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‘Someday people are going to read about you in a story or a poem Will you describe yourself for those people?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know I’m a fat piece of shit, I guess’ ‘No I’m serious’ ‘You’re not going to write about me’ ‘Hey, I’m a writer’ ‘Well then, just tell them I’m overweight’ ‘He’s overweight’ ‘I been shot twice’ ‘Twice?’ ‘Once by each wife, for a total of three bullets, making four holes, three ins and one out’ ‘And you’re still alive’ ‘Are you going to change any of this for your poem?’ ‘No It’s going in word for word’   (‘Steady Hands at Seattle General’ in Jesus’ Son)   Not all Denis Johnson’s narrators face the reader quite so directly, but the thrust and position here are broadly characteristic Entire novels have failed where the barest of his skits succeed in bringing people and their stories to life Raw is what you might use to describe dead meat; this stuff is alive But what would you call his kind of writing?   As a writer, Johnson is where the critics aren’t This is a reason I love him, but also why he’s difficult to discuss Reading the plaudits on his books is surreal, like looking down the wrong end of the telescope – all those adjectives twinkling at irrelevant distance The acclaim is in stark contrast with what lies between the covers: prose unlike any lens, of a sensory and psychological keenness beyond such critical gloss But trying to write about him without recourse to abstract praise is harder, and risks overstating the obvious or descending into mystical adulation I wind up with what the American painter Philip Guston said about his favourite Old Master: ‘in Rembrandt the plane of art is removed It is not a painting, but a real person – a substitute, a golem’   Denis Johnson’s career, at least, can be parsed with some measure An American with an international upbringing, he published his first poetry collection at the age of 19 in 1969, and