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Train Dreams
Denis Johnson's Train Dreams is an epic in miniature, one of his most evocative and poignant fictions. It is the story of Robert Grainier, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century---an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime. Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West, this novella captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.
116 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
About the author
Denis Johnson
63 books2,117 followersPoet, playwright and author Denis Johnson was born in Munich, West Germany, in 1949 and was raised in Tokyo, Manila and Washington. He earned a masters' degree from the University of Iowa and received many awards for his work, including a Lannan Fellowship in Fiction (1993), a Whiting Writer's Award (1986), the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from the Paris Review for Train Dreams, and most recently, the National Book Award for Fiction (2007).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,002 reviews
June 16, 2020
I refuse to stain this small perfect book with a long review.
This short novel is a dream: the kind you dip into, just for a drowsy second, yet wake from to find youself still immersed in a great epic--wounded by its sorrow, giddy with its marvels—all visited upon you in the blink of an eye.
The story of Robert Grainier, a laborer in the Great Northwest during the first third of the last century, is full of tragedy, tall tales, temporal dislocations, homespun humor, plain-speaking, and supernatural visitations. It is the “Great American Novel” reduced to a handful of fragments, then forged anew, as if by magic, into prose as concentrated as a lyric poem.
Train Dreams is a short dream well worth having, a short dream that lasts a long time.
January 2, 2013
‘God needs the hermit in the woods as much as He needs the man in the pulpit.’
Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, a novella shortlisted as a ‘Best Book of 2011’ by almost everyone from the New York Times to Esquire, and also considered for the Pulitzer, is a haunting little book that blossoms from the vine of American history. Spanning from the turn of the 20th century up until the late 60s, Johnson positions the reader to watch as the American west is transfigured by the technological growth of the nation, while ultimately exposing the hidden, untouched and nearly mythical qualities of the wild. Following with Robert Grainier, a common man living among extraordinary times, Johnson plays with the forces that shape a nations destiny while paying homage to the myths and legends of the wild world that continue to lurk in the dark recesses left untouched by the future.
The prose simply glistens in this novella. Johnson manages to rope epic proportions into concise, economical statements of pure beauty. From descriptions of a dirty, scraggly hobo dying in the woods: ‘he had the impression of a mouth hole moving in a stack of leaves and rags and matted brown hair’, to the sprawling landscapes Grainier travels, Johnson packs such sheer power into short, pregnant phrases. The descriptions of the land is as breathtaking as the actual sights must be, such as the passage following the great fire of the Moyea Valley:
The collision of myth and modernism is the spark that keeps this novel burning on. Grainier, more a legend than man himself having no past beyond showing up in town upon a train as a small child, exists in a world of myth and mystery that watches the future unroll train, planes, automobiles, television and other technological advances upon the earth. The world steps out of the dark mythical world into the bright light of technology, silencing superstitions with science and mystery with rationality. The old world is pushed back as the land is cleared and cultivated, cities blooming where once stood tall trees, and the myths shrink away as demons and evil spirits are replaced by the power and money hungry foes that wear human faces.
Grainier was born and dies with the myth. His life flows alongside it, believing the curse of a ‘Chinaman’, whom he attempted to kill, caused his misfortunes, and he remains amongst the mystery of the forest despite all the modern advances. Even when faced with them head on, he seems relatively unfazed and unimpressed (the nose dive in an airplane ride rattles him a bit, but he ultimately walks away without having been all that amazed), whereas the stories and legends of the wild chill him to the core. He converses with ghosts and howls with the wolves at night, being, as Kootenai Bob explains, ‘tamed’ by the wolves and wild. Grainier is the mythological woodsman, one with nature, like a Pan, and it isn’t the howl of wolves that haunt his dreams but the howl of a train engine in the dark distance that sets an eerie tone. To him, modernism is the myth and aberration. The final, beautiful paragraph offers a blend of the myth and modernism as a howl chills us to the core, transforming from that of a hot-blooded beast to that of cold technology mixed with that of music as if it were a auditory timeline of American history.
While this slim novella has extraordinary writing, some chilling scenes and an overall mythical message that is fun to toss about while lying awake in the dark (this book is best read in the depths of night while listening to the howling wind), it fell a bit short for me considering it was considered for a Pulitzer. The book is great, and perhaps it is my own shortcomings having not been able to really focus on the book and reading only a scant few pages a day for a week, but it left me underwhelmed and nearly as unchanged as Grainier by modern technology. This book is probably best read in a single sitting - in that case following Poe’s theory of a short story aiming at a single, unified effect upon the reader might allow the beauty to really shine – and I almost wish it had been a novella contained in a larger collection of short stories. Johnson really is something of a visionary and a dreamweaver with this book, so it is a bit difficult to dismiss it, yet I couldn’t help hold it up against Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil. Hamsun’s novel is constructed around many of the same themes, although following the changes etched into a Norwegian landscape as opposed to the American West, yet handled in a subtle manner and covering a much broader scope of ideas and their effects upon a community instead of a single quiet hermit. One thing I felt Johnson really excelled at was his manner of presenting events without following a linear timeline. By fluctuating between past and present, it allows a reader to receive Grainier as a whole, as opposed to a man ‘in his present’. The lack of difference in him through the years following the loss of his family highlights his indifference to the modern world. It was the land that claimed his love, so with the land he will stay.
Despite my own lukewarm reception, Train Dreams will echo like a ghostly train whistle in the back of your head for days to follow. The writing is crisp and chilling, the themes powerful and fueled through a potent portrait of the American West at the turn of the century. This was my first foray into Johnson’s works, but it has left me with a promise to myself to return very soon. Short and full of life, this novella is a great way to ride the rails across a changing nation.
3.5/5
‘Beyond, he saw the Canadian Rockies still sunlit, snow-peaked, a hundred miles away, as if the earth were in the midst of its creation, the mountains taking their substance out of the clouds. He’d never seen so grand a prospect. The forests that filled is life were so thickly populous and so tall that generally they blocked him from seeing how far away the world was, but right now it seemed clear there were mountains enough for everybody to get his own…’
Also, it doesn’t seem right talking about trains without a little W.Guthrie.
Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, a novella shortlisted as a ‘Best Book of 2011’ by almost everyone from the New York Times to Esquire, and also considered for the Pulitzer, is a haunting little book that blossoms from the vine of American history. Spanning from the turn of the 20th century up until the late 60s, Johnson positions the reader to watch as the American west is transfigured by the technological growth of the nation, while ultimately exposing the hidden, untouched and nearly mythical qualities of the wild. Following with Robert Grainier, a common man living among extraordinary times, Johnson plays with the forces that shape a nations destiny while paying homage to the myths and legends of the wild world that continue to lurk in the dark recesses left untouched by the future.
The prose simply glistens in this novella. Johnson manages to rope epic proportions into concise, economical statements of pure beauty. From descriptions of a dirty, scraggly hobo dying in the woods: ‘he had the impression of a mouth hole moving in a stack of leaves and rags and matted brown hair’, to the sprawling landscapes Grainier travels, Johnson packs such sheer power into short, pregnant phrases. The descriptions of the land is as breathtaking as the actual sights must be, such as the passage following the great fire of the Moyea Valley:
’ It had gutted the valley along its entire length like a campfire in a ditch. All his life Robert Grainier would remember vividly the burned valley at sundown, the most dreamlike business he’d ever witnessed waking— the brilliant pastels of the last light overhead, some clouds high and white, catching daylight from beyond the valley, others ribbed and gray and pink, the lowest of them rubbing the peaks of Bussard and Queen mountains; and beneath this wondrous sky the black valley, utterly still, the train moving through it making a great noise but unable to wake this dead world.’The land is as much of a character as Grainier himself, living and breathing across the pages and imposing its deadly will upon the men that try to tame it. The land takes on mythical proportions as a force stronger that man, progression, and even refusing to bow to word of God. ‘If the Lord had failed to protect even the book of his own Word, this proved to Grainier that here had come a fire stronger than God.’
The collision of myth and modernism is the spark that keeps this novel burning on. Grainier, more a legend than man himself having no past beyond showing up in town upon a train as a small child, exists in a world of myth and mystery that watches the future unroll train, planes, automobiles, television and other technological advances upon the earth. The world steps out of the dark mythical world into the bright light of technology, silencing superstitions with science and mystery with rationality. The old world is pushed back as the land is cleared and cultivated, cities blooming where once stood tall trees, and the myths shrink away as demons and evil spirits are replaced by the power and money hungry foes that wear human faces.
’The Kootenais, wedded as they were known to be to pagan and superstitious practice, would fall pray completely to Satan. Before the matter ended, only fire and blood would purge the valley…
But these were the malicious speculations of idle minds, and, when the election season came, the demons of the silver standard and the railroad land snatch took their attention, and the mysteries in the hills around the Moyea Valley were forgotten for awhile.’
Grainier was born and dies with the myth. His life flows alongside it, believing the curse of a ‘Chinaman’, whom he attempted to kill, caused his misfortunes, and he remains amongst the mystery of the forest despite all the modern advances. Even when faced with them head on, he seems relatively unfazed and unimpressed (the nose dive in an airplane ride rattles him a bit, but he ultimately walks away without having been all that amazed), whereas the stories and legends of the wild chill him to the core. He converses with ghosts and howls with the wolves at night, being, as Kootenai Bob explains, ‘tamed’ by the wolves and wild. Grainier is the mythological woodsman, one with nature, like a Pan, and it isn’t the howl of wolves that haunt his dreams but the howl of a train engine in the dark distance that sets an eerie tone. To him, modernism is the myth and aberration. The final, beautiful paragraph offers a blend of the myth and modernism as a howl chills us to the core, transforming from that of a hot-blooded beast to that of cold technology mixed with that of music as if it were a auditory timeline of American history.
While this slim novella has extraordinary writing, some chilling scenes and an overall mythical message that is fun to toss about while lying awake in the dark (this book is best read in the depths of night while listening to the howling wind), it fell a bit short for me considering it was considered for a Pulitzer. The book is great, and perhaps it is my own shortcomings having not been able to really focus on the book and reading only a scant few pages a day for a week, but it left me underwhelmed and nearly as unchanged as Grainier by modern technology. This book is probably best read in a single sitting - in that case following Poe’s theory of a short story aiming at a single, unified effect upon the reader might allow the beauty to really shine – and I almost wish it had been a novella contained in a larger collection of short stories. Johnson really is something of a visionary and a dreamweaver with this book, so it is a bit difficult to dismiss it, yet I couldn’t help hold it up against Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil. Hamsun’s novel is constructed around many of the same themes, although following the changes etched into a Norwegian landscape as opposed to the American West, yet handled in a subtle manner and covering a much broader scope of ideas and their effects upon a community instead of a single quiet hermit. One thing I felt Johnson really excelled at was his manner of presenting events without following a linear timeline. By fluctuating between past and present, it allows a reader to receive Grainier as a whole, as opposed to a man ‘in his present’. The lack of difference in him through the years following the loss of his family highlights his indifference to the modern world. It was the land that claimed his love, so with the land he will stay.
Despite my own lukewarm reception, Train Dreams will echo like a ghostly train whistle in the back of your head for days to follow. The writing is crisp and chilling, the themes powerful and fueled through a potent portrait of the American West at the turn of the century. This was my first foray into Johnson’s works, but it has left me with a promise to myself to return very soon. Short and full of life, this novella is a great way to ride the rails across a changing nation.
3.5/5
‘Beyond, he saw the Canadian Rockies still sunlit, snow-peaked, a hundred miles away, as if the earth were in the midst of its creation, the mountains taking their substance out of the clouds. He’d never seen so grand a prospect. The forests that filled is life were so thickly populous and so tall that generally they blocked him from seeing how far away the world was, but right now it seemed clear there were mountains enough for everybody to get his own…’
Also, it doesn’t seem right talking about trains without a little W.Guthrie.
![Profile Image for Orsodimondo [part time reader at the moment].](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1528452721i/10490224._UY200_CR39,0,200,200_.jpg)
November 18, 2023
LA CONQUISTA DEL WEST
In un paese civile, una vedova che vuole risposarsi non può fare tanto la schizzinosa. Ce ne sono in giro troppe senza marito. Ma qui sulla frontiera siamo molto ricercate. Possiamo scegliere chi vogliamo, anche se non ci facciamo mai un grande affare. Il problema è che voi uomini vi logorate presto.
Questa novella di Denis Johnson è un omaggio al genere western e alla narrativa della frontiera ed è un piacere dalla prima all’ultima pagina, che purtroppo sono pochine, soltanto un centinaio.
La vita era sicuramente logorante, per uomini e donne, sulla frontiera, che in questo caso corrisponde all’Idaho Panhandle, quella parte a nord dello stato lunga e stretta che confina con lo stato di Washington a ovest, con quello del Montana a est e con la Columbia britannica a nord.
Terra degli indiano Kootenai. Terra di lupi e coyote. Il lavoro era estremamente fisico, la gente si consumava presto. Ma doveva resistere e andare avanti per mettere il pranzo insieme con la cena. Più spesso colazione e cena, il pranzo era perlopiù uno spuntino sul luogo di lavoro.
Apparso prima sulla Paris Review nel 2002 e qualche anno dopo in volume (2011), ha umori alla Jack London, Ethan Frome, Billy Bud…
In stile asciutto, senza traccia di enfasi e retorica, Denis Johnson racconta la vita di un uomo, Robert Grainier, vissuto tra la fine dell’Ottocento e il sesto decennio del Novecento. E la racconta non attraverso un unico episodio decisivo, ma descrivendo quelli salienti come se fossero diventati cronaca condivisa. Momenti che riguardano incontri e scontri, bestie domestiche e bestie selvagge, visioni e presenze che qualcuno chiamerebbe fantasmi, una bambina cresciuta tra i lupi, un’agnizione che schianterebbe una sequoia, magia superstizione tecnica…
È un uomo qualunque, senza nulla di speciale, e forse proprio per questo unico e speciale al punto da entrare nell’epica. Cresce e vive mentre intorno a lui si forma la nazione (e qui il momento chiave è la costruzione della ferrovia): la sua esistenza finisce per rispecchiare quella del paese che si va consolidando. La dura lotta per conquistare la frontiera occidentale rispecchia quella quotidiana di Robert Grainier, taglialegna e lavoratore della ferrovia, marito e padre, vedovo troppo presto, solitario e silenzioso.
In un paese civile, una vedova che vuole risposarsi non può fare tanto la schizzinosa. Ce ne sono in giro troppe senza marito. Ma qui sulla frontiera siamo molto ricercate. Possiamo scegliere chi vogliamo, anche se non ci facciamo mai un grande affare. Il problema è che voi uomini vi logorate presto.
Questa novella di Denis Johnson è un omaggio al genere western e alla narrativa della frontiera ed è un piacere dalla prima all’ultima pagina, che purtroppo sono pochine, soltanto un centinaio.
La vita era sicuramente logorante, per uomini e donne, sulla frontiera, che in questo caso corrisponde all’Idaho Panhandle, quella parte a nord dello stato lunga e stretta che confina con lo stato di Washington a ovest, con quello del Montana a est e con la Columbia britannica a nord.
Terra degli indiano Kootenai. Terra di lupi e coyote. Il lavoro era estremamente fisico, la gente si consumava presto. Ma doveva resistere e andare avanti per mettere il pranzo insieme con la cena. Più spesso colazione e cena, il pranzo era perlopiù uno spuntino sul luogo di lavoro.
Apparso prima sulla Paris Review nel 2002 e qualche anno dopo in volume (2011), ha umori alla Jack London, Ethan Frome, Billy Bud…
In stile asciutto, senza traccia di enfasi e retorica, Denis Johnson racconta la vita di un uomo, Robert Grainier, vissuto tra la fine dell’Ottocento e il sesto decennio del Novecento. E la racconta non attraverso un unico episodio decisivo, ma descrivendo quelli salienti come se fossero diventati cronaca condivisa. Momenti che riguardano incontri e scontri, bestie domestiche e bestie selvagge, visioni e presenze che qualcuno chiamerebbe fantasmi, una bambina cresciuta tra i lupi, un’agnizione che schianterebbe una sequoia, magia superstizione tecnica…
È un uomo qualunque, senza nulla di speciale, e forse proprio per questo unico e speciale al punto da entrare nell’epica. Cresce e vive mentre intorno a lui si forma la nazione (e qui il momento chiave è la costruzione della ferrovia): la sua esistenza finisce per rispecchiare quella del paese che si va consolidando. La dura lotta per conquistare la frontiera occidentale rispecchia quella quotidiana di Robert Grainier, taglialegna e lavoratore della ferrovia, marito e padre, vedovo troppo presto, solitario e silenzioso.
November 5, 2019
Joins pantheon of stellar (first!) novellas from literary cosmonauts such as "The Neon Bible" & "A Pale View of Hills". This is better than the drug chronicle and much-imitated "Jesus's Son"--without that confusion, the story is more than captivating and, this being Johnson, devastating: American dreams, y'all!
It's all here in the perfect, brutal little package.
It's all here in the perfect, brutal little package.
January 21, 2020
As the 20th century begins a young boy, Grainier, travels to his new home by train. His life story is told in 116 pages of the most gentle writing that lifts the words right off the page and slowly into your heart. As the train whistle fades in the valley Grainier now a man he visited by dreams - his train dreams. Who was he then? At home with the wolves, coyotes and creatures of the hunt. Gentle, strong and patiently alive in the spirit of nature. He shares his knowing and skills while letting others go their way. Always he holds his mind open for when the spirits of those he lost return to him. He believes in what they tell him and so he remains alone, in the house he builds in the valley, waiting. A simply told beautiful story.
August 24, 2016
"He very often wept in church. Living up the Moyea with plenty of small chores to distract him, he forgot he was a sad man. When the hymns began, he remembered."
I sometimes wonder if I'm a natural reader. There are moments, like the greater part of last year, where there's nothing I like more, and whichever book that comes my way will be devoured in short notice. Other times, like the last couple of months, I become more picky, books don't manage to grab a hold of me due to other distractions that monopolize my mind, and only the right book at the right time can snap me back to the place I know is wonderful. The place that is books and the stories they tell. But life sometimes has a way of shutting the doors to that magical garden. With Train Dreams I've found a book that opened those doors again. The right book at the right time.
I'm still rusty on the reviews, my fingers literaly feel wooden as I type this up, so this will be a short one. Given it's a short book counting a mere 116 pages one might think this is adequate, but don't let the number of pages fool you: this is a gem, of which it's impossible to say everything given the many ways light can shine on it.
Basically, it tells the story of Robert Grainer, so it is actually a fictional biography of sorts. We are told of the most important moments in his life, how he met his foster family, his wife, what kind of jobs he worked on, a depiction of his daily routine and his life-defining moments. Robert Grainer is not a special man, with no talents or traits that make him stand out in any way.
Aside from the spot-on depiction of the hard life of an early 1900's man working in and living off the forest, making an enemy out of the trees, the book also contains a mysterious aspect of dreams, visions, strange behavior and mystical creatures. Cataclysmic events are told in the same tone as a trip to the fair, making this book the perfect blend of raw, realistic impressions of physical hardships mixed with the more ethereal mental consequences of coating emotions with the ashes of losses lived through. When reading this particular brew it's easy to get in the flow of a dream, of a train ride, allowing the words to take you wherever, whenever. And once in a while that flow is obstructed with a nugget of a pure emotion, a sense of loneliness or sadness whose description stands out like a mountain in the rest of this book, the kind of nugget that makes you wake up from that dream because it's become too real. You give it some thought, lie your head down and before you know it you're back on the train. This book has been a subtle, well-balanced experience of profound thought and the lightness of everyday life.
Don't let the title of Train Dreams fool you, for it's the real thing. I heartily recommend it!
I sometimes wonder if I'm a natural reader. There are moments, like the greater part of last year, where there's nothing I like more, and whichever book that comes my way will be devoured in short notice. Other times, like the last couple of months, I become more picky, books don't manage to grab a hold of me due to other distractions that monopolize my mind, and only the right book at the right time can snap me back to the place I know is wonderful. The place that is books and the stories they tell. But life sometimes has a way of shutting the doors to that magical garden. With Train Dreams I've found a book that opened those doors again. The right book at the right time.
I'm still rusty on the reviews, my fingers literaly feel wooden as I type this up, so this will be a short one. Given it's a short book counting a mere 116 pages one might think this is adequate, but don't let the number of pages fool you: this is a gem, of which it's impossible to say everything given the many ways light can shine on it.
Basically, it tells the story of Robert Grainer, so it is actually a fictional biography of sorts. We are told of the most important moments in his life, how he met his foster family, his wife, what kind of jobs he worked on, a depiction of his daily routine and his life-defining moments. Robert Grainer is not a special man, with no talents or traits that make him stand out in any way.
Aside from the spot-on depiction of the hard life of an early 1900's man working in and living off the forest, making an enemy out of the trees, the book also contains a mysterious aspect of dreams, visions, strange behavior and mystical creatures. Cataclysmic events are told in the same tone as a trip to the fair, making this book the perfect blend of raw, realistic impressions of physical hardships mixed with the more ethereal mental consequences of coating emotions with the ashes of losses lived through. When reading this particular brew it's easy to get in the flow of a dream, of a train ride, allowing the words to take you wherever, whenever. And once in a while that flow is obstructed with a nugget of a pure emotion, a sense of loneliness or sadness whose description stands out like a mountain in the rest of this book, the kind of nugget that makes you wake up from that dream because it's become too real. You give it some thought, lie your head down and before you know it you're back on the train. This book has been a subtle, well-balanced experience of profound thought and the lightness of everyday life.
Don't let the title of Train Dreams fool you, for it's the real thing. I heartily recommend it!
Read
June 26, 2017I hardly know anymore where reading ends and real life begins - the border between the two is getting hazier and hazier.
Take Thursday evening, for example. I was on a train finishing a book called A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing. A powerful book, such a powerful book that when I’d finished, I needed a distraction so I took out my iPad to see if I had a book on the ereader app to help me pass the rest of the journey pleasantly. Train Dreams seemed perfect at a little over a hundred pages, and so it proved to be from a timing point of view because I finished it just as the late night train rolled into the sleepy station.
And so home to bed, nearly dead with fatigue - I’d been travelling since early morning - train, plane, train.
Home to my comfy bed - I’d been dreaming of it for hours.
But it’s not such a great place sometimes, a comfy bed and dream time. Not when you've read two powerful books one after the other.
The title of the first book, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing echoed a very disturbing episode in Train Dreams and my subconscious latched on to that parallel and wouldn’t let go. My dream just got weirder and weirder. I became a half-formed thing, a half-wolf/half girl-child roaming the hillsides of Idaho with a pack of wolves, howling at the moon.
I was never so glad to wake up.
That was three days ago and I’ve not opened a book since.
Take Thursday evening, for example. I was on a train finishing a book called A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing. A powerful book, such a powerful book that when I’d finished, I needed a distraction so I took out my iPad to see if I had a book on the ereader app to help me pass the rest of the journey pleasantly. Train Dreams seemed perfect at a little over a hundred pages, and so it proved to be from a timing point of view because I finished it just as the late night train rolled into the sleepy station.
And so home to bed, nearly dead with fatigue - I’d been travelling since early morning - train, plane, train.
Home to my comfy bed - I’d been dreaming of it for hours.
But it’s not such a great place sometimes, a comfy bed and dream time. Not when you've read two powerful books one after the other.
The title of the first book, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing echoed a very disturbing episode in Train Dreams and my subconscious latched on to that parallel and wouldn’t let go. My dream just got weirder and weirder. I became a half-formed thing, a half-wolf/half girl-child roaming the hillsides of Idaho with a pack of wolves, howling at the moon.
I was never so glad to wake up.
That was three days ago and I’ve not opened a book since.
May 14, 2018
This little book has been sitting on my to-read shelf for so long that I can't remember whose recommendation prompted me to buy it. I am very glad that I finally found the small amount of time needed to read it, as it is a beautiful and atmospheric miniature.
The book's subject is Grainier, and it follows his isolated life in a remote and wild valley in the north of Idaho through a series of episodes that span his long lifetime. It is partly an elegy for the old west and partly a reflection on how even wild landscapes evolve and succumb to modernisation.
The book's subject is Grainier, and it follows his isolated life in a remote and wild valley in the north of Idaho through a series of episodes that span his long lifetime. It is partly an elegy for the old west and partly a reflection on how even wild landscapes evolve and succumb to modernisation.
October 2, 2018
Train Dreams appears at first if it is on familiar territory: a short but sweeping third-person historical novel which grapples strongly with the American myth of the pioneer sensibility, the dramatic speed with which that remarkable nation arose around a startled populace. Robert Grainier it's main character is an itinerant labourer, building bridges and felling trees for the rapidly expanding railways of America in the early 20th century.
He finds happiness with his wife and infant daughter, but is living is a poor, crushingly modest and life, described with gorgeous economy. Sleeping under old civil war canvas, his young eyes fall upon land and forest that white men and women have barely ventured into, yet those same eyes will glimpse Elvis on his touring train in the late 1950's and the bewildering superhighways of the 60's. Grainier is an innocent, seemingly untroubled by greater complication or the scourge of doubt, who is ultimately crushed by a more desperately cruel and irrational world than he could have dreamed of. And dream he does, thus, fulfilling the novel's title. Characteristically, Johnson releases a lurking grotesquery which gives the novel a rugged bite. As always, main and peripheral characters are magically conjured from a few deeply considered, gruff sentences. Grainier is an everyman yet also no man; essentially an orphan, with conflicting versions of his origins. The landmarks of his tough existence include the attempted execution of a storeroom thief, who seems to put a curse on him; a man shot by his own dog and the childhood discovery of a fatally injured railway hobo.
As a book which looks at the history of one person’s lifelong struggle to come to turns with the loss of his loved ones, and an ever changing America this book works, however, the story isn't filled with greater purpose and deeper meaning, and is ultimately superficial and way too short. The journey of Robert Gainer is compelling and incredibly moving, and the way Johnson has written with such affection and attention to detail makes this a decent short read. I just would have preferred it to be an expansive epic fives times bigger, digging deeper into the vast unknown of it's huge scope.
He finds happiness with his wife and infant daughter, but is living is a poor, crushingly modest and life, described with gorgeous economy. Sleeping under old civil war canvas, his young eyes fall upon land and forest that white men and women have barely ventured into, yet those same eyes will glimpse Elvis on his touring train in the late 1950's and the bewildering superhighways of the 60's. Grainier is an innocent, seemingly untroubled by greater complication or the scourge of doubt, who is ultimately crushed by a more desperately cruel and irrational world than he could have dreamed of. And dream he does, thus, fulfilling the novel's title. Characteristically, Johnson releases a lurking grotesquery which gives the novel a rugged bite. As always, main and peripheral characters are magically conjured from a few deeply considered, gruff sentences. Grainier is an everyman yet also no man; essentially an orphan, with conflicting versions of his origins. The landmarks of his tough existence include the attempted execution of a storeroom thief, who seems to put a curse on him; a man shot by his own dog and the childhood discovery of a fatally injured railway hobo.
As a book which looks at the history of one person’s lifelong struggle to come to turns with the loss of his loved ones, and an ever changing America this book works, however, the story isn't filled with greater purpose and deeper meaning, and is ultimately superficial and way too short. The journey of Robert Gainer is compelling and incredibly moving, and the way Johnson has written with such affection and attention to detail makes this a decent short read. I just would have preferred it to be an expansive epic fives times bigger, digging deeper into the vast unknown of it's huge scope.
August 31, 2019
I like novellas, they feel a lesser undertaking than settling into a novel in its full form. For me it also opens up options I might spurn if I thought I'd have to take on three hundred or more pages.
I first picked up this thin book at at a local bookstore - I was attracted by a single sentence as I briefly flicked through it. I didn't read the blurb or otherwise pre-acquaint myself with the text and I didn't buy it at the time, but the sentence stayed with me and I later bought the Kindle version. So a mystery read, and a satisfying one. A strange and unsettling group of anecdotes telling of the life of a lonely man. Well, more a loner than a lonely man. I enjoyed the descriptions of people, places and events - it's really well written and it touched me.
I'll seek out more of the writers work.
I first picked up this thin book at at a local bookstore - I was attracted by a single sentence as I briefly flicked through it. I didn't read the blurb or otherwise pre-acquaint myself with the text and I didn't buy it at the time, but the sentence stayed with me and I later bought the Kindle version. So a mystery read, and a satisfying one. A strange and unsettling group of anecdotes telling of the life of a lonely man. Well, more a loner than a lonely man. I enjoyed the descriptions of people, places and events - it's really well written and it touched me.
I'll seek out more of the writers work.
December 29, 2021
There was a great story here, of a lonely widow and a mysterious wolf-child, which might have lasted some way beyond the novella's 116 pages. But the opportunity was lost. The tale was still there, but in an abstract form, and carelessly diluted between a few other far less interesting stories. All in all a good read, but far from the incredible reading experience I'd anticipated.
December 16, 2021
A beautiful encapsulation of the life of an average man - haunting and expansive - a compassionate version of Babbitt that will take you on a trip that will often seem familiar. Came across this book in a used bookstore and took a chance on it - so very glad that I did - great example of how you have to expand your reading list by going outside your comfort zone.
July 5, 2015
This is a brief novella, easily readable in one sitting; well written and lyrical. It is a third person historical tale about the life of Robert Grainier spanning the period from the 1880s to the 1960s with the depression of the 1930s standing out in the background. Grainier is a manual worker who works over the years on the railroads, logging, transporting; but generally earning from the sweat of his brow. Grainier is an ordinary man with hopes and dreams, a decent man who suffers loss and tragedy, but who refuses to let life beat him down completely. Strikingly, he is a kind man with a conscience.
There is also a sense of the pioneering spirit and the proximity and wilderness; a sense of great space. This, I think is what taps into a particularly American sensitivity; you don’t get the same feel on this small island. It is also a novella about masculinity; there are very few female characters. At a surface level it is about building things, making stuff and machines and machinery. For some reason I never really myself got that supposedly masculine feel for building, taking apart or putting back together. I don’t have a shed or “man-cave”; give me a book lined room every time. The wilderness doesn’t appeal (where are the bookshops and libraries?) and machinery is purely functional. I have a car to get from A to B, not for any other reason and being in charge of a roaring great hulk of machinery has never really appealed to my aesthetic sense. That side of the novel doesn’t appeal, but the prose is wonderfully lyrical and the landscape is a character in its own right.
There is a good deal of American myth in this; the odd ghost, a feral child, half-dog half wolf pets, frontier tales and Grainier himself almost becomes mythical as a woodsman himself towards his end. I was reminded of Woody Guthrie’s autobiography, “Bound for Glory”. I think there is also a longer novel here trying to get out.
There is also a sense of the pioneering spirit and the proximity and wilderness; a sense of great space. This, I think is what taps into a particularly American sensitivity; you don’t get the same feel on this small island. It is also a novella about masculinity; there are very few female characters. At a surface level it is about building things, making stuff and machines and machinery. For some reason I never really myself got that supposedly masculine feel for building, taking apart or putting back together. I don’t have a shed or “man-cave”; give me a book lined room every time. The wilderness doesn’t appeal (where are the bookshops and libraries?) and machinery is purely functional. I have a car to get from A to B, not for any other reason and being in charge of a roaring great hulk of machinery has never really appealed to my aesthetic sense. That side of the novel doesn’t appeal, but the prose is wonderfully lyrical and the landscape is a character in its own right.
There is a good deal of American myth in this; the odd ghost, a feral child, half-dog half wolf pets, frontier tales and Grainier himself almost becomes mythical as a woodsman himself towards his end. I was reminded of Woody Guthrie’s autobiography, “Bound for Glory”. I think there is also a longer novel here trying to get out.
September 8, 2019
This is the story of Robert Granier, a quiet man living a quiet life. It is a story of little action, and yet, it says so much.
This novella is so atmospheric and dream-like. Trains are an integral part of Granier's life. Orphaned at six he is sent to the panhandle of Idaho to his new family via the Great Northern Railroad. His first memory is of the mass deportation of a hundred or more Chinese families clamoring aboard three open flatbeds. He worked for many years clearing the forests in advance of the ever-expanding railway. The sound of the train whistle is often in his troubled dreams. Also recurring in those dreams are those whose loss he mourns. After the death of his wife and child in a devastating fire, he lives alone in a cabin in the wilderness. Just as the landscape has dramatically changed after the fire, so is the west changing and a way of life never to be experienced again. Johnson juxtaposes the sound of the train whistle with the sound of the wolves and coyotes. Both have a mournful, yet soothing effect on Granier. He is a thoughtful, good man, who has endured much.
Johnson packs a lot into this novella. His writing is concise and sparse; the dialogue authentic. This book may not be for everyone, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
This novella is so atmospheric and dream-like. Trains are an integral part of Granier's life. Orphaned at six he is sent to the panhandle of Idaho to his new family via the Great Northern Railroad. His first memory is of the mass deportation of a hundred or more Chinese families clamoring aboard three open flatbeds. He worked for many years clearing the forests in advance of the ever-expanding railway. The sound of the train whistle is often in his troubled dreams. Also recurring in those dreams are those whose loss he mourns. After the death of his wife and child in a devastating fire, he lives alone in a cabin in the wilderness. Just as the landscape has dramatically changed after the fire, so is the west changing and a way of life never to be experienced again. Johnson juxtaposes the sound of the train whistle with the sound of the wolves and coyotes. Both have a mournful, yet soothing effect on Granier. He is a thoughtful, good man, who has endured much.
Johnson packs a lot into this novella. His writing is concise and sparse; the dialogue authentic. This book may not be for everyone, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
May 11, 2024
2.5 stars
This review is a postcard from Outlier Island. 📫🌴
short review for busy readers: fictional, highly literary biography of a poor, lonesome lumberjack in the American Northwest between the 1880s to 1960s. Non-linear timeline. A mixture of hard reality, superstition, ignorance, religion and natural catastrophe. Lots of nature, much of it threatening. Fits the genre of "Story of America's Greatness and the Heroism of the Little Guy".
in detail:
Apparently, this novella got a lot of rave reviews from readers and overwhelming critical acclaim when it was first published. It also has a high GR rating. I'm not sure why. I suppose I'm one of those few readers who found the meandering and in general no-plot tale difficult to connect with and kind of a snooze.
Yes, there are some really good scenes. Yes, there is drama and you feel bad for poor Robert Grainier, but not too bad, because you never quite get a sense he's a real person. He's more a 'figure in the mist' or a flat, reflective surface to his surroundings even when he's the only character around.
Look, the story opens with the attempted murder of a Chinese labourer for supposed theft.
That should have been emotionally cutting, leaving the reader with mixed feelings about the participation of the protagonist in what is clearly a racial motivated act. But it isn't and it doesn't. The scene is told so disjointedly and oddly that it's utterly unengaging, leaving you wondering if you even want to keep reading.
Although I can see all the hero-making and the great, big 'how we built America' stuff, what I was really left with after finishing this novella was a sense of how much damage ignorant and profit-driven people have done to a vast and heroic natural world.
I mean, there's a lot of nature in this novella, but it's all there to be exploited, tamed, cut down, cleared, ransacked, feared, beaten, abused, killed and subjugated to the willy-nilly wants/beliefs of man and the profit of faceless companies.
The story supposedly takes place mostly in the 20th century post WW1, but I kept thinking we were around Civil War times given the 19th century notions of the characters and their pioneer-esque, hillbilly lifestyles.
In short, I guess what I'm trying to say is that this just wasn't a pleasant reading experience and it mostly left a bad taste in my mouth. Whatever Denis Johnson wanted to say with this work, I think it was lost on me. Possibly, I'm just not the right audience.
For those who didn't get the final scene, this is what I think Johnson was trying to show...
This review is a postcard from Outlier Island. 📫🌴
short review for busy readers: fictional, highly literary biography of a poor, lonesome lumberjack in the American Northwest between the 1880s to 1960s. Non-linear timeline. A mixture of hard reality, superstition, ignorance, religion and natural catastrophe. Lots of nature, much of it threatening. Fits the genre of "Story of America's Greatness and the Heroism of the Little Guy".
in detail:
Apparently, this novella got a lot of rave reviews from readers and overwhelming critical acclaim when it was first published. It also has a high GR rating. I'm not sure why. I suppose I'm one of those few readers who found the meandering and in general no-plot tale difficult to connect with and kind of a snooze.
Yes, there are some really good scenes. Yes, there is drama and you feel bad for poor Robert Grainier, but not too bad, because you never quite get a sense he's a real person. He's more a 'figure in the mist' or a flat, reflective surface to his surroundings even when he's the only character around.
Look, the story opens with the attempted murder of a Chinese labourer for supposed theft.
That should have been emotionally cutting, leaving the reader with mixed feelings about the participation of the protagonist in what is clearly a racial motivated act. But it isn't and it doesn't. The scene is told so disjointedly and oddly that it's utterly unengaging, leaving you wondering if you even want to keep reading.
Although I can see all the hero-making and the great, big 'how we built America' stuff, what I was really left with after finishing this novella was a sense of how much damage ignorant and profit-driven people have done to a vast and heroic natural world.
I mean, there's a lot of nature in this novella, but it's all there to be exploited, tamed, cut down, cleared, ransacked, feared, beaten, abused, killed and subjugated to the willy-nilly wants/beliefs of man and the profit of faceless companies.
The story supposedly takes place mostly in the 20th century post WW1, but I kept thinking we were around Civil War times given the 19th century notions of the characters and their pioneer-esque, hillbilly lifestyles.
In short, I guess what I'm trying to say is that this just wasn't a pleasant reading experience and it mostly left a bad taste in my mouth. Whatever Denis Johnson wanted to say with this work, I think it was lost on me. Possibly, I'm just not the right audience.
For those who didn't get the final scene, this is what I think Johnson was trying to show...
January 25, 2020
4.5 stars
This is a superb novella covering one man's life in the American West during the late 19th and early 20th century. He works on the railroad and in the logging camps, then settles in a little cabin in Northern Idaho. The prose is gorgeous, sometimes soaring, but never flowery. The story is too non-specific to be considered historical fiction, but it feels like an authentic depiction of life in that region in that era.
John Steinbeck's darker works are marked by superstition, animism, and characters who seem to descend into madness from being too much alone with their thoughts. I'm thinking specifically of To a God Unknown, The Pastures of Heaven, and East of Eden.
This little novella begins to take on that Steinbeckian flavor as it progresses. The main character seems to have been destined to spend most of his life alone. He was orphaned as a child and has no recall of his parents or what happened to them. As he gets older, he becomes orphaned from society, so to speak, partly by circumstances and partly by choice. All that time alone makes him a little "tetched" as he grows older. He begins to believe in fantastical things and it's hard to know if he's dreaming or hallucinating or simply wishing for what he has lost.
Highly recommended. I just finished reading it last night, and I'm already thinking about going back and reading it again.
This is a superb novella covering one man's life in the American West during the late 19th and early 20th century. He works on the railroad and in the logging camps, then settles in a little cabin in Northern Idaho. The prose is gorgeous, sometimes soaring, but never flowery. The story is too non-specific to be considered historical fiction, but it feels like an authentic depiction of life in that region in that era.
John Steinbeck's darker works are marked by superstition, animism, and characters who seem to descend into madness from being too much alone with their thoughts. I'm thinking specifically of To a God Unknown, The Pastures of Heaven, and East of Eden.
This little novella begins to take on that Steinbeckian flavor as it progresses. The main character seems to have been destined to spend most of his life alone. He was orphaned as a child and has no recall of his parents or what happened to them. As he gets older, he becomes orphaned from society, so to speak, partly by circumstances and partly by choice. All that time alone makes him a little "tetched" as he grows older. He begins to believe in fantastical things and it's hard to know if he's dreaming or hallucinating or simply wishing for what he has lost.
Highly recommended. I just finished reading it last night, and I'm already thinking about going back and reading it again.
May 27, 2017
As me and my better half perused the shelves of our local library, we came upon Train Dreams by Denis Johnson. Even though I hadn’t read any of Johnson’s works prior to, I had had the curiosity to check him out via my girlfriends’ mentioning of Jesus’ Son last year. As I flipped to the back page to look at the author’s picture (something I’m strangely accustomed to do), I see a man sitting with his back to the wall; with black-tinted sunglasses looking up to the heavens, sun-drenched, cool and collected like a man with no worries; nothing but time on his side and a small resemblance to the treacherous megalomaniac Jim Jones, but only in profile. I read the description of the short novella and was intrigued, my interest piqued not only with book cover, but with the story described within.
We brought it home and it sat amongst the rest of our library pile of books that we obtained that weekend day. Other books were chosen first, denying my first exposure to Johnson’s first-rate story-telling. As the rain hits the panels of my hilltop apartment, I finally felt the need to read this short novella of the natural world and of the unpredictable subconscious.
Johnson’s story of a simple, solitary man born into mystery living the life of a woodsman who encounters love and family for the first time in his life and then the catastrophe that takes it all away is a good read; not profound, but still with purpose and substance.
Robert Grainer is an everyday choke setter along the Spokane International Railroad, mostly working in the panhandle of Idaho. Not knowing who he came from or where he’s going, he meets his eventual wife Gladys and later has a daughter named Kate. They live in a cabin in the middle of the woods and as he goes to work along the railroad, she tends to the home, keeping the child, being the homemaker that he desperately needs. Robert is content with his life, sending money home as he earns it, living off the land as he needs to, without a care in the world, much like my description of the author. As a forest fire engulfs the forest for which he’s made his home with his family and also taken his family without a trace, he has dreams of which are supernatural in nature; somewhat prophetic and magical. As the years go on, Robert rebuilds the ashy soot-laden cabin into what it was and lives a solitary life for the next half century until he perishes himself. As he was brought into the world under mysterious circumstances, he enters that black void under the same; being found several months after his expiration. Robert’s character shows how humans, after a certain amount of time can forget not only our loved ones, but ourselves. Losing who we are, how we are, what we are, in other words, losing ourselves is a horrible thing, some may even say more than death.
We brought it home and it sat amongst the rest of our library pile of books that we obtained that weekend day. Other books were chosen first, denying my first exposure to Johnson’s first-rate story-telling. As the rain hits the panels of my hilltop apartment, I finally felt the need to read this short novella of the natural world and of the unpredictable subconscious.
Johnson’s story of a simple, solitary man born into mystery living the life of a woodsman who encounters love and family for the first time in his life and then the catastrophe that takes it all away is a good read; not profound, but still with purpose and substance.
Robert Grainer is an everyday choke setter along the Spokane International Railroad, mostly working in the panhandle of Idaho. Not knowing who he came from or where he’s going, he meets his eventual wife Gladys and later has a daughter named Kate. They live in a cabin in the middle of the woods and as he goes to work along the railroad, she tends to the home, keeping the child, being the homemaker that he desperately needs. Robert is content with his life, sending money home as he earns it, living off the land as he needs to, without a care in the world, much like my description of the author. As a forest fire engulfs the forest for which he’s made his home with his family and also taken his family without a trace, he has dreams of which are supernatural in nature; somewhat prophetic and magical. As the years go on, Robert rebuilds the ashy soot-laden cabin into what it was and lives a solitary life for the next half century until he perishes himself. As he was brought into the world under mysterious circumstances, he enters that black void under the same; being found several months after his expiration. Robert’s character shows how humans, after a certain amount of time can forget not only our loved ones, but ourselves. Losing who we are, how we are, what we are, in other words, losing ourselves is a horrible thing, some may even say more than death.
April 10, 2024
After reading 'Train Dreams', I must admit I was puzzled. How could I not have known about this text before? A cross-section of time shown through the fate of one person. The stern and laconic poetry of old America, organically existing among the hills, rivers, and railway tracks of Northern Idaho. This is a great text. Magical. Bright and sad like a dream that appeared to a train - if trains could dream.
November 1, 2015
“Frost had built on the dead grass, and it skirled beneath his feet. If not for this sound he’d have thought himself struck deaf, owing to the magnitude of the surrounding silence. All the night’s noises had stopped. The whole valley seemed to reflect his shock. He heard only his footsteps and the wolf-girl’s panting complaint.”
― Denis Johnson, Train Dreams
So, I've just read my second great American novella set in Northern Idaho. 'Train Dreams' isn't A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, but it travels similar territory. Just different actors and a different experience. It reads like the Spring sun has just risen on Cormac McCarthy's prose.
If you can describe any novel of less than 120 pages as epic, this novel would belong in that group. The story seems to float like a gossamer-thin cloud across the sky of the late 19th and early 20th century. It captures horizon-to-horizon the struggles and the dreams that disappeared as horses were replaced with cars and planes, and trains traveled back and forth.
― Denis Johnson, Train Dreams
So, I've just read my second great American novella set in Northern Idaho. 'Train Dreams' isn't A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, but it travels similar territory. Just different actors and a different experience. It reads like the Spring sun has just risen on Cormac McCarthy's prose.
If you can describe any novel of less than 120 pages as epic, this novel would belong in that group. The story seems to float like a gossamer-thin cloud across the sky of the late 19th and early 20th century. It captures horizon-to-horizon the struggles and the dreams that disappeared as horses were replaced with cars and planes, and trains traveled back and forth.
September 14, 2021
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This was an interesting novella tracing the life of a man in the western us at the beginning of the 20th century and his connection with trains. The prose is limpid and the ideas are rather inventive. It encouraged me to push on to read Tree of Smoke, and it was better written than his collection of short stories, Jesus' Son.
This was an interesting novella tracing the life of a man in the western us at the beginning of the 20th century and his connection with trains. The prose is limpid and the ideas are rather inventive. It encouraged me to push on to read Tree of Smoke, and it was better written than his collection of short stories, Jesus' Son.
February 14, 2023
Denis Johnson (1949-2017), šiuolaikinis JAV klasikas lietuvių skaitytojams žinomas iš Raros leidyklos šiemet (2021) išleisto apsakymo rinkinio "Jėzaus sūnus". Dar tebeskaitydama juos supratau, kad norėsiu Johnson'o daugiau ir paskubėjau bibliotekoje užsisakyt šią knygą.
Tai trumpas romanas (apysaka) 2012 metais patekęs į Pulitzer Prizo trumpąjį sąrašą, bet netapęs nugalėtoju nes tai 'novella', o ne 'novel' ir jau buvo skelbtas Paris Review 2002-iais (tai kam tuomet jį įtraukė į jį?). "Train Dreams" yra labai geras pavyzdys - koks talpus gali būti vos 116 psl. tekstas.
Tai įspūdingas, stiprus pasakojimas apie JAV vakarų 20 amžiaus pirmosios pusės technologijos raidos virsmus, apie tame fone išgyvenamą paprasto žmogaus nepaprastą gyvenimą.
Protagonistas Robert Greiner, tiesiantis geležinkelį JAV vakaruose pragyvena ilgą, virš 80 metų trunkantį gyvenimą, kuris paženklintas tragiškos žmonos ir dukters (dar kūdikio) netekties. Gyvena atsiskyrėlišką gyvenimą trobelėje miške, labiau išgyvendamas ryšį su gamta, gyvūnais, nei su žmonėmis.
Pasakojimas šiek tiek siurrealistinis, magiškas, su vietinių indėnų mitologijos inkliūzais. Ir kaip ir dera gerai literatūrai yra daugiasluoksnis, nebanaliai kabina ne vieną vis dar aktualią temą ir užduoda klausimus į kuriuos atsakyti turim mes patys.
Labai rekomenduoju.
'Nobody present had ever seen anyone stand so still and yet so strangely mobile.'
Tai trumpas romanas (apysaka) 2012 metais patekęs į Pulitzer Prizo trumpąjį sąrašą, bet netapęs nugalėtoju nes tai 'novella', o ne 'novel' ir jau buvo skelbtas Paris Review 2002-iais (tai kam tuomet jį įtraukė į jį?). "Train Dreams" yra labai geras pavyzdys - koks talpus gali būti vos 116 psl. tekstas.
Tai įspūdingas, stiprus pasakojimas apie JAV vakarų 20 amžiaus pirmosios pusės technologijos raidos virsmus, apie tame fone išgyvenamą paprasto žmogaus nepaprastą gyvenimą.
Protagonistas Robert Greiner, tiesiantis geležinkelį JAV vakaruose pragyvena ilgą, virš 80 metų trunkantį gyvenimą, kuris paženklintas tragiškos žmonos ir dukters (dar kūdikio) netekties. Gyvena atsiskyrėlišką gyvenimą trobelėje miške, labiau išgyvendamas ryšį su gamta, gyvūnais, nei su žmonėmis.
Pasakojimas šiek tiek siurrealistinis, magiškas, su vietinių indėnų mitologijos inkliūzais. Ir kaip ir dera gerai literatūrai yra daugiasluoksnis, nebanaliai kabina ne vieną vis dar aktualią temą ir užduoda klausimus į kuriuos atsakyti turim mes patys.
Labai rekomenduoju.
'Nobody present had ever seen anyone stand so still and yet so strangely mobile.'
January 26, 2024
Train Dreams For Independence Day
Each year for the Fourth of July I try to write a review that captures something of the spirit of the day. Earlier this year, I attended a conference in Seattle and took a cross-continental train trip home from Seattle to Chicago to Washington D.C., travelling through the Northwest on Amtrak's Empire Builder. This train trip offers an unforgettable view of the wildness and breadth of our country. I had recently read novels involving American history and railroads which took a sour, dim view of the United States and its history. What better way to counter that prevailing contemporary skepticism than by reading a book with a different perspective? Thus I read this short novel "Train Dreams" by Denis Johnson (1949 -- 2017) after taking a detour through Johnson's earlier and more famous book "Jesus' Son". "Train Dreams" is set primarily in northern Idaho and Montana, north of the route of the Empire Builder through these states; and it offers a train-window view of the development of the United States from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century.
This novella is a series of poetically-written vignettes about the life of its primary character, Robert Grainier. Grainier's parents and place of birth are unknown, but he found himself as a child and lived his life in the northwest, mostly in the northern part of the Idaho panhandle near Bonner's Ferry. Grainier lived the life of a laborer, lumberjack, builder of railroad bridges, and teamster, dying in the 1960s.
The book offers scenes from Grainier's life intertwined with the ongoing development of the region which would make lives such as Grainier's impossible. The book shows some of the prejudices and violence of the region which would haunt Grainier for life. It also shows hard work in the forests and along the rivers that would turn the area into a place of settlement and ultimately into a community. In the story, Grainier marries at 32 after acquiring a one-acre plot. Four years later, his wife and daughter die in a forest fire. Grainier is heartbroken but carries on. Ultimately, he rebuilds on his plot and lives the life of a laborer and loner over the remainder of his 80 year life. Johnson's novel shows Grainier at work, in his relationship with others, in his companionship with dogs, and in his learning something about the development of his country, including encounters with airplanes, highways, film, and Elvis Presley. He also has moments of preternatural mystery.
Grainier never remarries but largely keeps to himself in the woods. He is sad and lonely but independent. He comes to terms with his life while contributing to the development of the modern culture he only dimly understands. Johnson describes Grainier's life in the following passage late in the book.
"Grainier himself lived more than eighty years, well into the 1960s. In his time he'd traveled west to within a few dozen miles of the Pacific, though he'd never seen the ocean itself, and as far east as the town of Libby, forty miles inside Montana. He'd had one lover -- his wife Gladys -- owned one acre of property, two horses, and a wagon. He'd never been drunk. He'd never purchased a firearm or spoken into a telephone. He'd ridden on trains regularly, many times in automobiles, and once on an aircraft. During the last decade of his life he watched television whenever he was in town. He had no idea who his parents might have been, and he left no heirs behind him."
"Train Dreams" is a moving book about an American life and about an American place. The story shows something of American growth and of how the development of our country was intertwined with independence, sacrifice, loneliness, guilt and pain in language that is reflective and poetic. I enjoyed thinking about American independence on this Fourth of July by reading and writing about Denis Johnson's "Train Dreams".
Robin Friedman
Each year for the Fourth of July I try to write a review that captures something of the spirit of the day. Earlier this year, I attended a conference in Seattle and took a cross-continental train trip home from Seattle to Chicago to Washington D.C., travelling through the Northwest on Amtrak's Empire Builder. This train trip offers an unforgettable view of the wildness and breadth of our country. I had recently read novels involving American history and railroads which took a sour, dim view of the United States and its history. What better way to counter that prevailing contemporary skepticism than by reading a book with a different perspective? Thus I read this short novel "Train Dreams" by Denis Johnson (1949 -- 2017) after taking a detour through Johnson's earlier and more famous book "Jesus' Son". "Train Dreams" is set primarily in northern Idaho and Montana, north of the route of the Empire Builder through these states; and it offers a train-window view of the development of the United States from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century.
This novella is a series of poetically-written vignettes about the life of its primary character, Robert Grainier. Grainier's parents and place of birth are unknown, but he found himself as a child and lived his life in the northwest, mostly in the northern part of the Idaho panhandle near Bonner's Ferry. Grainier lived the life of a laborer, lumberjack, builder of railroad bridges, and teamster, dying in the 1960s.
The book offers scenes from Grainier's life intertwined with the ongoing development of the region which would make lives such as Grainier's impossible. The book shows some of the prejudices and violence of the region which would haunt Grainier for life. It also shows hard work in the forests and along the rivers that would turn the area into a place of settlement and ultimately into a community. In the story, Grainier marries at 32 after acquiring a one-acre plot. Four years later, his wife and daughter die in a forest fire. Grainier is heartbroken but carries on. Ultimately, he rebuilds on his plot and lives the life of a laborer and loner over the remainder of his 80 year life. Johnson's novel shows Grainier at work, in his relationship with others, in his companionship with dogs, and in his learning something about the development of his country, including encounters with airplanes, highways, film, and Elvis Presley. He also has moments of preternatural mystery.
Grainier never remarries but largely keeps to himself in the woods. He is sad and lonely but independent. He comes to terms with his life while contributing to the development of the modern culture he only dimly understands. Johnson describes Grainier's life in the following passage late in the book.
"Grainier himself lived more than eighty years, well into the 1960s. In his time he'd traveled west to within a few dozen miles of the Pacific, though he'd never seen the ocean itself, and as far east as the town of Libby, forty miles inside Montana. He'd had one lover -- his wife Gladys -- owned one acre of property, two horses, and a wagon. He'd never been drunk. He'd never purchased a firearm or spoken into a telephone. He'd ridden on trains regularly, many times in automobiles, and once on an aircraft. During the last decade of his life he watched television whenever he was in town. He had no idea who his parents might have been, and he left no heirs behind him."
"Train Dreams" is a moving book about an American life and about an American place. The story shows something of American growth and of how the development of our country was intertwined with independence, sacrifice, loneliness, guilt and pain in language that is reflective and poetic. I enjoyed thinking about American independence on this Fourth of July by reading and writing about Denis Johnson's "Train Dreams".
Robin Friedman
July 5, 2022
Today, when I picked up this Denis Johnson novella, I quickly knew it was my perfect Fourth of July read.
My idea of patriotism isn’t “my country right or wrong.” How ridiculous that is. What resonates with me, what makes me feel a connection to my country is the country itself, the nature of the place that makes it different from other places: the flora; the fauna; the land--what it gives us and what it demands; the way it feels.
And this little gem of a book feels like my country.
The timeframe is the first half of the 20th century, and the place is primarily rural Idaho. It’s about a man, Robert Grainier, who comes from somewhere else, somewhere he has forgotten. He struggles and makes a home for himself. His life is changed by a natural disaster. He adapts. He is a loner, but experiences the mystical forces around him.
“For many minutes before she showed herself, he felt her moving around the place. He detected her presence as unmistakably as he would have sensed the shape of someone blocking the light through a window, even with his eyes closed.”
Told in straightforward but arresting prose, Train Dreams evokes the beauty of a simple life. It’s somehow concrete and dreamlike at the same time. Reading it felt like a visit to a natural wonder like the Grand Canyon--once you experience it, you tuck it away inside and it’s yours forever.
My idea of patriotism isn’t “my country right or wrong.” How ridiculous that is. What resonates with me, what makes me feel a connection to my country is the country itself, the nature of the place that makes it different from other places: the flora; the fauna; the land--what it gives us and what it demands; the way it feels.
And this little gem of a book feels like my country.
The timeframe is the first half of the 20th century, and the place is primarily rural Idaho. It’s about a man, Robert Grainier, who comes from somewhere else, somewhere he has forgotten. He struggles and makes a home for himself. His life is changed by a natural disaster. He adapts. He is a loner, but experiences the mystical forces around him.
“For many minutes before she showed herself, he felt her moving around the place. He detected her presence as unmistakably as he would have sensed the shape of someone blocking the light through a window, even with his eyes closed.”
Told in straightforward but arresting prose, Train Dreams evokes the beauty of a simple life. It’s somehow concrete and dreamlike at the same time. Reading it felt like a visit to a natural wonder like the Grand Canyon--once you experience it, you tuck it away inside and it’s yours forever.
November 15, 2014
As a small child he arrived on a train and later would not have a clear understanding of where he came from or what his background was. For a time, as an adult he would make a living from trains, clearing the trees so more tracks could be laid, a necessity as more and more people moved West. It is the early twentieth century and great changes are taking place in the United States. Yet for the most part the West was a raw and hard place for a man to make a life and raise a family.
Told in a spare and stark manner but with some wonderful descriptions, this is the story of Robert Grandier, an ordinary man. A man with not much ambition, willing to settle for just enough to keep himself and his wife and baby daughter fed through the winter. A time when the woodlands were disappearing at a rapid rate and life was in every
way, man against nature.
I liked his character, and liked this short yet anything but simple story. A time when survival was fought for and was very uncertain. When a man could only depend on himself and where superstitions ran rampant with often tragic results.
Told in a spare and stark manner but with some wonderful descriptions, this is the story of Robert Grandier, an ordinary man. A man with not much ambition, willing to settle for just enough to keep himself and his wife and baby daughter fed through the winter. A time when the woodlands were disappearing at a rapid rate and life was in every
way, man against nature.
I liked his character, and liked this short yet anything but simple story. A time when survival was fought for and was very uncertain. When a man could only depend on himself and where superstitions ran rampant with often tragic results.
February 21, 2018
This small book has a great palette of feelings to offer you. En entire life opens and expands itself while reading the compact chapters. Mesmerising.
August 20, 2015
If anyone can be accused of writing fiction way too closely tailored to the tastes of prizegivers, it's Philip Roth.
And Jonathan Franzen.
And John Updike.
Okay, a lot of writers. But let's add Denis Johnson to that list, which is a damn shame because it wasn't always this way. Jesus' Son and Angels are both great fucking books, visceral and ghostly at the same time. But then something happened, and I'm not sure what, but Johnson became this sudden chronicle of the American mythology. Okay, fine, doesn't have to be bad - I love me some Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison and Housekeeping-era Marilynne Robinson - but did you ever get the feeling that Writing About America was kind of the easy way out? Like, write a book about the Big American Whatever is all you have to do to win prize upon prize upon prize? Especially after Updike's whole Rabbit Armstrong yippie-dippie-dippie-doo became an admittedly pretty but still dull as dishwater target for any acclaim the Institution could throw at it?
So this is Johnson's attempt at tapping into American mythology, and it's popular and acclaimed and supposed to be wonderfully ghostly, but I am just not feeling the damn thing. Part of it is the sheer dodginess of romanticizing American frontier life to begin with, especially when you compare the Native Americans as either superstitious savages or magical benign forces with a weirdly vested interest in helping their conquerors. This aspect of Train Dreams SUCKS and really can't be justified by any pretty prose... look, McCarthy's Border Trilogy cuts close to romanticizing the last days of the Old West, but at least Blood Meridian proves he's smart enough to realize that there were, y'know, people there before who were kinda, like, brutally slaughtered and forced off their own land so we could satisfy our imperialist desires. Urgh, not even my only problem with this novella, but it sure is problematic that Johnson keeps portraying the not-Americans as these savage louts. Y'know how Tree of Smoke did the same thing every single 'nam movie does and portrayed the Vietnamese as not much better than violent children? Yeah, kinda like that.
But even Tree of Smoke is better than this, and Tree of Smoke was about three, four hundred pages longer than it needed to be. Did it drag n' drag? Of course, but sometimes the endless cloak-and-dagger shenanigans produced interesting results. There are the rare moments when Johnson does tap into these quasi-mythic rhythms, and sometimes they get subverted into a gallows joke, but you want the rest? Well, here's the rest: cardboard Robert Grainier, the kind of character who has a bunch of stuff happen to him but doesn't really seem to react or do much at all about or with it, has cardboard conversations with other people and endures the sort of tragedies that happen to characters in Big Serious Novels. Same problem as Tree of Smoke, really, and I for one miss the days when characters schlepped from Chicago to Phoenix and got mixed up in bank robberies and landed in prisons occupied by people who thought they were Jesus. I 100% disagree with the common claim that people who can't write "normal" fiction instead write "weird" fiction, since Johnson portrayed his bizarro world roughly 10,000,000 times more interestingly than the mythic or whatever worlds of his more recent stuff.
So maybe I should treat Johnson as two different authors and ignore everything he wrote after a certain point? Hard to tell, but this one is a technically decent novel that just doesn't grab me. The prose only occasionally works any emotions up, the characters aren't, and the whole thing smacks as a Gone with the Wind-style lament for colonial days. Blurgh. Time to reread Angels, I suppose.
And Jonathan Franzen.
And John Updike.
Okay, a lot of writers. But let's add Denis Johnson to that list, which is a damn shame because it wasn't always this way. Jesus' Son and Angels are both great fucking books, visceral and ghostly at the same time. But then something happened, and I'm not sure what, but Johnson became this sudden chronicle of the American mythology. Okay, fine, doesn't have to be bad - I love me some Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison and Housekeeping-era Marilynne Robinson - but did you ever get the feeling that Writing About America was kind of the easy way out? Like, write a book about the Big American Whatever is all you have to do to win prize upon prize upon prize? Especially after Updike's whole Rabbit Armstrong yippie-dippie-dippie-doo became an admittedly pretty but still dull as dishwater target for any acclaim the Institution could throw at it?
So this is Johnson's attempt at tapping into American mythology, and it's popular and acclaimed and supposed to be wonderfully ghostly, but I am just not feeling the damn thing. Part of it is the sheer dodginess of romanticizing American frontier life to begin with, especially when you compare the Native Americans as either superstitious savages or magical benign forces with a weirdly vested interest in helping their conquerors. This aspect of Train Dreams SUCKS and really can't be justified by any pretty prose... look, McCarthy's Border Trilogy cuts close to romanticizing the last days of the Old West, but at least Blood Meridian proves he's smart enough to realize that there were, y'know, people there before who were kinda, like, brutally slaughtered and forced off their own land so we could satisfy our imperialist desires. Urgh, not even my only problem with this novella, but it sure is problematic that Johnson keeps portraying the not-Americans as these savage louts. Y'know how Tree of Smoke did the same thing every single 'nam movie does and portrayed the Vietnamese as not much better than violent children? Yeah, kinda like that.
But even Tree of Smoke is better than this, and Tree of Smoke was about three, four hundred pages longer than it needed to be. Did it drag n' drag? Of course, but sometimes the endless cloak-and-dagger shenanigans produced interesting results. There are the rare moments when Johnson does tap into these quasi-mythic rhythms, and sometimes they get subverted into a gallows joke, but you want the rest? Well, here's the rest: cardboard Robert Grainier, the kind of character who has a bunch of stuff happen to him but doesn't really seem to react or do much at all about or with it, has cardboard conversations with other people and endures the sort of tragedies that happen to characters in Big Serious Novels. Same problem as Tree of Smoke, really, and I for one miss the days when characters schlepped from Chicago to Phoenix and got mixed up in bank robberies and landed in prisons occupied by people who thought they were Jesus. I 100% disagree with the common claim that people who can't write "normal" fiction instead write "weird" fiction, since Johnson portrayed his bizarro world roughly 10,000,000 times more interestingly than the mythic or whatever worlds of his more recent stuff.
So maybe I should treat Johnson as two different authors and ignore everything he wrote after a certain point? Hard to tell, but this one is a technically decent novel that just doesn't grab me. The prose only occasionally works any emotions up, the characters aren't, and the whole thing smacks as a Gone with the Wind-style lament for colonial days. Blurgh. Time to reread Angels, I suppose.
August 30, 2011
Denis Johnson won an O. Henry prize for this novella of the old American West in 2003. It originally appeared in the Paris Review but is now reissued and bound in hardback with an apt cover art—a painting by Regionalist Thomas Hart Benton called “The Race.” If you contemplate the painting for a while, you may feel the ghost of the book’s protagonist, Robert Grainier, as he, too, felt the ghosts and spirits of the dead.
Robert Grainier is a man without a known beginning—at least, he didn’t know his parents, and neither did he know where he was from originally. Some cousin suspected Canada, and said that he spoke only French when he was left off in Fry, Idaho, circa 1893, arriving there on the Great Northern Railroad as a young lad. His aunt and uncle were his parents, and he grew up in the panhandle by the Kootenai River with the loggers, the Indians, the Chinese, and the trains.
As the book opens in the summer of 1917, Grainier is helping his railroad crew of the Spokane International Railway (in the Idaho panhandle) hold a struggling Chinese laborer accused of stealing. They meant to throw him from the trestle, sixty feet above the rapids at the gorge, but the man, cursing and speaking in tongues, broke free and went hand-over-hand from beam to beam, until he disappeared.
“The Chinaman, he was sure, had cursed them powerfully…and any bad thing might come of it.”
And that was the signal incident that curses, spirits, and demons would inhabit the landscape of Grainier’s dreams. Often, in the background, is heard the melancholic whistle of the trains.
Johnson’s story is a portrait of early 20th-century America as witnessed through the itinerant Grainier, a scrupulous, dignified man whose wife and infant daughter were consumed in a fire in their cabin while he was miles away working on the railroad or in the forest as a logger. Grainier’s long life is seen through snapshots juxtaposed in a deliberately disjointed style, submerging our thoughts deep into the great Northwest, as forests are cleared and the trains tracks are laid that connect one land to the next.
“He was standing on a cliff…into a kind of arena enclosing…Spruce Lake…and now he looked down on it hundreds of feet below him, its flat surface as still and black as obsidian, engulfed in the shadow of surrounding cliffs, ringed with a double ring of evergreens and reflected evergreens.”
Grainier came back and rebuilt on the burnt lot, the grief of his loss now a thing in his soul, a muted or massive thing, depending on his memories or his dreams. The dead spirit of his daughter appears in abstract or animal form to haunt him, and the wolves enter his soul.
“…when Grainier heard the wolves at dusk, he laid his head back and howled for all he was worth…It flushed out something heavy that tended to collect in his heart…”
Love, loss, death, and lust are wound into this short but powerful story, a story of a time that is receding from the collective American memories. Denis Johnson’s ode is an evocative and sublime remembrance of things past—of railroads built, of people buried, and of souls lost and wandering. Johnson awakens them, and puts them to rest.
My oroginal review posted at MostlyFiction.com Here is the link:
http://bookreview.mostlyfiction.com/2...
Robert Grainier is a man without a known beginning—at least, he didn’t know his parents, and neither did he know where he was from originally. Some cousin suspected Canada, and said that he spoke only French when he was left off in Fry, Idaho, circa 1893, arriving there on the Great Northern Railroad as a young lad. His aunt and uncle were his parents, and he grew up in the panhandle by the Kootenai River with the loggers, the Indians, the Chinese, and the trains.
As the book opens in the summer of 1917, Grainier is helping his railroad crew of the Spokane International Railway (in the Idaho panhandle) hold a struggling Chinese laborer accused of stealing. They meant to throw him from the trestle, sixty feet above the rapids at the gorge, but the man, cursing and speaking in tongues, broke free and went hand-over-hand from beam to beam, until he disappeared.
“The Chinaman, he was sure, had cursed them powerfully…and any bad thing might come of it.”
And that was the signal incident that curses, spirits, and demons would inhabit the landscape of Grainier’s dreams. Often, in the background, is heard the melancholic whistle of the trains.
Johnson’s story is a portrait of early 20th-century America as witnessed through the itinerant Grainier, a scrupulous, dignified man whose wife and infant daughter were consumed in a fire in their cabin while he was miles away working on the railroad or in the forest as a logger. Grainier’s long life is seen through snapshots juxtaposed in a deliberately disjointed style, submerging our thoughts deep into the great Northwest, as forests are cleared and the trains tracks are laid that connect one land to the next.
“He was standing on a cliff…into a kind of arena enclosing…Spruce Lake…and now he looked down on it hundreds of feet below him, its flat surface as still and black as obsidian, engulfed in the shadow of surrounding cliffs, ringed with a double ring of evergreens and reflected evergreens.”
Grainier came back and rebuilt on the burnt lot, the grief of his loss now a thing in his soul, a muted or massive thing, depending on his memories or his dreams. The dead spirit of his daughter appears in abstract or animal form to haunt him, and the wolves enter his soul.
“…when Grainier heard the wolves at dusk, he laid his head back and howled for all he was worth…It flushed out something heavy that tended to collect in his heart…”
Love, loss, death, and lust are wound into this short but powerful story, a story of a time that is receding from the collective American memories. Denis Johnson’s ode is an evocative and sublime remembrance of things past—of railroads built, of people buried, and of souls lost and wandering. Johnson awakens them, and puts them to rest.
My oroginal review posted at MostlyFiction.com Here is the link:
http://bookreview.mostlyfiction.com/2...
March 30, 2013
Early in this novella, but not in his chronological life, Robert Grainier feels obliged to help fellow workers grab a Chinese laborer, working in the Pacific Northwest, and throw him off a span of bridge into a gorge below. They are ultimately unsuccessful, but Death is not denied otherwise in the life of Grainier. In fact, everyone he meets seems to have a sorry end.
The story of this man (this Country?) is told in sepia-toned, non-linear vignettes. His Asian adventure (if you want to read something more into this) has left him spiritless. Grainy-er. He is a good man who somehow cannot love again.
If you don't want to go down that road, you can simply enjoy the Twain-like stories that our protagonist confronts. (Because Twain merely entertained and never had a larger purpose, right?). So you can hear about the drunk man who gambled his fortune on a brag that he could outrun a horse; or about the man whose dog shot him...in self defense. You never actually get to meet Miss Galveston, the Winner of the Famous Pageant of Pulchritude. Grainier doesn't either. But his misunderstanding of the word torments him something powerful.
This was a very enjoyable read. Don't tell those dicks at Amazon.
The story of this man (this Country?) is told in sepia-toned, non-linear vignettes. His Asian adventure (if you want to read something more into this) has left him spiritless. Grainy-er. He is a good man who somehow cannot love again.
If you don't want to go down that road, you can simply enjoy the Twain-like stories that our protagonist confronts. (Because Twain merely entertained and never had a larger purpose, right?). So you can hear about the drunk man who gambled his fortune on a brag that he could outrun a horse; or about the man whose dog shot him...in self defense. You never actually get to meet Miss Galveston, the Winner of the Famous Pageant of Pulchritude. Grainier doesn't either. But his misunderstanding of the word torments him something powerful.
This was a very enjoyable read. Don't tell those dicks at Amazon.
September 2, 2022
Me esperaba un relato más desgarrador.
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I was expecting a more harrowing story.
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I was expecting a more harrowing story.
January 30, 2019
Gorgeous vivid writing
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