“Later in the afternoon, with sad resignation, the county fair bares its breasts.”
–”Emergency,” Denis Johnson, from Jesus’ Son
I’m a big believer that writers should use their own personal vocabulary (thanks, Michael Kimball) to show the reader how they uniquely perceive the world, and I can think of no better sentence that exemplifies that belief than this one–no one else could have written it but Johnson.
Jen Michalski is the author of Close Encounters.
YES!
Oh, lovely. I read that book like four times in a row and then again a few years after….but it’s been a long time. Just lovely.
Man, yes.
Though, I have to admit, my favorite sentence from Emergency is the one where the narrator wakes up in the truck, and understands how a drowning man might suddenly feel a great thirst being quenched.
Yeah, I love this line. So many great ones in there, but this might be my favorite too.
[...] Sean Kilpatrick, Michael Kimball, Matthew Kirkpatrick, Brian Kiteley, Darby Larson, Diane Lefer, Jen Michalski, Kyle Minor, Lance Olsen, Jeff Parker, David Peak, D. A. Powell, Dawn Raffel, Adam Robinson, [...]