Train Dreams

Last updated
Train Dreams
Train Dreams (Johnson novella).png
First edition cover
Author Denis Johnson
Audio read by Will Patton [1]
LanguageEnglish
Genre Historical fiction
Set in Idaho and Washington
Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date
August 30, 2011
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardcover and paperback)
Pages116
Awards O. Henry Award (2003)
Aga Khan Prize for Fiction (2002)
ISBN 978-0-374-28114-4
OCLC 705350825
813/.54
LC Class PS3560.O3745 T73 2011

Train Dreams is a novella by Denis Johnson. It was published on August 30, 2011, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. [2] It was originally published, in slightly different form, in the Summer 2002 issue of The Paris Review . [3] [4]

Contents

The novella details the life of Robert Grainier, an American railroad laborer, who lives a life of hermitage until he marries and has a daughter, only to lose both wife and child in a forest fire, and sink into isolation again.

The novella won an O. Henry Award in 2003. [5] It also won the 2002 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction. [6] It was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, but no award was given that year. [7] [8] [9] [10]

Plot

In summer 1917, a Chinese laborer is accused of stealing from the company stores of the Spokane International Railway in the Idaho Panhandle. Robert Grainier and the other white laborers attempt to throw him over the bridge they are constructing, but he escapes. Grainier stops in Meadow Creek and buys a bottle of sarsaparilla for his wife, Gladys, and their four-month-old daughter, Kate. Hiking home to his cabin, Grainier thinks he sees the Chinese man and believes he has cursed him.

In 1920, Grainier leaves for northwestern Washington to help repair the Robinson Gorge Bridge. He also cuts and transports timber for the Simpson Company. He meets fellow worker Arn Peeples, a fearless but superstitious old man who dangerously excavates tunnels with dynamite. Arn is later killed by a falling dead branch. In 1962 or 1963, Grainier watches young ironworkers build a new highway. In the mid-1950s, he sees the World's Fattest Man. He recalls seeing Elvis Presley's private train in Troy, Montana, and flying in a biplane in 1927.

Grainier was born in 1886 in Utah or Canada. In 1893, he arrived on the Great Northern Railway as an orphan in Fry, Idaho, and was adopted by a family. He witnesses the mass deportation of Chinese families from the town. In 1899, the towns of Fry and Eatonville were merged to form Bonners Ferry. Grainier quit school in his early teens and began fishing. One day, he stumbles upon a dying man named William Coswell Haley. He brings him a drink of water from his boot and leaves him to die alone.

Grainier is hired out to the railroad and local families, and works around town through his twenties. At 31 years old, he marries Gladys Olding. In summer 1920, Grainier returns to Idaho from working on the Robinson Gorge to find a massive wildfire has consumed the valley. His cabin is lost and his wife and daughter are nowhere to be found. The following spring, he returns to their cabin and believes he feels Gladys' spirit. One night while sleeping by the river, he sees her white bonnet "sailing past" above him. He lives there through summer, taking in a red dog as company. He hikes to Meadow Creek and takes a train to Bonners Ferry, staying there through winter. In March, he returns to the Moyea Valley and rebuilds his cabin. The red dog returns in June, with four puppies. Grainier befriends a Kootenai Indian named Bob, who drunkenly gets run over by trains.

Four years into living in his cabin, Grainier realizes he cannot continue to move out every summer to Washington and every winter to Bonners Ferry. By April 1925, he stays and works in town. In one job, he loads sacks of cornmeal aboard the Pinkhams' wagon. After witnessing their grandson Hank collapse and die, Grainier buys their horses and wagon. Around this time, Grainier hears rumors about a wolf-girl.

Grainier is visited by a figure of his wife Gladys, who tells him she died after falling and breaking her back on rocks down by the river. Before drowning, she unknotted her bodice to allow Kate to crawl away and escape.

Thereafter, Grainier lives in his cabin, working one final summer in the Washington woods to pay for winter lodging for his horses. He travels on the Great Northern to Spokane, Washington, taking a ride on a plane. He meets his childhood friend Eddie Sauer, who returns with him to Meadow Creek.

Grainier continues to live in his cabin, despite having arthritis and rheumatism. When a pack of wolves comes upon his cabin one night, Grainier sees a wolf-girl and is convinced it is Kate. She growls and barks at him, but lets him splint her broken leg. She sleeps in his cabin but leaps out the window come morning. He never sees her again.

Robert Grainier dies in his sleep in November 1968. His body is discovered next spring by a pair of hikers. In a memory from 1935, Grainier attends a sideshow to see a "wolf-boy". The audience laugh at him but are shocked by his roar. The novella concludes, "And suddenly it all went black. And that time was gone forever."

Publication

Train Dreams was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 30, 2011. [2] It was originally published, in slightly different form, in the Summer 2002 issue of The Paris Review . [3]

The novella appeared at number 28 on The New York Times Hardcover Fiction best-sellers list on October 9, 2011. [11]

Reception

According to Book Marks, based on American publications, the book received "rave" reviews based on 11 critic reviews, with 11 being "rave". [12]

Publishers Weekly called the novella "the synthesis of Johnson's epic sensibilities rendered in miniature in the clipped tone of Jesus' Son ." [5]

Writing for The New York Times Book Review , author Anthony Doerr praised the novella, writing, "What Johnson builds from the ashes of Grainier's life is a tender, lonesome and riveting story, an American epic writ small." [13]

Alan Warner, in The Guardian said that it was a book with a "tragic and surreal" denouement and that "Softly and beautifully, this novel asks a profound question of human life: is the cost of human society and so-called civilisation perhaps just too high?" [14] K. Reed Petty, for Electric Literature , said "Train Dreams, luscious with grief, regret, and lowered expectations, is a lesson in end-of-the-frontier humility for a country anticipating apocalypse." [15] In Ploughshares , Jocelyn Lieu said that the novel was "a brilliantly imagined elegy to the lost wilderness of the early 20th-century Idaho Panhandle". [16]

James Wood in The New Yorker rated Train Dreams "a severely lovely tale" and Eileen Battersby of The Irish Times declares that "Johnson's novella, Train Dreams, a daring lament to the American West, is a masterpiece which should have won him the Pulitzer Prize but was short-listed in a year that the jury decided not to award it." [17] [18]

Critical assessment

Style

Critics have widely discerned the influence of 20th Century American novelists in Train Dreams, most strikingly that of Ernest Hemingway, and in particular Johnson's use of the declarative sentence, a hallmark of Hemingway's style. [19] [20]

Literary critic Anthony Wallace praises Johnson's sustained and skillful use of this stylistic device: "Johnson is indeed a very good Hemingway disciple, perhaps even a great one…the true, simple declarative sentence is alive and well here..." [21] Wallace points out that Johnson's use of "free indirect discourse" serves to convey the simple and unaffected quality of his protagonist: "[M]ost of what we know about Grainier on the inside is achieved indirectly, suggestively" in the manner of Hemingway. [22]

Critic James Wood praises Johnson's Hemingwayesque writing: "Johnson often uses an unobtrusive, free indirect style to inhabit the limited horizons of his characters", [23] adding this caveat:

There is a kind of pure, clean American simplicity in prose that is easy to mimic and hard to make. Sometimes, after the beautiful monotonies of Hemingway, one longs to bathe in impurities—to take on the luxuries and rough excesses of a more abundant style. Spareness can be too spare, and a reticent avoidance of sentimentality can itself prove sentimental. Train Dreams...seems at times a bit too close to this tradition, as if the protagonist's lack of inwardness were itself a literary virtue... [24]

Theme

Train Dreams examines the personal repercussions that accompany overwhelming loss in an individual. [25] Literary critic Alan Warner sums up Grainier's fate as follows:

The denouement of Train Dreams is so tragic and surreal that the reader at first denies its grisly approach… it fulfills the book's theme, the collapse of the rational world for a decent man." [26]

Critic Anthony Wallace comments on this key thematic element in the novel:

Grainier's life is a mystery from start to finish, a sort of blank space that he fills in and that we fill in with him. At the core of such fiction is the conviction that our lives will remain essentially mysterious to us—that as human beings we don't know what we are and cannot grasp our own experience. In the character of Robert Granier, though, Johnson seems to be suggesting that we need not understand our own lives in order to live them, enjoy them, fully inhabit them–and also that we might take some comfort in that, if in anything at all." [27]

Footnotes

  1. "Audio Book Review: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, read by Will Patton". Publishers Weekly . November 28, 2011. Retrieved October 13, 2019.
  2. 1 2 Prabhaker, Sumanth (August 25, 2011). "Of Living Obsolete: Denis Johnson's Train Dreams". Slant Magazine . Retrieved October 14, 2019.
  3. 1 2 Johnson, Denis. "Train Dreams". The Paris Review . No. 162 (Summer 2002 ed.).
  4. Wood 2011 : "This novella, a version of which appeared in The Paris Review, in 2002, is indeed simpler and sparer than anything else Johnson has written."
  5. 1 2 "Fiction Book Review: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson". Publishers Weekly . May 9, 2011. Retrieved October 13, 2019.
  6. "Prizes". The Paris Review . Retrieved October 13, 2019.
  7. "Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)". The Pulitzer Prizes . Retrieved October 13, 2019.
  8. Cunningham, Michael (July 9, 2012). "Letter from the Pulitzer Fiction Jury: What Really Happened This Year". The New Yorker . Retrieved October 13, 2019.
  9. English 2019 : "The work was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2011, the year in which no prize was awarded."
  10. Battersby 2015 : "His novella, Train Dreams (2011)...is a masterpiece which should have won him the Pulitzer Prize but was short-listed in a year that the jury decided not to award it."
  11. "Best Sellers: Hardcover Fiction: Sunday, October 9th 2011". The New York Times . October 9, 2011. Retrieved October 14, 2019.
  12. "Train Dreams". Book Marks . Retrieved 14 August 2024.
  13. Doerr, Anthony (September 16, 2011). "Denis Johnson's Tragedy-in-the-Woods Novella". The New York Times Book Review . Retrieved October 13, 2019.
  14. Warner, Alan (September 13, 2012). "Train Dreams by Denis Johnson – review". The Guardian . ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved July 31, 2024.
  15. electricliterature (September 1, 2011). "REVIEW: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson". Electric Literature . Retrieved July 31, 2024.
  16. "Review: Train Dreams". Ploughshares . Retrieved July 31, 2024.
  17. Wood 2011 : "...severely lovely tale..."
  18. Battersby 2015
  19. Wallace 2011 : Wallace identifies Cormac McCarthy , Flannery O'Conner and William Faulkner as influences on Johnson's style in Train Dreams.
  20. Cheuse, Alan (August 25, 2011). "Train Dreams Evokes Frontier Life, Fate And Death". NPR . Retrieved September 12, 2022. The matter-of-factness of the first couple of sentences about the everyday cruelty of the American frontier partakes of the seeming impartiality and declarative truth of a newspaper account.
  21. Wallace 2011
  22. Wallace 2011 : "...the way a good old-fashioned Hemingway disciple would conjure his main character."
  23. Wood 2011
  24. Wood 2011: "The hard, declarative sentences...suddenly flare into lyricism; the natural world of the American West is examined, logged, and frequently transfigured."
  25. English 2019 : "...Surviving great loss is a theme..."
  26. Warner, Alan (September 13, 2012). "Train Dreams by Denis Johnson – review". The Guardian . Retrieved September 8, 2022.
  27. Wallace 2011

Sources

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Franzen</span> American writer (born 1959)

Jonathan Earl Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel The Corrections drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist, earned a James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. His novel Freedom (2010) garnered similar praise and led to an appearance on the cover of Time magazine alongside the headline "Great American Novelist". Franzen's latest novel Crossroads was published in 2021, and is the first in a projected trilogy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Bishop</span> American poet and short-story writer (1911–1979)

Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Dwight Garner argued in 2018 that she was perhaps "the most purely gifted poet of the 20th century". She was also a painter, and her poetry is noted for its careful attention to detail; Ernest Hilbert wrote “Bishop’s poetics is one distinguished by tranquil observation, craft-like accuracy, care for the small things of the world, a miniaturist’s discretion and attention."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Powers</span> American novelist (born 1957)

Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. He has also won many other awards over the course of his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship. As of 2023, Powers has published thirteen novels and has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. He won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Muldoon</span> Irish poet

Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Farrar, Straus and Giroux</span> American book publishing company

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and Nobel Prizes. As of 2016 the publisher is a division of Macmillan, whose parent company is the German publishing conglomerate Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Williams Straus Jr.</span> American publisher (1917–2004)

Roger Williams Straus Jr. was co-founder and chairman of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a New York book publishing company, and member of the Guggenheim family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice McDermott</span> American writer, novelist, essayist (born 1953)

Alice McDermott is an American writer and university professor. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. She was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Wright (poet)</span> American writer; University of Virginia professor

Charles Wright is an American poet. He shared the National Book Award in 1983 for Country Music: Selected Early Poems and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for Black Zodiac. From 2014 to 2015, he served as the 20th Poet Laureate of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Grossman</span> Israeli author (born 1954)

David Grossman is an Israeli author. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denis Johnson</span> American novelist and poet (1949–2017)

Denis Hale Johnson was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet. He is perhaps best known for his debut short story collection, Jesus' Son (1992). His most successful novel, Tree of Smoke (2007), won the National Book Award for Fiction. Johnson was twice shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Altogether, Johnson was the author of nine novels, one novella, two books of short stories, three collections of poetry, two collections of plays, and one book of reportage. His final work, a book of short stories titled The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, was published posthumously in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. K. Williams</span> American poet, critic and translator (1936–2015)

Charles Kenneth "C. K." Williams was an American poet, critic and translator. Williams won many poetry awards. Flesh and Blood won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Repair (1999) won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The Singing won the 2003 National Book Award and Williams received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2005. The 2012 film The Color of Time relates aspects of Williams' life using his poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Berryman</span> American poet and scholar (1914–1972)

John Allyn McAlpin Berryman was an American poet and scholar. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and is considered a key figure in the "confessional" school of poetry. His 77 Dream Songs (1964) won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Jeremiah Sullivan</span> American writer, musician, teacher, and editor

John Jeremiah Sullivan is an American writer, musician, teacher, and editor. He is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, a contributing editor of Harper's Magazine, and the southern editor of The Paris Review. In 2014, he edited TheBest American Essays, a collection in which his work has been featured in previous years. He has also served on the faculty of Columbia University, Sewanee: The University of the South, and other institutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suketu Mehta</span> New York-based author

Suketu Mehta is the New York-based author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award, and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, the Lettre Ulysses Prize, the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award. His autobiographical account of his experiences in Mumbai, Maximum City, was published in 2004. The book, based on two and a half years of research, explores the underbelly of the city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Ross (music critic)</span> American music critic (born 1968)

Alex Ross is an American music critic and author who specializes in classical music. Ross has been a staff member of The New Yorker magazine since 1996. His extensive writings include performance and record reviews, industry updates, cultural commentary, and historical narratives in the realm of classical music. He has written three well-received books: The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007), Listen to This (2011), and Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music (2020).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lydia Davis</span> American novelist (born 1947)

Lydia Davis is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, who often writes short short stories. Davis has produced several new translations of French literary classics, including Swann's Way by Marcel Proust and Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Lerner</span> American writer

Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among many other honors. Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.

Donald Heiney was a sailor and academic as well as a prolific and inventive writer using the pseudonym of MacDonald Harris for fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Phillips</span> American writer and poet (born 1959)

Carl Phillips is an American writer and poet. He is a Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2023, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Giroux</span> American book editor and publisher

Robert Giroux was an American book editor and publisher. Starting his editing career with Harcourt, Brace & Co., he was hired away to work for Roger W. Straus, Jr. at Farrar & Straus in 1955, where he became a partner and, eventually, its chairman. The firm was henceforth known as Farrar, Straus and Giroux, where he was known by his nickname, "Bob".