In the fiction of his that I have read Denis Johnson is such a splendid writer, with such a distinctive voice, that I was curious to read his non-fiction -- more properly, perhaps, his "journalism" -- as contained in SEEK. The pieces are somewhat uneven in quality and effect, but here too Johnson's prose is (often) scintillating -- reason in and of itself to read these pieces though most are now about twenty-five years old.
There are thirteen pieces. The three best report on insane violence and mayhem in Africa -- two on the Civil War in Liberia (circa early 1990s) and the third on Somalia around the time of the withdrawal of United Nations forces (1995). Other subjects include a Rainbow Gathering in the Ochoco National Forest (mid-1990s); the Eagle Mountain Motorcycle Rally near Fort Worth, catering to "Bikers for Jesus"; the search in the Blue Ridge Mountains for the fugitive terrorist bomber Eric Robert Rudolph; and covering the First Gulf War from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
I found all but one of the thirteen pieces interesting to at least some degree. The three about Africa were riveting. But, as mentioned, the real reason to read SEEK is for Johnson's writing. Here is the first paragraph of a report from Kabul, shortly after the Taliban had captured it:
"The dogs hear the jets before they arrive overhead, so you get the dogs barking, the dogs yammering, every dog in the city of Kabul protesting the violence that approaches, then the shock waves of bomb blasts rubbing the windows, then the lights of the antiaircraft--some like red droplets whipped from a wand, others floating up like orange bubbles and bursting into smoky flares, and blinding, winking muzzle-bursts in the hills like a single light racing madly back and forth, and Stinger missiles rising on crimson tracers--all, for the first several seconds, in absolute silence; and then the distant knocking noises and little pops like ice cubes in a drink, no bigger than that, until nearer positions start up loudly enough to knock a person off a chair."
And here is Johnson, known to his two Somalian comrades or escorts as "White Boy" or "Mike from Idaho", looking at the night sky while laying on a mat with those comrades as the three wait for a convoy to leave Mataban, Somalia for the coast: "'We' are me * * * and two Mohameds--Billeh from Mogadishu and the Lion from Lobopar. We're going to Mogadishu with extremely vague notions as to what happens then . . . 'The Lion'--I suppose Billeh's the Tin Man, and we're looking out for the Scarecrow--and naturally I'm Dorothy, and I guarantee you, Africa is as close as you can come to the Land of Oz, or as close as anybody would want to come. In the dark it seems as distant to the horizon as to the sky overhead. No moon tonight, only every star there ever was * * *."
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