Already Dead
In this black comedy of Wagnerian proportions, Nelson Fairchild, a wealthy Californian, is also a professional marijuana farmer with strong ties to the counterculture. Fairchild meets his nemesis in Carl Van Ness, a psychotic drifter obsessed with Nietzsche. Fairchild has it all, and Van Ness is going to take it from him. In a moral sense, Van Ness is "already dead"; his soul has left his body, and a demon has moved in. Johnson's first work of fiction since Jesus' Son (LJ 11/1/92) covers the same territory as T.C. Boyle's horticultural classic Budding Prospects (LJ 4/15/84), but this is a much darker and more disturbing work. The pace is excruciatingly slow, the structure sloppy, and the huge cast of weirdos unwieldy, but Johnson's druggy prose is simply gorgeous. This work will do little to change his reputation as a cult novelist, but Johnson's fans will recognize the book as a worthy successor to Angels (LJ 8/83), his astonishing debut novel. Recommended for most serious fiction collections.?Edward B. St. John, - Library Journal
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