are from Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son:

No more pretending for him! He was completely and openly a mess. Meanwhile the rest of us go on trying to fool each other. (140)

and:

The Vine had no jukebox, but a real stereo continually playing tunes of alcoholic self-pity and sentimental divorce. "Nurse," I sobbed. She poured doubles like an angel, right up to the lip of a cocktail glass, no measuring. "You have a lovely pitching arm." You had to go down to them like a hummingbird over a blossom. I saw her much later, not too many years ago, and when I smiled she seemed to believe I was making advances. But it was only that I remembered. I'll never forget you. Your husband will beat you with an extension cord and the bus will pull away leaving you standing there in tears, but you were my mother. (66)

I have to admit that on more than one occasion while reading this book I asked myself, "Why, again, does everyone love this book so much?" But then, time after time, I'd get to the end of a story (the second paragraph above ends the story "Work," for instance) and my heart would be in my bowels and I'd have to fish it out, thinking, "What the fuck did he just do to me? How can I be more like him?" Him being Denis Johnson, of course. I don't envy Fuckhead in the least.

What Johnson does best in JS, I think, is to interrupt what are already compelling descriptions of places (The Vine), people (redhead naked, we know she is flying), happenings (the bunnies squashed all around in Fuckhead's shirt), etc. with tenderly morbid thoughts that seem connected to the story only in that they are undeniably resonant, and so is the rest of the story--sort of like the quotes above. He's able to zoom so far out from the narrative in such a small amount of space, but in a way that also allows him to come right back to that narrative. It's not unlike what Rebecca Curtis does at the end of many stories in Twenty Grand, but Johnson often does this within the stories in Jesus’ Son, so we get a lot of little gifts along the way, not just one big payoff at the end (not to diminish Curtis’ achievements).

There's also the whole thing narrative-as-memory-mash-up thing going on. Like, halfway through the story "Emergency," after several pages of describing a drive-theater that Fuckhead mistakes for a graveyard with angels rising out of it, we get the sentence, "Or maybe that wasn't the time it snowed" (84). Through this device, Johnson (1) allows us to experience several narratives somewhat simultaneously, like what might happen if we cracked open Fuckhead's brain, and (2) tricks us into thinking he is advancing 'plot' so we are perhaps more accepting of the sentences, when what he is really doing is building character. (I don't know why (or if I really do) I think readers are less patient with sentences that develop character as opposed to ones that 'advance plot'-- I guess I'm just thinking of the whole 'page-turner' phenomenon. I don't think I, or most of my literaphilic friends favor either of these types. Maybe 'mainstream' readers do.)

I think that is all I will say about that.