Triumph Over the Grave

Last updated
"Triumph Over the Grave"
Short story by Denis Johnson
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Publication
Published in The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
Publisher Random House
Publication dateJanuary 16, 2018

"Triumph Over the Grave" is a short story by Denis Johnson first appearing in his collection The Largesse of the Sea Maiden published in 2018 by Random House.

Contents

Plot

"Triumph Over the Grave" is a discursive journey composed of vignette-like episodes, perhaps autobiographical or fictional. The unnamed narrator, a writer in his sixties living in San Francisco, recounts the lives - and deaths - of now-deceased friends, literary associates, and mentors.

The story opens with an incident at a restaurant involving a case of mistaken identity: the narrator confuses a red-headed woman for Nan, the spouse of his friend Robert, both of whom live in New York City. A phone call leads to the narrator's discovery that Robert had died suddenly that morning. The news leaves the narrator profoundly shaken.

The narrator, who in his youth led a precarious existence, describes his early efforts to become a successful author. He announces to the reader, "I'll write a story for you right now" which he titles "The Examination of My Right Knee", a tale concerning a failed operation for his trick knee, during which he was hallucinating on LSD.

The critical vignettes of the story relate the narrator's role as a witness to the death struggles of two elderly literary associates: Darcy Miller and "Link" Linkwits. Miller descends into madness— or perhaps enlightenment—as he succumbs to lung cancer. Linkwits, who the narrator had served as a caregiver and personal secretary, is defiant and stoic to the end before dying from cancer. Neither man goes gently into the night.

The story closes with the narrator's report that Nan, Robert's widow, had suddenly passed away after a short illness. The narrator writes: "It doesn't matter. The world keeps turning. It's plain to you that at the time I write this, I'm not dead. But maybe by the time you read it." [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Theme

"Triumph Over the Grave" is a final testament to Johnson's career as a writer, a memoir of his struggles all of which are "linked by the death of friends." [6] [7] Critic David L. Ulin emphasizes the revealing, memoir-like elements of the story:

"Triumph Over the Grave" occupies the center of The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, and not only because it begins in the exact middle of the book. Rather, this is a narrative that—not unlike the collection as a whole—evokes Johnson as he is and as he was: author, teacher, moral being, lost soul adrift in an indifferent universe." [8]

Author Troy Jollimore comments on the relationship between theme and style in the story:

"Triumph Over the Grave" is a reflection on mortality, in which a writer reflects on the lives and, more particularly, the deaths of people he has known. Here, and also in the title story, Johnson's narration moves unpredictably (but never haphazardly) between various plotlines that are united not by conventional standards of causation and chronology but by theme and dream logic. [9]

Jollimore adds that " "Triumph Over the Grave", in essence,...gestures toward the deepest mysteries of our existence on this planet." [10]

Critic Gavin Corbett observes that in "Triumph Over the Grave', the narrator traces over a stream of past events, but here he is literally writing his memories out—what we're reading is his testament to these personally significant episodes, all linked by the deaths of friends." [11]

Johnson provides a striking image of death, symbolized by circling turkey vultures, noted by Corbett:

"The Triumph Over the Grave" contains the collection's most powerful image: approaching the remote country home of a dying fellow writer, our narrator notices an ominous swirl of vultures which, nonetheless, looks "no more substantial than burning pages." [12]

Social commentator Sandy English remarks upon the same passage: "On one visit [to Miller's ranch], there are buzzards in the sky…We hear the 'demoralized lowing of distant cattle' and the narrator says, 'I saw nothing, really … to suggest that anybody cared what went on here or even knew of the existence of this place.' This seems to catch the feeling of many places in America today." [13]

Johnson was dying of liver cancer when he completed his 2018 collection of short fiction, and he closes "Triumph Over the Grave" with this: "The world keeps turning. It plain to you at the time I write this, I'm not dead. But maybe by the time you read it." [14]

Critic Kevin Zambrano observes that "In the story's final lines, the narrator's all-but-explicit evocation of his author takes a startling, haunting turn." [15]

Author David L. Ulin, commenting on the collection that includes "Triumph Over the Grave" writes:

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden [is] inspired less by the impending demise of its creator than by the more general condition of mortality the writer and the reader share. [16]

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Zambrano 2018 : "...discursive..."
  2. ↑ Ulin 2018
  3. ↑ English 2019
  4. ↑ Giraldi 2018 : "In "Triumph Over the Grave," a writer recounts his caregiving of two deathward friends, men 'beaten at last not by life but by the refusal of their dramas to end in anything but this meaningless procedural quicksand."
  5. ↑ Lennon 2018 : "To illustrate that he's a writer ("I'll write a story for you right now"), the narrator tells an anecdote about a strange knee problem..."
  6. ↑ Corbett 2018
  7. ↑ Ulin 2018 : "The conditionality, the sense of language, of narrative, as instruments of both redemption and the impossibility of redemption—these have been among Johnson's most abiding themes all along."
  8. ↑ Ulin 2018
  9. ↑ Jollimore 2018
  10. ↑ Jollimore 2018
  11. ↑ Corbett 2018
  12. ↑ Corbett 2018
  13. ↑ English 2019
  14. ↑ Ulin 2018 : Ulin cites same passage in his essay
  15. ↑ Zambrano 2018
  16. ↑ Ulin 2018

Sources

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shmuel Yosef Agnon</span> Israeli writer and Nobel laureate

Shmuel Yosef Agnon was an Austro-Hungarian-born Israeli novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew literature. In Hebrew, he is known by the acronym Shai Agnon. In English, his works are published under the name S. Y. Agnon.

<i>The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More</i> Collection of short stories by Roald Dahl

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More is a 1977 short story collection by British author Roald Dahl. The seven stories are generally regarded as being aimed at a slightly older audience than many of Dahl's other children's novels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffery Deaver</span> American mystery and crime writer

Jeffery Deaver is an American mystery and crime writer. He has a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a J.D. degree from Fordham University and originally started working as a journalist. He later practiced law before embarking on a career as a novelist. He has been awarded the Steel Dagger and Short Story Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association and the Nero Wolfe Award, and he is a three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader's Award for Best Short Story of the Year and a winner of the British Thumping Good Read Award. His novels have appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including The New York Times, The Times, Italy's Corriere della Sera, The Sydney Morning Herald, and the Los Angeles Times.

"The Aleph" is a short story by the Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. First published in September 1945, it was reprinted in the short story collection The Aleph and Other Stories in 1949, and revised by the author in 1974.

<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.

<i>Winner Take Nothing</i> Book by Ernest Hemingway

Winner Take Nothing is a 1933 collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway's third and final collection of stories, it was published four years after A Farewell to Arms (1929), and a year after his non-fiction book about bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon (1932).

<i>Jesus Son</i> (short story collection) 1992 short story collection by Denis Johnson

Jesus' Son is a collection of short fiction by Denis Johnson published in 1992 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. A short story cycle comprising 11 pieces, Jesus' Son is Johnson's most critically acclaimed and popular literary effort, and the work with which Johnson is most identified. In 1999, it was adapted into a film of the same name by Elizabeth Cuthrell, David Urrutia, and Oren Moverman, directed by Alison Maclean.

Troy Jollimore is a Canadian-American poet, philosopher, literary critic, and academic known for poetic writings.

<i>Train Dreams</i> 2011 novella by Denis Johnson

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

<i>The Largesse of the Sea Maiden</i> 2018 short story collection by Denis Johnson

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden: Stories is a 2018 short story collection by Denis Johnson. It was published posthumously on January 16, 2018, by Random House. It consists of five short stories, three of which were previously published in The New Yorker and Playboy. Johnson finished the collection a few weeks before his death in May 2017.

<i>Resuscitation of a Hanged Man</i> 1991 novel by Denis Johnson

Resuscitation of a Hanged Man is a novel by Denis Johnson published in 1991 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

<i>The Name of the World</i> 2000 novel by Denis Johnson

The Name of the World is a novel by Denis Johnson published in 2000 by HarperCollins.

<i>The Stars at Noon</i> 1986 novel by Denis Johnson

The Stars at Noon is a 1986 novel by Denis Johnson. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf on September 12, 1986. The novel follows an unnamed American woman during the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1984. It was adapted into the 2022 film Stars at Noon, starring Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn.

<i>The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories</i> Short story collection by Susan Hill

The Travelling Bag And Other Ghostly Stories was initially a 2016 collection of four short stories by British author Susan Hill. The 2017 paperback edition included a fifth story, "Printer's Devil Court".

"The Largesse of the Sea Maiden" is a short story by Denis Johnson. The work was first published in The New Yorker in 2014 and appears as the lead story in Johnson's short story collection of the same name, published posthumously by Random House in 2018.

"Car Crash While Hitchhiking" is a work of short fiction by the American writer Denis Johnson based on a real incident in Johnson's life. The story was first published in The Paris Review in 1989 and collected in the 1990 edition of The Best American Short Stories, which was curated by Richard Ford. Later, "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" served as the opening story in Johnson's short story collection Jesus' Son in 1992.

<i>Nobody Move</i> (novel) 2009 novel by Denis Johnson

Nobody Move is a crime novel by Denis Johnson published in 2009 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The novel first appeared as a four-part serial for Playboy magazine in 2008.

<i>The Incognito Lounge and Other Poems</i> Collection of poetry by Denis Johnson

The Incognito Lounge and Other Poems is a collection of lyric poetry by Denis Johnson. Published in 1982 by Random House, the volume was Johnson's fourth book of poems.

The Incognito Lounge is a sonnet by Denis Johnson and first published his collection The Incognito Lounge and Other Poems in 1982 by Random House. The poem has appeared in the Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary Series in 2008.

Leah Hampton is a writer. She writes primarily about Appalachia, class, and climate change. Her debut collection, F*ckface, was named a Best Book of 2020 by Slate, Electric Literature, and PopMatters. She is currently the Environmental Humanities and Creative Writing Fellow in Residence at the University of Idaho’s Confluence Lab. 

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.