Denis Johnson novel -- I thought I'd start with a short one before diving into something like "Tree of Smoke." It's the story of a burned-out, middle-aged professor at an unnamed Midwestern university still dealing with the loss of his wife and child several years earlier in a car accident. It's not an academic satire, though there are some funny/scathing observations. I was afraid it was going to turn into the cliche of nubile young student banishes demons of schlubby older man through torrid sex (this seems to be so many middle-aged male writers' fantasy), but -- sort of spoiler -- I was pleasantly surprised that it did not end up that way. The plot, such as it is, held my interest and the writing is crisp and lively. This is not a grand-scale epic -- it's one man's story, a very human and humane story, and I found myself really caring about what happened to him.
—Lisa
