Blurb

A New York Times Notable Book for 2011
One of The Economist‘s 2011 Books of the Year
One of NPR’s 10 Best Novels of 2011

From the National Book Award-winning author Denis Johnson (Tree of Smoke) comes Train Dreams, an epic in miniature, and one of Johnson’s most evocative works of fiction.

Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West―its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders―this extraordinary novella poignantly captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.

It tells the story of Robert Grainer, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century―an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime.

Review

I’ve been watching Warrior, the Bruce Lee inspired television show about a Chinese immigrant set around 1900. So that Train Dreams starts out with tale of the main character participating in a lynching attempt of a Chinese immigrant “taking our jobs” was a bit of convenient timing.

I’m pretty sure Train Dreams wound up in my list due to BJ Barham, whos should definitely start a book club someday. You listening BJ? Sad Songs, Happy People and Good Books has a ring to it.

Checking in at just 116 pages, this is novella, not novel. But it packs a punch in a short time. While set in the west, it could have just as easily been Appalachian, which I swear is an attitude, not a place. Take Robert Grainer out of the western forest and put him in a Virginia mine and the story doesn’t’ change one lick.

Train Dreams is simply written. Johnson is considered Hemmingway-esque apparently. But I think that is a term thrown at anyone who writes simple but well. It is not flowery prose. It is one declarative sentence after another. Yet, it is still enjoyable. And I think we us pretentious folk enjoy something simple, we must attribute it to something others consider great, aka the Hemmingway style.

But simple fits this story perfectly, because it is about a simple man living a simple life. Not a stupid man, but also not not stupid. Grainer is just a man getting through life in a mostly hermit manner. I’m a largely social creature. I enjoy being around others. But in a world where over simulation is easy to achieve without really trying that hard, a short story about the other way of life is a nice retreat. It is what fiction is suppose to be, after all. An escape into other perspectives.