The Big Ugly

Denis Johnson Insists that Nobody Move

By John Hood

Crime isn’t pretty. It’s generally violent, often bloody, and inherently obscene. When the crime is committed by an idiot, you can pretty much bet it’s stupid too, especially if said idiot insists on rubbing it into the faces of the real criminals.

Such marks the spot at the beginning of Denis Johnson’s wicked quick crime spree, Nobody Move (Farrar Strauss Giroux, $23). A perennial loser named Jimmy Luntz gets picked-up on account of an outstanding gambling balance; then accidentally on purpose shoots the leg-breaker who’s about to give him the business.

Problem is Luntz is such a dunce that he not only lets the leg-breaker live, he tosses the thug, steals his Caddy, then calls the guy’s boss and gloats.

Not a wise move, especially when the boss man’s a bit of a hot head who’s got a peculiar fondness for dining on the unmentionables of his foes while. they. watch.

But Luntz is stricken with the kinda naïve hubris a 10-year-old might show the schoolyard bully while he’s safely getting away in mom’s car. And there’s no question that all those faces he’s making from the backseat are gonna one day get his ass kicked in front of the whole class.

Meantime the dunce gets to live another day. And if he’s got the kinda luck Johnson’s keen on giving his characters, he gets to do so with a dame who’s not just knock-dead gorgeous, but she’s as damaged as he is, only different.

This dame’s named Anita, and she’s just been tossed to the curb with nothing but a vintage Camaro and a stainless steel .357 Magnum. Luntz stumbles upon her along the Feather River, where both had retreated in order to regroup from their respective bad days. He’s in the process of ditching his own pistol; she grabs hers and decides to give him a show.

Bang, bang, pow. It’s not exactly love at first sight, but you know it’s gonna be. And later, when Luntz hits the karaoke bar and hears Anita tear the heart out of an evening, it is. The two come together like accident and happen; the rest is simply kismet.

Remember though, this is Johnson, and there’ll be no such thing as happily-ever-after. As the two new love birds are busy soaking up liquor and making the two-backed beast, the leg-breaker’s recuperating in the arms of a red-headed hefty and plotting his revenge. Boss man’s also got some plans for little Jimmy, and he’s on his way up with a vengeance befitting his place in the underworld.

Jimmy and Anita retreat to the mountaintop hideout of some former biker pals of his while they wait for her divorce to settle so they can flee the coop they’ve constructed for good. Thing is, one of the bikers is also on the outs with boss man, and giving up Jimmy might just be his way back in.

As always, I’ll keep the more of the story to myself. But it won’t be giving much away to tell you that a reckoning is on the horizon, and that the sun’s gonna rise blood red.

If you read Johnson’s ’92 breakout Jesus’ Son, you’ll know the man has an innate gift for creating characters that are born to lose big and conditioned to fail disgracefully. Had you got with Johnson’s National Book Award-winning Tree of Smoke, you’ll know he’s got an epic sense of telling a tale. Nobody Move, which was originally serialized in the pages of Playboy, combines the speed of Jesus’ shorts with the breadth of Tree’s scope and comes up with the kinda classic that used to pack paperback racks back when pulp was king.

In other words it’s high lit for your back pocket, Homer in a hip flask, a punch-drunk study in intellectual thuggery done-up in red and black and blue. Best, though, is that the story’s written in a way that makes you forget there’s a writer behind it. A sure sign that something’s been masterfully written.

Get ugly.

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The Southern Indie Bestseller List
Brought to you by IndieBound and SIBA. Week ended May 31

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