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Car Crash While Hitchhiking
by Denis Johnson, from his story collection Jesus’ Son (1992)

Read the rest of it.

Maybe it was the faint smell of burning flesh, but after our laser appointment at the dermatologist we had to find a copy of Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson.

We’d been looking for the book for years but had never seen it. Come to think of it, we’d never read Denis Johnson, he was read to us by famous writers who admired him. (Listen to Tobias Wolff reading Emergency and Salvatore Sciabona reading Two Men.)

So we walked to the bookstore, tiny red spots all over our face like we’d been attacked by a light saber-wielding smurf, and there was Jesus’ Son on the shelf in a skinny British reissue. On newsprint like Soviet toilet paper. We read the first two stories in the taxi queue. They’re amazing.