Seeking Someplace Extraordinary
Denis Johnson’s Seek is a nonfiction account of his travels to Liberia, Somalia, Alaska, and a Kenneth Copeland motorcycle retreat somewhere in the middle of Saginaw County, Texas. Johnson fuses the essays’ themes together under the rubric of ‘Obscure Travel Destinations.’ No place is like what you typically encounter: in “Down Hard Six Times,” Johnson and his wife honeymoon in Alaska, electing to dig for gold to create their wedding bands. The trip goes horribly wrong, from tip to tail. The newlyweds are abandoned by an accident-prone bush pilot in the midst of an expansive forest, in a deluge of icy rain. The two become lost as soon as the plane departs, and they quickly discover that their middle class suburbanite existence has left them woefully unprepared for the rigors of the unforgiving wilderness: Johnson fails to judge distances accurately, he insists on bravery and stoicism, loose cloth flaps dangerously in the powerful wind, and they must wade a river to reach their destination, a log cabin. It is only a short time into the honeymoon and already Johnson’s temper has run short and his new wife is sobbing.
Johnson, though, is not primarily known for his essays on marriage. His reputation as a writer was established with Jesus’ Son, the pocket-sized short story collection chronicling the misadventures of a junkie protagonist. Readers are most familiar with drug abuse as Johnson’s primary motif, and they will find substance abuse in Seek as well. “Hippies” lives up to its implication of drugs, as Johnson purchases a hundred dollars worth of mushrooms for himself and his friend, Joey. Johnson writes, “I said I’d split (the mushrooms), but I only gave (Joey) about a quarter. Less than a quarter. Yeah. I never quite became a hippie. And I’ll never stop being a junkie” (29). Johnson gives his audience insight into lifelong addiction, an addiction that lurks even after his most self-destructive days have passed.
“Hippies” is an essay outlining Johnson’s experience at the Rainbow Gathering in north-central Oregon. The essay attempts to be a Kerouacian celebration of the art of the road trip, and an aggrandizing reflection on the golden days of lost drug culture. But Johnson’s road trip never seems that much fun, mostly because the reader understands that Johnson is older now—he’s writing with a sense of responsibility that sucks away the carelessness that makes drug literature exhilarating. Johnson’s friend gives him advice on what to bring, and Johnson listens; he comes prepared with a sleeping bag, a tent, cup, spoon, etc. He takes the drugs, then he wants to, “turn them off” (32). Johnson, in all seriousness, writes the phrase, “Far fuckin out!” (34). In the instance of “Hippies,” a lack confirms a truth: that drug culture is difficult to write, and that writers necessarily change their focus during their careers. Readers looking for junkie lit. should revisit Jesus’ Son, but readers looking for a more mature Johnson can find essays other than “Hippies” to be rewarding.
One such essay (Johnson’s first literary foray into Liberia) exhibits Johnson’s deeper empathy and vision that came with his aging. The New Yorker sent Johnson to Liberia to write a profile on President Charles Taylor, and Johnson found Liberia a living Hell. Young boys carry assault rifles. The rules are arbitrary and absolute. The state endorses torture. It is in “The Civil War in Hell” that Johnson writes an essay that is overpowering in its graphic descriptions of violence. The essay is not for the squeamish or weak-stomached—his visit to Liberia unmasked a corner of the earth that is both inhospitable and nearly unbelievable. Field Marshall Johnson, one of the people that Denis interviewed, spoke sanely and rationally about his political opponent, Doe—Doe: whose ears F. M. Johnson had cut off; Doe: who was forced by Johnson to eat his own ears. F.M. Johnson recounted the torture while sipping a cold beer. The violence is senseless. The Liberians, as D. Johnson writes, are fighting a war that is stalemated: there is only the grotesque, only the notion that time is stalled or has ceased to be pertinent, only a rising corpse count. The reader is left with the disturbing sense that there can be no winner, and that everyone is a loser in the Liberians’ so-called struggle for political freedom and the rights to self-autonomy and identity. When Johnson writes, he keeps his lens focused directly on the violence, and the narrowness of the focus is perturbing. Often, in essays that depict the graphic, there are neutral places for the reader to recuperate, but “The Civil War in Hell” offers no such space. Johnson starts with violence, he writes of violence throughout, and he ends with violence. Structurally, the essay offers no rest, and the literary clobbering of the reader reinforces the situation of the Liberian civil population: if there is no rest for the reader, then there is no rest for the Liberian commoner.
Essays on Liberia bookend Seek and provide a sense of geographical unity to what is otherwise a compartmentalized collection. The essay at the end of Seek, “The Small Boys’ Unit” is the book’s greatest essay; it alone is worth the cover price of the text. “The Small Boys’ Unit” recounts Johnson’s experience in Liberia in a personal fashion, outlining his beginning in Côte d’Ivoire and encapsulating his three week journey into life-threatening territory. Much like in “Six Times Down Hard”, Johnson’s trip goes haywire as soon as the plane lands. The difference between “Six Times” and “The Small Boys’ Unit”, though, is that the events during the course of each essay influence the endings differently. The former essay ends happily enough, on a redemptive note. The latter essay ends in a cynical, jaded, bitter fashion. Johnson is not at all happy that he went to Liberia—he has lost some of his faith in men, and he is disappointed after the violent disturbance of his world view.
Johnson peoples the “The Small Boys’ Unit,” with unusual characters: a lunatic Italian roaming Liberia, a British student beaten nearly to death by children, and a Commissaire de Police whose policy it is to operate on a system of lies. The atmosphere of this African landscape is influenced and informed by the actions of these people and others similar to them. Johnson’s Africans are desensitized to violence; they are willing to tolerate the torture of one man, so long as they themselves can avoid being tortured. And the concept of time—scheduling was once fundamental to Johnson—decreases in importance: itineraries are constantly being made, promises are always being made, but nothing ever happens. The Liberian people just sit and wait and somehow the days pass. From the way that Johnson describes Africa there seems to be a general consensus to achieve a certain level of amnesia—the Liberians seem to have a sense that something is wrong in the present, and that things have gone amiss in the recent past, but all of these wrongs seem somehow foggy and forgettable. Effectually, the amnesia allows for an eliding of pacification and positive change.
Between the Liberian essays (and in addition to the works on Alaska, hippies, and motorcycles) are Johnson’s visits to three deserts, his interactions with the militia-driven America First political party, and his take on Eric Rudolph (the notorious bomber of abortion clinics and the Atlanta Olympics). These essays are all of similar quality—that is to say, they’re well written, engaging, and informative. Mostly, though, the essays are useful tools for examining Johnson himself. He’s well traveled, he is courageous, and he finds himself in situations where his comfort is challenged and his discomfort is increased. He is an explorer. Audiences searching for essays written by a man who has been “to the Edges of America and Beyond” will find Johnson’s work attractive, not only because of the element of adventure in his essays, but also because of his work’s informative nature. The thirteen dollar and ninety-five cent price tag makes the book affordable, but due to Johnson’s popularity, many local libraries will have a copy of Seek.
5 out of 5
Reviewed by David
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