Johnson's is a universe governed by addiction, malevolence, faith and uncertainty.' Reviewing the book for The New York Times, James McManus noted that 'Mr. I mean that he couldn't tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn't tell him what was real.'

'I don't mean that we all end up dead, that's not the great pity. I knew that, but he didn't, and therefore I looked down into great pity upon a person's life on this earth,' Johnson writes. In the story 'Car Crash While Hitchhiking,' the narrator looks upon an accident victim, a bloodied man taking his final breaths. But, as related by a recovering addict with an unprintable name (his initials were F.H.), the stories had an underlying sense of connection, possibility and unknown worlds. Much of 'Jesus' Son' tells of crime, violence, substance abuse and the worst of luck. The title was taken from the Velvet Underground song 'Heroin,' the stories were sometimes likened to William Burroughs' 'Naked Lunch' and the experiences were drawn in part from Johnson's own struggles with addiction. Many remember him for 'Jesus' Son,' which in hazed but undeniable detail chronicled the lives of various drug addicts adrift in America. He won the National Book Award in 2007 for his Vietnam War novel 'Tree of Smoke' and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for 'Tree of Smoke,' and, in 2012, for his novella 'Train Dreams.' His other works include the novel 'Laughing Monsters' and 'Angels,' the poetry collection 'The Veil' and the play 'Hellhound On My Trail.' The story collection 'The Largess of the Sea Maiden,' his first since 'Jesus' Son,' is scheduled to come out January from the Penguin Random House imprint Dial Press. Johnson's honesty, humor and vulnerability were intensely admired by readers, critics and fellow writers, some of whom mourned him on Twitter. 'He wrote prose with the imaginative concentration and empathy of the poet he was.' 'Denis was one of the great writers of his generation,' Jonathan Galassi, president and publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, said in a statement Friday. Johnson died of liver cancer at his home in The Sea Ranch, outside of Gualala, California. Johnson died Wednesday, according to his literary agent, Nicole Aragi. Denis Johnson, the prize-winning fiction writer, poet and playwright best known for his surreal and transcendent story collection 'Jesus' Son,' has died at age 67.

Jesus son denis