Nobody can write like Denis Johnson. That's the best take away from this - you have to write like yourself and a lot of this is semi-autobiographical. I can see Denis in rehab asking a mad with a bullethole in his face for more stories. The fact that a lot of writers or people who think they are worship at Johnson's altar - shouldn't deter you from reading it. These stories read very fast because they are short and Johnson writes so smoothly.

"When we were arguing on my twenty-fourth birthday, she left the kitchen, came back with a pistol, and fired it at me five times across the table. But she missed. It wasn't my life she was after. It was more. She wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert with what she'd done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it. She wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother"


"Michelle left me permanently for a man called John Smith, or shall I say that during one of the times we were parted she took up with a man and shortly after that had some bad luck and died? Anyway, she never came back to me. "