Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

One of the benefits of being in an MFA in Creative Writing program is that I’ve been exposed to authors I probably wouldn’t have chosen to read on my own. Denis Johnson is one of them. We’ve probably all known people who talk very little and seem to live quiet, uneventful, even dull lives. They’re easy to dismiss unless we step back and consider the times they’ve lived through. Robert Grainier, the story’s protagonist is such a man. Grainier doesn’t say much but he’s introspective, loves his wife and child deeply, and weathers the tragedy and change that befalls him with the kind of steadiness that my people refer to as being ‘salt of the earth’. Johnson’s writing is tight and vivid in a way that gives the reader the defining details of Grainier’s life and the essence of his character and mirrors the take-life-as-it-happens attitude of those people whose quiet exteriors belie the depth of their lives.

From the cover blurb of Train Dreams:

“Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams is an epic in miniature, one of his most evocative and poignant fictions. It is the story of Robert Grainier, 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. Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West, this novella by the National Book Award–winning author of Tree of Smoke captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.”