Books 9 and 10 of 2018

Denis Johnson has passed away. While he was in the process of dying he composed some final stories which feature characters who ruminate largely on mortality and dying. Or at least on finding ways to kill time while waiting for death to arrive.

If you have loved Denis Johnson stories in the past--for example the collection Jesus' Son: Stories, which first caught my eye 25 years ago when I was Literature Department Bookseller at Borders Books & Music store 043 in Towson, MD--then you should definitely get this as a worthy final chapter in the work of a fine writer.

The stories are reminiscent of Cheever, or Carver, or even Sherwood Anderson. They have a thin veneer of middle-class suburban respectability belied by derangement and perversion, obsession and addiction. But there is a deep empathy for the misguided and lost souls in his work, along the lines of George Saunders. And though his work can shock or disgust, often the jolts are hilarious.




I read in this breezy esoteric rumination that Jupiter is the potential Sun of a new solar system, where certain advanced souls who've progressed beyond Earthly re-incarnation gather in order to work out their final karmic debts before becoming a glowing manifestation of perfection similar to our Sun. I've read this idea in Ouspensky as well, and of course if you've seen Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, you are also somewhat familiar with this ancient teaching.

I was of course fascinated to learn that Guatama Buddha has reincarnated on Mars in order to fulfill the Christ mission for its denizens. And that St. Francis is there to help him.

Steiner only achieved access to this knowledge by following Goethe's methods of scientific observation: ie, trying to meditate on plants and seeds until their true impulse was revealed. Soon he was visited by a representative of an esoteric order who initiated him into the Temple and allowed him access to the Reader's Digest Condensed Akhasic Records.