{"id":106175,"date":"2016-12-26T10:30:23","date_gmt":"2016-12-26T15:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=106175"},"modified":"2017-08-23T12:50:43","modified_gmt":"2017-08-23T16:50:43","slug":"on-car-crash-while-hitchhiking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/26\/on-car-crash-while-hitchhiking\/","title":{"rendered":"Denis Johnson\u2019s Perfect Short Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our\u00a0complete digital archive is available now.\u00a0Subscribers can read every piece\u2014every story and poem, every essay, portfolio, and interview\u2014from <\/em>The Paris Review\u2019s sixty-three-year history. Subscribe now<\/a> and you can start reading 0ur\u00a0back issues\u00a0right away. You can also try a free ten-day trial period<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

A short story must be, by definition, short. That\u2019s the trouble with short stories. That\u2019s why they\u2019re so difficult to write. How do you keep a narrative brief and still have it function as a story? Compared to writing novels, writing short fiction is mainly a question of knowing what to leave out. What you leave in must imply everything that\u2019s missing.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019d like to learn how to do this, you\u2019d be well advised to study Denis Johnson\u2019s blisteringly acute \u201cCar-Crash While Hitchhiking<\/a>.\u201d In this story\u2014and indeed, in all of the stories in Johnson\u2019s brilliant collection, Jesus\u2019 Son<\/em>\u2014Johnson found a way to leave out the maximum in terms of plot, setting characterization, and authorial explanation while finding a voice that suggested all these things, a voice whose brokenness is the reason behind the narrative deprivation, and therefore a kind of explanation itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first two paragraphs of the story divulge the entirety of its action: \u201cA salesman who shared his liquor and steered while sleeping \u2026 A Cherokee filled with bourbon \u2026 A VW no more than a bubble of hashish fumes, captained by a college student \u2026 And a family from Marshalltown who headonned and killed forever a man driving west out of Bethany, Missouri \u2026 \u201d This appears to be a straightforward recounting of events except for that one word: forever<\/em>. What \u201ckilled forever\u201d means isn\u2019t entirely clear. It\u2019s a strange thing to say, as if it were possible for a person to be killed temporarily. Soon, other unusual statements appear. \u201cThe traveling salesman had fed me pills that made the linings of my veins feel scraped out. My jaw ached. I knew every raindrop by its name. I sensed everything before it happened. I knew a certain Oldsmobile would stop for me even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside of it I knew we\u2019d have an accident in the storm.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then comes the kicker: \u201cI didn\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n

We are, at this point, about twenty lines into the story, and the ground has fallen away beneath us. Who is this guy (identified, elsewhere in the collection, only as \u201cFuckhead\u201d)? What has happened to get him in this altered state? Why is he capable of making vatic utterances about the weather and of registering the sweetness of human voices while not caring about their impending demise? No explanation is given. The story rolls on, rubbernecking its way through the car crash, the individual sentences veering from poetic reverie (\u201cUnder Midwestern clouds like great gray brains\u201d) to detached commentary (\u201cThe interstate through western Missouri was, in that era, nothing more than a two-way road.\u201d) The description of the accident is frightening in the extreme, and leads to a scene in a hospital, when the wife of the injured man learns of his death: \u201cThe doctor took her into a room with a desk at the end of the hall, and from under the closed door a slab of brilliance radiated as if, by some stupendous process, diamonds were being incinerated there. What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I\u2019ve gone looking for that feeling everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible for the reader to know how to interpret this. Customary narrative procedure has disappeared and you realize that you\u2019ve entered, or better, been sucked into, Fuckhead\u2019s world. By removing any rational linkage from the story, by refusing to provide any form of accepted behavior on the part of the narrator, Johnson brings the reader to a place where these things are no longer operative, as they are, after all, in an addict\u2019s twisted mind. The story hasn\u2019t told you about an experience so much as made that experience your own. Which is as good a definition of fiction writing as I can think of.<\/p>\n

Up to this point, however, as chilling as \u201cCar Crash While Hitchhiking\u201d is, it still isn\u2019t a story. It doesn\u2019t become a story until the last paragraph, where Johnson makes an amazing move. Mirroring the chronological liberties of the opening paragraph, he leaps forward: \u201cSome years later, one time when I was admitted to the Detox at Seattle General Hospital, I took the same tack.\u201d Fuckhead goes on to describe the voices that are speaking to him in the room, and the lush hallucinations that appear before his eyes, as a \u201cbeautiful nurse\u201d gives him an injection.<\/p>\n

By the end of the story, then, we glimpse the narrator\u2019s eventual descent into drug-fueled insanity, and we get a clue to the reason he\u2019s been able to write about these events with such clarity. The story is a description of \u201cthe pity of a person\u2019s life on this earth\u201d as well as a testimonial of redemption, without any sentimentality or even the prospect of permanence. That \u201cone time when I was admitted to the Detox\u201d suggests that it happened more than once. The narrator\u2019s recovery, which allows him to relate these events, doesn\u2019t absolve him of his heartlessness during them or bring the dead people back to life. That\u2019s the meaning of \u201ckilled forever.\u201d Sobriety and sanity, precious as they are, do not compensate for the tragic senselessness of life. Redemption is glorious and it isn\u2019t nearly enough. It saves only one person at a time, and the world is full of people.<\/p>\n

As if to emphasize this hard truth, the story concludes with a furious last line: \u201cAnd you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.\u201d Fuckhead isn\u2019t Jesus. He\u2019s Jesus\u2019s son, which is a different thing entirely. He\u2019s a person graced with an intuition of heaven who still lives in hell on earth.<\/p>\n

All this Denis Johnson does in a little over a thousand words. By conflating registers of time and tone, he delivers a narrative where the personal brushes up against the eternal, all from a single incident, or accident, on a rainy night.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This essay appeared in<\/em>\u00a0Object Lessons: \u2018The Paris Review\u2019 Presents the Art of the Short Story<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A short story must be, by definition, short. That\u2019s the trouble with short stories. 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