Seek: Reports from the Edges of America and Beyond

by Denis Johnson

Part political disquisition, part travel journal, part self-exploration, Seek is a collection of essays and articles in which Denis Johnson essentially takes on the world.  And not an obliging, easygoing world either; but rather one in which horror and beauty exist in such proximity that they might well be interchangeable.  Where violence and poverty and moral transgression go unchecked, even unnoticed. A world of such wild, rocketing energy that, grasping it, anything at all is possible. Whether traveling through war-ravaged Liberia, mingling with the crowds at a Christian Biker rally, exploring his own authority issues through the lens of this nation's militia groups, or attempting to unearth his inner resources while mining for gold in the wilds of Alaska, Johnson writes with a mixture of humility and humorous candor that is everywhere present. With the breathtaking and often haunting lyricism for which his work is renowned, Johnson considers in these pieces our need for transcendence.  And, as readers of his previous work know, Johnson's path to consecration frequently requires a limning of the darkest abyss.  If the path to knowledge lies in experience, Seek is a fascinating record of Johnson's profoundly moving pilgrimage.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Travel, Memoir, Journalism, Politics, History

238 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

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

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

GUIDA ANARCHICA DEL MONDO



Denis Johnson mantiene quanto promesso dal titolo. E più che quello inventato dall’editore italiano, mi riferisco a quello originale che è Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond: in effetti si tratta proprio di reportage dal margine dell’America e oltre.

Nella prima categoria, l’America marginale, posso segnalare i due pezzi (credo tutti destinati al New Yorker) che documentano alla maniera di Denis Johnson due raduni all’aperto: uno di hippy nelle foreste dell’Oregon in occasione del Magical Mistery Message organizzato dalla Famiglia Arcobaleno. Anzi, sarebbe meglio definirli vetero hippy (più che ex), forse anche loro si rendono conto d’essere ormai anacronistici.
L’altro in Texas in una ex base della Guardia Nazionale. E in questo caso ad occorrere, tutti motorizzati, principalmente su due ruote, nello specifico fiumi di Harley Davidson – la moto d’ordinanza dei biker americani – sono fan delle sacre scritture. Perché la mamma dei freaks è sempre incinta, e lo sembrerebbe in modo particolare in questa parte del pianeta. Forse è specializzata in parti plurigemellari.
Oppure il racconto della coppietta in viaggio di nozze stile into-the-wild in Alaska dove hanno l’incontro ravvicinato con un pilota di aeroplanini che colleziona incidenti e cadute.

L’oltre, il Beyond lo si trova nel primo pezzo, che è sulla guerra civile in Liberia raccontata senza peli sulla lingua, senza miti e illusioni. O in quell’altro che documenta la prima presa dell’Afghanistan da parte dei Talebani (1996). O ancora quello a Mogadiscio, e anche qui pazzi sanguinari a destra e sinistra, davanti e dietro, sopra e sotto.



La sensazione che Denis Johnson sia attirato dalla marginalità e ben oltre è forte sin dal principio. E avendo letto la sua breve magnifica raccolta Jesus’s Son non ne sono affatto stupito. Oltre i margini, oltre il confine, le vite secondarie, i dropout, gli alternativi… Tutti coloro che si direbbero esclusi dal sogno americano: ma che invece rappresentano una parte dell’anima di quel grande paese.
E raccontarli con sguardo alla stessa altezza, mai dall’alto. Con sentimento di vicinanza, con simpatia, e volendo scomodiamo l’empatia. Come se fosse parte del gruppo, li racconta con ironia, in modo buffo: proprio come racconterebbe se stesso, mai giudicante. Come se fossero tutti compagni di viaggio incontrati per strada, ai quali si unisce per compiere un tratto del percorso.

Sono storie e racconti che rimangono in bilico tra giornalismo e finzione, testimonianza e invenzione, vero e falso. Ma, in qualche strano modo, sono storie e racconti che fa bene leggere, scaldano il cuore, aiutano ad andare avanti.

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Denis Johnson, in my opinion, was one hell of a writer. A writer who though, from the eight books I've read so far, did have a couple that disappointed me. Thankfully, this is top-notch Johnson. Seek; along with Jesus' Son, is the best I've read. I'd even go as far to say this collection of essays was just as good as, and deserves just as much attention, as my two other favourites by American writers - Consider the Lobster & Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Nope, I'm not crazy. I genuinely believe this to be a masterpiece of non-fiction. I bet hardly anyone has even heard of it, and I doubt many will seek it out, but I'm just so glad I did. From the civil war from hell in Liberia, Johnson's time with the hippie movement, mining for gold in Alaska, and Jesus worshiping bikers, to the deserts of Afghanistan & the American souhtwest, the serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph, small town Montana, and reportage from Somalia, I was pretty much blown away.

[Sean Beaudoin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Denis Johnson is one of the best writers in America. There. Anything else need be said? Oh, yeah, this is a bunch of mostly non-fiction essays that are mostly very interesting and contain of all Johnson's trademark humanity, philosophy, descriptive ability, and lack of ego. Johnson travels from a Rainbow Gathering to Somalia to settle in and get a feel of things without making judgments. No grand pronouncements, just observation.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

I am a huge Denis Johnson novels and short stories.

This book however is non-fiction and I found two essays that were quite extraordinary.

The first is entitled "Jungle Bells". It is a nine page story about his ill fated Boy Scout outing into the jungle while he lived in the Philippines as a boy. His father was with the U.S. State Department so Johnson lived in many places around the world. The story is hilarious, irreverent and nostalgic. I loved it immensely, it is perfect.

The second one is lengthy at nearly a hundred pages and it's entitled "The Small Boys' Unit". It is a much more serious story and in line with some of the fictional works he has set in Africa. In this real life story Johnson was hired by the New Yorker to interview Charles Taylor in the Ivory Coast. Charles Taylor was a ruthless warlord from the Congo who was at the time invading neighboring countries and slaughtering many people. He could do this because he had thousands of child soldiers in his employ. Johnson was arrested many times trying to get into and out of the Ivory Coast, a war zone. He was threatened with death many times and was terrified he would die for most all of the assignment. I won't spoil the plot but this is easily one of the best stories on what it is like to travel through a war zone in Africa. Hint: You're not in Kansas anymore Dorothy.

The other essays in the collection are good but these two are in a class by themselves for different reasons. I will remember them for a very long time because of the descriptive writing. It was like I was there with a gun pointed to my head. It amazes me how versatile Johnson was and how his skills were not just limited to fiction.

[Il Pech · Rating 4 out of 5]

Questo libro dovrebbe raccogliere reportage di Johnson ma quasi sempre è impossibile stabilire dove finisca la cronaca e dove inizi l'invezione.

E questo testi sono stati precedentemente pubblicati? Se si, dove? Io non sono riuscito a trovare info utili.

Passando ai reportage o presunti tali:

•Denis cinquantenne che al raduno hippy si sfascia di funghetti è il testo più riuscito perché porta la poetica da beatnik disperato di Jesus son in un articolo di giornalismo super Gonzo che neanche il miglior Hunter Thompson.

•Gli scritti sulla terribile guerra civile in Liberia sono quelli che dovrebbero "fare" la raccolta, vista l'enorme quantità di materiale umano allucinante, ma Denis non vuole vincere facile, si limita a descrivere qualche scena tra cui un paio di interrogatori cruenti ed evita volutamente di caricare il tutto, quasi fosse a disagio nel riportare quelle situazioni, quasi si vergognasse di raccontare ciò che sta vedendo.

Questo mix di avventure semibiografiche nel subartico, adunate religiose, storie di bar mi ha fatto capire che Denis non se la cava benissimo quando deve fare da reporter ed è invece molto più bravo quando deve inventarsi qualcosa.

La sensazione generale è che da questa raccolta mi aspettavo di più anche se resta un bel libro.

Cronache anarchice è anche l'ultima pubblicazione italiana di Johnson che mi rimaneva da leggere quindi sono un po' in lutto.

[Jayden McComiskie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely magnificent. As usual, Johnson does not disappoint. The final essay of the collection, 'The Small Boys' Unit' blew me away. Kafka in Africa.

[M. Sarki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Johnson brought back memories of my own trips to Alaska, flying in float planes in terrible storms, wanting to always fly with the experienced old pilot who had crashed numerous times only because he knew how to survive them, the old Beaver cargo planes, wilderness jaunts, loggers, whiskey, and barges. A story relating to the wilds of Alaska, actually being there and still living to tell about it, is no easy feat.

I was surprised by this book of essays as I did not know Johnson was so involved as a journalist. I wrote a more personal and detailed account of this book here:

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/5089959...

[JQ Salazar · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 60-pg closer “The Small Boys’ Unit,” about the time Johnson was held in ‘light captivity’ in war-torn Liberia for several weeks, is easily an all-timer that rivals some of his best short stories.

[Max Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

At our best, we are loving, delusional students of this inhospitable, beautiful world. In Seek, The Man from Idaho shows us how being a student is the only way to survive.

[Johnnie]

crazy stuff

[Gabe Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times a memoir, at times gonzo, Seek records Johnson's adventures both within and without the borders of the United States. While war-torn Afghanistan, Liberia and Somalia provide the more dramatic settings, I found Johnson's travels through American fringe culture more compelling. Johnson meets Rainbow Children, Bikers for Jesus, and right-wing militia men on their own terms, and describes them with detail and with humor. Johnson is sympathetic towards indivuals and suspicious of organizations, and his personal search for meaning in a messed up a world provides an interesting parallels to his characters' wanderings.

[Nick LeBlanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goddamn some of these pieces are haunting. Not that they’re written in a haunting way. In fact they are written in a very straightforward, generous prose with great character observation and presence of mind. The subjects are just fractured pieces of humanity and DJ views them completely without judgment. Truly great reportage. An incredible nonfiction book, and not in some nerd-assed NPR way. No preachy nonsense and no moral lessons to be learned, just humanity.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The villagers sit close together, everyone touching someone else, steeped in a contentment that seems, at this moment, perpetual. It occurs to the writer that the secret way to happiness is in knowing a lot of dead people." pg 150

"Billeh's been lent a Kalashnikov, sand-blasted smooth and dull like those of the other two, each with a thirty-shot clip that may or may not be full, they refuse to say, and also Lion carries a sort of rocket, or grenade, that screws down onto the muzzle of his Kalashnikov and appears not to bear experimenting with. Lion produces from his waistband, for the writer's use, a 1917 model U.S. Army .45 caliber six-shooter, probably a Colt. It's got three forty-five automatic rounds in its cylinders, which are chambered for the long .45s, not the shorter automatic rounds. "One for each of you, if we're attacked, and one for me," the writer jokes-- they laugh like hell for twenty seconds, then shut down tight and inform him seriously that Muslims don't do suicide, it's banned by the Koran. He assures them the Bible's against it too, and everybody's comforted."pg 152

"When logic and utility fall from grace, the mystical authority of subtler concerns rises up like an intoxicating incense, and everything is done for reasons no one understands." pg 155

"Another night under a strange sky in a different realm. I listen to the reports on the shortwave of bombings, attacks, plagues, even witch-burnings (seventy elderly women burned in South Africa in the last ten months) and I feel I'm living in a world where such things are all there is... I've got a pocket New Testament, but I can't read much of it- because I'm living in the Bible's world right now, the world of cripples and monsters and desperate hope in a mad God, world of exile and impotence and the waiting, the waiting, the waiting. A world of miracles and deliverance, too. Add the invention of the Kalashnikov in 1947 into the mix, and life gets exciting." pg 157

"Some begin complaining about the Marines, and others point with pride to the water trucks and big guns stolen from the U.N., to the blown-up troop trucks upended and wheelless in the streets, and the corner, a monument now, where eighteen U.S. Rangers died fighting Somali militia. The U.N.- What did it accomplish? The tons of food and medicine, it's all forgotten. Only the police effort and the bossing stays fresh in the minds of Mogadishu. The outfit that saved, by it's own count, 150,000 here seems almost universally derided and resented." pg 161

"When the ill-timed efforts of nation-states to impose their idea of stability unbalances the tribal powers, the return to balance is violent." pg 161

"The journalist from America has decided to cling to the notion that out there, in the countryside he passed through to reach this crazy city, the people know what they're doing. Their leaders don't, and we don't. But they know. All this destruction is shaping tomorrow- a tomorrow without a lot of Idaho White Boy ideas in it." pg 169

"But the nation-state, the twentieth-century geopolitical entity held together by the government's monopoly on the use of force- it's finished. The Kalashnikov rifle and the Stinger missile, and the world-wide dissemination of these weapons during the proxy conflicts of the Cold War, have changed things as much as the invention of gunpowder did in the thirteenth century. A determined Third-World people can now hold out against the greatest powers- witness Vietnam- and even a loose coalition of determined clans or factions can drive away the strongest armies- witness Afghanistan- and now in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia it's been made plain that even factions at war with one another can, with their left hand, as it were, stalemate the U.N. in its efforts to stop the fighting among them." pg 170

[Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Denis Johnson has been one of my favorite authors since I first read "Already Dead" over a decade ago. His combination of violent, brutal realism with the sort of hazy, dreamlike imagery that is so often the purview of those who've spent much of their lives self-medicating creates a world where the all-to-real can intersect with the seemingly surreal within a turn of a phrase.

This collection isn't an exception to his oeuvre, except that rather than harsh realism, "Seek" trades in harsh reality. The works compiled display his journalistic side (so often overshadowed by his work as a writer of both short and long fiction, poetry, and theatre works) and take him from Christian biker rallies to Charles Taylor's Liberia, from militia meetings to Rainbow Gatherings, skipping back and forth over vast swaths of normalcy and complacency towards whatever fringe he can lay his hands on.

So many reviews of this book refer to Hunter Thompson and suggest that Johnson's journalism is some heir to a gonzo throne, but I don't think that quite nails it. Though he does eat some mushrooms at a Pacific Northwest hippie gathering and make some references to his counterculture past, the best work in this book revolves around Johnson's exclusion of himself. He plays the invisible eye so well that those sections where he himself is a main character, most notably his forays into (and sympathies with) the militia movement, fall a bit flat. Because the best of his work details the world as it happens rather than the world as it happens to him, the self-referentiality of much of "Seek" compromises many of its strengths.

On the whole, despite my criticisms and moderate rating, I would recommend "Seek". For those interested in the fringes of the Western world, it's an interesting travel document. For fans of Johnson's other work, so many of these segments could have been short stories, with the individuals and situations featured providing striking parallels to some of Johnson's fictional work.

In general, however, I'd suggest reading everything else he's ever written first.

[Colin N. · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Seek" is a collection of journalism by Denis Johnson from the early 1990s. The chapters span from his reporting in war torn areas such as Somalia, Liberia, and Afghanistan to his explorations of the fringes of life in America: a bikers for Jesus rally, a hippie festival, Alaskan survivalists, the towns in the area where Eric Rudolph avoided capture. The stories describe Johnson's interactions with the people in these areas and groups and his thoughts on each.

Overall I thought this work was decidedly just okay. I am not sure where the effusive praise of some of the other postings is coming from. I liked the concept of the book much more then its execution. The writing was straightforward but not astounding, and I frankly found many of the chapters rather boring.

The reason I gave the book 3 stars, however, instead of 2, is because the reports from war-torn areas, especially "An Anarchist's Guide to Somalia" and "The Small Boy's Unit" are fascinating tales. It really is amazing that Johnson managed to lived through those experiences and he really manages to capture the surreal insanity of such chaotic regions. "The Small Boy's Unit" is really gripping, you don't want to put it down until you find out how manages to extricate himself from the situation. If only the stories from America were similarly entertaining or insightful. Some, such as "Three Deserts" appear cobbled together and only loosely connected. And there is a bit of overlap between some chapters when Johnson repeats facts or observations he made elsewhere.

Spotty, but a quick read and entertaining in parts.

[Diann Blakely]

When the author of JESUS' SON appeared in the NEW YORK TIMES Sunday magazine talking not about sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, but about the radically libertarian survivalist movement and its underground, one could almost hear the hip literary world’s collective gasp. Did Johnson’s newfound fascination with subjects like Ruby Ridge and Eric Paul Rudolph’s still successful evasion of the law in the Smoky Mountains mean that he was turning into an anti-big-government Republican? Or worse?

This new collection of Johnson’s nonfiction prose renders such questions moot by bringing into visceral clarity what has always pulsed at his work’s sacred heart: The poet, fiction writer, and essayist is still hell-bent—so to speak—on the vertical burn, on not only gettin’ right with God but gettin’ in his face. The desire for spiritual transcendence, to use a blander term, kick-started Johnson’s own past addiction and current searches, but also, unfortunately--and this certainly isn't Johnson's fault--produced a godawful, so to speak, plethora of cheap druggy and kissy-face ones facsimiles. If Jesus is to be found among us, whispers “Hippies,” one of the most restless, enraged, and brilliant essays here, he won’t be at a longhaired reunion, smoking dope, and saying, “Loving you!”





--adapted from the NASHVILLE SCENE/Village Voice Media, 13 September 2001

[Kilburn Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read quite a bit of Denis Johnson's fiction. I especially liked Tree of Smoke, and Jesus' Son. But this book of journalism and essays, is something completely different.

He visits war torn countries like Irag, Afghanistan, Liberia, and Somalia.

His trip to Afghanistan was way before 9/11. When The Taliban were in power. He just crossed the Khyber Pass, and headed to Kabul. I was quite impressed with this trip. Unlike Don McCullin who tried to enter Afghanistan during the soviet invasion. His trip was successful.

Some of the more harrowing articles. Took place in Somalia and Liberia. Where countless macabre atrocities are described. I won't spoil the book and go into detail, but these articles left me somewhat disturbed and uneasy.

It's not all death and war though. He is a self described beatnik. And one essay, is about a trip to the rainbow gathering. Where he describes a psychedelic experience with psilocybin mushrooms.

Despite the uncomfortable subject matter, of some of the articles. This is definitely a book that's worth reading. And fully deserves the 5 stars that I've given it.

[Kallie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Denis Johnson is one of my favorite writers, but I don't think reportage is his milieu. I expected too much, probably: Kapuscinski with Johnson's voice? Johnson's insights come through fiction better, in my opinion. For travel and cultural observation, I would prefer Kapuscinski, Didion, Malcolm, or even Bowden (who can be pretty melodramatic, but wow). Part of the problem is a lack of context. Where exactly is the author when: "For two days, the former president and his brother dangle from their necks." Use of the present tense makes it sound like Johnson was there in Kabul and observed Najibullah dangling. This was true of piece on Liberia, too. We are not told how Johnson approaches the story, where he came from, etc. That bugged me. A different accountability is called for and I don't find it in this book so I'm disappointed.

[ds white · Rating 5 out of 5]

now I am not as big a denis johnson fan as people would believe me to be. I think on occasion he throws out some amazing sentences and even better paragraphs, but his novels as a whole suffer. I loved Seek: Reports from the Edges of America and Beyond, it was his element. Like I say about Sam Lipsyte, he should stay with the short story for his novels lack. Saunders, lutz they know thier barriers and do not try do be something bigger than they are, but in their form they are as big as a rising moon on a autumn night in the deserts of Arizona. Denis, go back to the short story you are so good at it.

[Kaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dipped back into this recently and remembered how great some of these essays are. "Hippies" is probably my favorite (having grown up around Rainbow Family folks), but many other things in here are also great and timely reading today.

[Elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of my favorite books of all time. honest, clear insightful.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book kicks some ass. I personally like his depiction of Civil War torn Liberia but Bikers for Jesus was equally unique.

[Rand · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent portrayal of fragmentation in contemporary american life.
it's a trip. it'll do ya good.

[Tyler · Rating 1 out of 5]

The language was so bogged down by needless exposition. I was bored with every single story in this collection.

[Phil reading_fastandslow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Denis Johnson was always searching for something. He looked for that “something” in heroin and psychedelics, in the religious sobriety of Alcoholics Anonymous (dedicating a few books to “Higher Power”), and in many ill-advised travels, some to war torn countries as a self described pseudo-journalist with little experience or support. Denis Johnson loved spending time at the razor’s edge, even if he felt conflicted about it later in life.

Three of the best essays in this collection of Gonzo journalism report on insane violence and mayhem in Africa — two on the Civil War in Liberia (circa early 1990s) and the third on Somalia around the time of the withdrawal of United Nations forces (1995). They have a bewildered, reverent quality. “Hippies” details a Rainbow Gathering in the Ochoco National Forest, which reveals a bit about the author’s struggles with addiction. “Down Hard Six Times” details Denis and Cindy’s honeymoon, an ill-advised quest to mine for gold in remote Alaska. “Bikers for Jesus” tells of the Eagle Mountain Motorcycle Rally near Fort Worth, TX. The rally was hosted be Kenneth Copeland, a particularly insane televangelist whose mad and dangerous anti-vaccine ramblings went viral around 2020-2021.

This is an eclectic snapshot into a decade of the artist’s life and it shows his penchant for constant experimentation and improvisation, in lieu of anything resembling a plan. I would recommend reading “Jesus’ Son” first, which is close to a memoir of his early life, because it gives more context to the type of person our protagonist is when he shows up in these unfamiliar places.

[Ahmed Al-otaibi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had been sitting on my list for a while, and I only picked it up after reading several of Johnson’s short stories and novellas. I’ve come to believe that Johnson lives inside a world entirely his own, not a pleasant one, necessarily, but one so distinct and consistent that it bleeds through everything he writes. His loyalty to that world, and his endless attempts to express it through every possible form, are what make reading him such a strange pleasure. It’s demanding, often bitter, but always rewarding. This nonfiction collection is perhaps the clearest window into that inner landscape.

‎‏I’m stunned by the worlds Johnson documented in these journalistic pieces, by how Johnson infused them with literature and self-revelation. It’s a combination that looks easy on the surface but is incredibly difficult to pull off. Even Johnson himself struggles with it: at times, you can almost see him chasing the reporter’s hat across the page. Ironically, this tension is what makes some essays brilliant and others frustrating. But that difficulty is exactly what makes Seek fascinating.

‎‏The worlds he explores here mirror his fiction in uncanny ways. as if the world imitates his art. Pieces like “Hippies”, “The Militia in Me”, and “Run, Rudolph, Run” nailed my eyelid to my forehead and left me with a mix of emotions, the clearest of which was: Fuck I wish I had written these myself.

[Louis Molyneux · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first encounter with Johnson's non-fiction, a collection of essays, reportage and personal stories covering everything from the horrors of war and revolutions in Liberia, Somalia and Afghanistan, places where Johnson travelled at great risk and with great difficulty, religious cults, far right militias, Christian biker rallies within America as well as pieces that are essentially travel diaries from his eventful trips panning for gold in the Alaskan wilderness and tripping on a heroic dose of mushrooms at a hippie gathering. He comes off as a kind of Louis Theroux meets Graham Greene type.

What links all these pieces for me, is a sense of searching and transcendence common to all its characters, Johnson has an egoless observational way of writing that is non judgemental even when he is encountering objectively terrible people and finding himself in awful circumstances where he has to struggle with his own sense of guilt and trauma. I would place this up with my favourite of his works I have read because it's the first time I felt I've really got a sense of the man himself, even as he leaves his own perspective mostly out of his writing, you get a feeling of Johnson the war reporter, the religious seeker, the itinerant and the addict. For me his prose is still the best I have ever read, this being a collection of non fiction essays doesn't change that one bit.

[Scott Eggerding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Johnson’s nonfiction is even more fractured and gritty than his fiction-as if his fiction is a distillation of a world even more broken than he can bear to report. Yet somehow he plows forward, gets where he intends to, and returns with mayhem left in his wake. Whether in Liberia avoiding random air strikes or moving among bikers at a revival, Johnson flirts with the line between reporting the story and being the story. Johnson’s crisp prose and ability to observe and reveal the mood, even when the language around him is unintelligible, make complex situations rendered with clarity and confusion simultaneously. Nobody else could have written these dispatches.

[Regina C · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I’d come to this place and I was not whole enough or real enough to accept its terms. “Save me,” it says and you want to. “Shoot me” it begs and you think, wouldn’t that just be the best and quickest thing? I’d given a statement in English which would be presented to me in French and which I was supposed to sign without any idea what it said. Everyone I’d dealt with, and everyone they had dealt with, had been arrested. The Commissaire de Police wouldn’t speak his own name."

Excellent writing. 'The Small Boys' Unit' is incredibly haunting.

[Samuel Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it possible that a book can happen to you? From Liberia to Somalia via Waco. The warm winter-emergent sun warming my neck through my living room window. A shock of car horns failing to distract me from words failing to explain why I was reading them. And then it was over - but what was it all for?

This review thus far has been written in the style of this wild book that was gifted to me as a part of the most thoughtful wedding reception imaginable. I’d never have found it otherwise. I’m not sure I’ll ever truly understand why I liked it, but I did. And that’s fine.