Title:: [[Angels]] Authors:: [[Denis Johnson]] Tags:: #fiction Read:: [[2024-01-06]] Instagram :: https://www.instagram.com/jeronimo_ficus/p/C1zefHSr1EP/ ## Editions - Edition:: [[Harper Perennial]],1983 - Original Copyright:: 1977 - Pages:: 224 ## Purchase * Bookshop.org:: https://bookshop.org/a/94437/9780060988821 ## Annotations A book that drags you by the collar and whisks you into its world of questionable parenting, horrific violence, dysfunctional families, but also love and hilarity, and always, empathy. I loved it.  I read a posthumous New Yorker profile of Denis Johnson written by Philip Gourevitch shortly after Johnson’s death in 2017. Gourevitch retells the day in 1983 when he, an aspiring writer, college dropout, and bartender, picked up Angels and read it in a single sitting. So amazed by what he had just read, he looked up where Johnson lived, called the local operator (kids, this is how it was done then), got his number, and called him. Johnson, inexplicably by today’s standards, took the call. It was a short call, and the only thing Gourevitch clearly remembers is asking him how long it took him to write Angels: “He asked me if I was a writer, and I said that that remained to be seen. Then he answered my question: “Twelve years,” he said.” The book is 200 pages long.  Gourevitch ends his recounting with the thought that even if writing would be that hopeless and challenging, Angels proves its worth it. (He doesn’t mention that Johnson spent most of the 70s addicted to drugs and alcohol, which may have contributed to how long it took him to finish - but I think the sentiment still stands).