Lit Matters: Thank You. Merry Christmas. Denis Johnson.

by Josh Dinar

It was daytime, or nighttime. Hard to tell. I’d arrived at the edge of the Arctic Circle after a few-day stop in England. Time had jumped forward or back by some number of hours, but the sun, like me, was loitering at this end of the planet for the season, so it would always be light. I was 22, a recent college grad, and traveling “indefinitely.”

“How long is that?” my father had asked. “Give me a ballpark.”

But I would not cage my experience. This was where I’d “find myself”—in the youth hostels and boarding rooms of far-flung places, in throwing myself to the world. I’d worked hard to save money for my travels while my parents stroked the opening checks of my student loan payments. They must have been so proud. It was light out, and always would be.

I’d arranged to rent a room in a house with a host family for the summer and was picked up at the airport by a sweet elderly couple that practiced their English on me: “Hello, Josh. How. You. Are?” I practiced my Icelandic back at them, which I assume sounded to their ears something like, “Thank you, Merry Christmas. Brownies.”

We drove to their small, lovely home, smiling and grunting awkwardly at each other, and they showed me to my room, a tiny little space that could barely hold the twin bed and small nightstand within. Two windows were covered by tin foil—a custom, I later learned, to help people sleep through the confused evening hours, which I may or may not have been in the midst of. My hosts mimed their insistence that I get some rest and shut the door. I sat on the bed in the darkened room, wide awake, and felt the first pangs of loneliness settle like an imprecise dread.

resuscitationI pulled the chain on the dusty lamp and retrieved the beaten paperback I’d traded for in London a day ago: Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, by Denis Johnson. I sat back against the wall—in the dark, in the light—and read the opening lines. “He came there in the off-season. So much was off. All bets were off. The last deal was off. His timing was off…”

The truth was, I was terrified. I read for hours, empathizing with Leonard English, the confused and lonely drifter at the heart of the book. Leonard was searching for something or someone to care about beside himself. Leonard seemed to hover above his own life, a detached observer, saddened by his own detachment. Leonard had no idea what the fuck he was doing.

By the lamplight of that artificially darkened room, the unknown ballooned around me. I could go anywhere, be anyone. The future was just a sentimental idea—bad poetry read with great enthusiasm—and I followed Leonard vaguely toward it.

From that room, my travels would last another two years. I would have near-daily adventures. I would meet and lose people, fall in and out of love, work in fruit fields and sweaty kitchens, be bored and exhilarated, inspired and endangered. And the whole time, I’d drop well-worn paperbacks behind me, like breadcrumbs to mark the memories and whatever they’d come to teach me.

In those first strange hours, I finished Resuscitation without ever putting it down, and then, having no other book and no sense of time, I turned to the first page and started again. At some point I slept, and the book intertwined with my unconsciousness. I don’t know how long it was before I finally came out of the room or what my hosts must have thought of me by then, but somehow, I emerged a little less alone.

“Goot mor-ning, Josh.”

So—it was morning, a new start to an endless day. I wondered if there was an English bookstore somewhere in the city. “Sandwich is frog butt,” I probably said.

This post is part of our annual Lit Matters series, in which writers and readers express why supporting and elevating literary arts—the mission of Lighthouse Writers Workshop— is important to them. If you agree, consider supporting Lighthouse on Colorado Gives Day. Mark your calendar for December 8 or schedule your gift now. Thank you!


Josh is a Book Project alum and former (long-time) board member at Lighthouse. He is a co-founder of DiningOut magazines, the Conscious Cleanse, and T|ACO Restaurant in Boulder and will be opening a new restaurant in the spring of 2016. His turn-ons include people who like him and breakfast sandwiches.