Jesus' Son

The majority of the stories in Jesus’ Son feature non-linear narratives. However, beyond just reordering the events of his stories to center around theme rather than chronology, Johnson fully breaks down the line between real-world, linear events, hallucinations, and anticipations. For instance, at the end of “Car Crash While Hitchhiking,” the narrative takes a sharp turn away from the fairly linear story to jump into the future, when F**khead is hallucinating during a detox. The ending lines of the story further demonstrate this breakdown of traditional temporal order, as the story disintegrates even its perspective, moving from a traditional first-person perspective into a direct address to the reader: “Gigantic ferns leaned over us. The forest drifted down a hill. I could hear a creek rushing down among rocks. And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you” (10).

In a traditionally ordered narrative, each event is causally linked: Everything that happens in a piece of fiction is typically the direct consequence of a previous action or event. In Jesus’ Son, many of the stories feature events that are causally disconnected, so a story in this collection can contain many different anecdotes, which, instead of being linked by direct plot events or character actions, are instead linked by the relationships of feeling/emotion and theme. In the story “Work,” for instance, the narrative begins describing F**khead’s chaotic relationship with his girlfriend, before moving to the bar, then to the house they’re stripping of copper, to his friend’s ex-wife, then back to the bar. The ending of “Work,” in which F**khead worships his favorite bartender like she was his mother, doesn’t have any direct relationship with the description of the relationship at the beginning of the story. Rather, the passages at the end are connected by mood—a sad, nostalgic pining—and by the theme of F**khead viewing the women in his life often as mothers or lovers.

The slipperiness of time comes to a distinct head in the story “Out on Bail,” which is about F**khead running into Jack Hotel at The Vine. At first, F**khead believes Jack Hotel to be there during a recess in his trial, but later, the reader finds out that F**khead was mistaken, and Jack Hotel is at the bar because he was acquitted. Just as the character F**khead doesn’t grasp reality due to his substance use disorder, the narrative itself, which F**khead is telling, also doesn’t follow the logical rules of storytelling, instead giving us a rundown of the various characters in the bar and how F**khead feels about them. This method of composition enhances the mindset of someone with substance use disorder, as is the nature of the book: Its construction focuses on how someone like F**khead perceives the world around them.