Shoppers: Two Plays

by Denis Johnson

"Perfection is not the basis of what I'm talking about," says a member of the Cassandra family, which forms the center of Denis Johnson's plays, Hellhound on My Trail and Shoppers Carried by Escalators into the Flames. The character could be speaking for his creator, because human imperfection is one of Denis Johnson's specialties – in his critically acclaimed novels, short stories, and nonfiction, and, now, in two brilliant new plays. These two works present a dramatized field guide to some of the more dysfunctional and dysphoric inhabitants of the American West: a sexual-misconduct investigator who misconducts herself sexually; a renegade Jehovah's Witness who supports his splinter Jehovean group by dealing drugs; the Cassandra Brothers and their father and their grandmother, thrown together at a family reunion/wedding/melee at their shabby homestead in Ukiah, California. When Shoppers Carried by Escalators into the Flames was performed in San Francisco in 2001, the Chronicle said, "There's an enormous appeal in Johnson's bleak-comic vision of a semi-mythic American West." That appeal derives from the author's perfect vision of imperfection, embodied with such energy and courage in these marvelous pieces of theatre.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre

211 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2002

About the author

Poet, 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).

Reviews

[Aaron Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two very fun and quite funny—but also completely batshit crazy—plays by Denis Johnson. Structurally the two pieces are quite different, but in terms of characters and the kind of USAmerican surrealism you might expect from Sam Shepard, the plays are quite similar.

Hellhound on My Trail is a triptych. Three scenes, each with two characters playing power games with one another. We can never quite get our bearings in these scenes, and this is intentional. This is a play about a world gone completely mad, totally driven by craven self interest and desire.

Shoppers Carried by Escalators into the Flames is a two-act family drama much more along the lines of Buried Child or Curse of the Starving Class, with a similar setting in the American West (we're in Ukiah, California) and similar language and behavior from its Shepardesque characters—two drunk brothers, a crazy dad, and a senile old grandmother. But Johnson's vision is much more apocalyptic than Shepard's, and because these plays were written at the turn of the millennium, they have the feeling of truly going off the rails, as if we're watching what happens through the drunken vision of the play's own characters.

For me, the real highlight of Shoppers Carried by Escalators into the Flames is its sentient television set, which talks back to the characters and causes just as much mayhem as the characters themselves.

[Neil · Rating 1 out of 5]

Garbage.

[Ethan Inglis · Rating 3 out of 5]

(4.5 stars)

Evidence that Denis Johnson can do no wrong in terms of writing really great dialogue. The second play is the highlight but both are interconnected and share characters. The first one is a little slight and overly ambiguous but the second masters the blend between structure, humor, and pathos.

[Phil reading_fastandslow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Denis Johnson became obsessed with writing theatre after hearing Holly Hunter and Arliss Howard do a dramatic reading of a portion of his novel “Resuscitation of a Hanged Man”. This wasn’t the first time he jumped from one written medium to another. He began his career as a poet for about a decade, before he began on his debut novel, Angels. He also made a foray into screenwriting. Even among his fiction, there is quite a big spectrum of genre. Anyway, he wanted to write some theatre, and here it is.

Much like Salinger’s Glass family, these two plays involve the fictional Cassandra family, which would return in DJ’s posthumous story collection. In this and his other lesser works, his childlike excitement and raw talent are visceral on the page, even through the end result doesn’t feel fully formed. It’s not bad, just kind of middling. But I did find some portions of dialogue hilarious enough to post online, and some of the dramatic action was quite affecting. I think he just needed to take these elements a little bit further.

I heard him say or read him imply once that he never really got much advice on how to write for theatre, he just started doing it. The feedback came at the performances, a bit too late. He went on to write three more plays after this: Soul of a Whore and Purvis (published as a collection), and my holy grail which is nowhere to be found: Des Moines (performed off broadway with Michael Shannon). Honestly, it seems like the feedback to his theatre works was consistently mixed, but I have no doubt that if he hadn’t died at 67 he would have kept at it, and maybe he would’ve come up with a really beautiful play. As it stands, these two plays aren’t essential, but they are a fascinating insight into his constant experimentation, and worth reading if you want to understand him better as an author.

I only have two more works of his to go until I’ve read his whole catalogue: “Resuscitation…” and “Soul…and Purvis”.

3 stars rounded up.

[Bob · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of a mess. The two pieces together here are reminiscence of Albee‘s zoo story, in the way that one informs the other, I guess, and the overall setup might make for a good short story, but overall, particularly the second half, it’s disjointed and frustrating.

[Curtis Harrington · Rating 2 out of 5]

Johnson writes really good dialogue, but not really feeling this one.

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting effort--have both books of his plays on my shelf just on principle. Not quite as special as his short stories but worth reading.

[Diann Blakely]

If your thoughts run toward the apocalyptic, political or familial, and you're considering a family trip, you might also consider packing copies of SHOPPERS, a book of two award-winning plays by poet, fiction writer and essayist Denis Johnson, and ANGELS, a reprint of his first novel, published in 1977. The former takes place in Houston, Texas, and Ukiah, Calif., focusing on an ur-dysfunctional family, sexual harassment investigators and various ecclesiastical figures, including a theologically and ethically imperfect circle that finances its ministry through dealing drugs. Indeed, failings and flaws are what drive these two plays: “Perfection is not the basis of what I’m talking about,” says one of the Cassandras, the resonantly named family at the core of SHOPPERS.

The Houstons, the familial protagonists of ANGELS, would agree wholeheartedly. That book’s prophets manqué, thieves and addicts, however despicable their actions, remain timely representatives of the search for meaning in a country where too much is free and too little valued, including the possibilities for genuine freedom in our own lives. In their wayward questing, the Houstons are not unlike drug-amped contemporary Magi, and their thoughts, actions and longings are rendered with a hallucinatory yet universal quality that confounds attempts at paraphrase. Witness the following excerpt: “As he walked beside the road,” Johnson writes of ANGELS' James Houston, “he felt his anger burning up in the heat of noon, and saw himself, as he often did when he was outdoors on hot days, being forged in enormous fires for some purpose beyond his imagining. He was only walking down a street toward a barroom, and yet in his own mind he took his part in the eternity of this place. It seemed to him—it was not the first time—that he belonged in Hell, and would always find himself joyful in its midst. It seemed to him that to touch James Houston was to touch one iota of the vast grit that made the desert and hid the fires at the center of the earth.”


(originally published in the NASHVILLE SCENE)

[Nelson Maddaloni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Denis Johnson has written much, much better. This wasn't completely terrible but it was all over the map and confusing for a play. The dialogue was okay and it felt natural but it got bogged down in what seemed like light science fiction, especially when he'd done a lot better in "Fiskadoro". Maybe it was because it was his first attempt at theater? I'm not sure, but it was a weaker entry into the Denis Johnson bibliography.

[Alissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Saw these plays performed at Viaduct Theater. Johnson was involved and we actually went to the same performance he attended, which was a thrilling moment for me. I still remember his sandals.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this dude's dialogue!

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moments of brilliance, but not close enough together. Feels unfocused and forced at times. But oh those moments of brilliance.

[Sarah Funke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my thing. Though if I had come up with the title "Shoppers Carried by Escalators Into the Flames" I suppose I would have written a play or two as well.

[Snakes · Rating 1 out of 5]

Johnson should stick to novels. Just terrible.