Already Dead: A California Gothic - Hardcover

Johnson, Denis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060187379 ISBN 13: 9780060187378

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1997

Synopsis

For three generations Fairchild's family has owned miles of coastal Northern California, a region to whose grandness, he believes, the best people are drawn.
But it's also a land of interminable rains, puzzling droughts, and cloying fog-banks. And some of its fine people have become, in Fairchild's eyes, "isolated minds bending around tightly to feed on themselves." These are his people - the burnouts and mystics, the bikers and surfers, the witches and warlocks.
Into this world comes Carl Van Ness, a man bent on suicide who thinks of himself as "already dead," drifting along the coast until he finds this strange community waiting for him. Then he collides with Nelson Fairchild.
The pacts Fairchild makes - first with criminal associates, later with the would-be suicide, finally with a demon - all have to be paid for. The lengths to which he's willing to go ultimately become the depths to which he must sink before he's ready to confront himself. And his journey leads readers into the labyrinth of Northern California's demimonde.

About this title

From the Publisher

A contemporary noir, Already Dead is the tangled story of Nelson Fairchild Jr., disenfranchised scion to a northern California land fortune. A relentless failure, Nelson has botched nearly every scheme he's attempted to pull off. Now his future lies in a potentially profitable marijuana patch hidden in the lush old-growth redwoods on the family land.

Nelson has some serious problems. His marriage has fallen apart, and he may lose his land, cash and crop in the divorce. What's more, in need of some quick cash, he had foolishly agreed to smuggle $90,000 worth of cocaine through customs for Harry Lally, a major player in a drug syndicate. Chickening out just before bringing the drugs through, he flushed the powder. Now Lally wants him dead, and two goons are hot on his trail. Desperate, terrified and alone, for Nelson, there may be only one way out.

This is Denis Johnson's biggest and most complex book to date, and it perfectly showcases his signature themes of fate, redemption and the unraveling of the fabric of today's society. Already Dead, with its masterful narrative of overlapping and entwined stories, will further fuel the acclaim that surrounds one of today's most fascinating writers.

About the Author

Born in Munich, Germany, gifted poet (Throne of the Third Heaven ) and story-teller (Jesus' Son )Denis Johnson now resides in northern Idaho. Johnson's first work of fiction in five years, Already Dead: A California Gothic , is a complex, darkly comic take on life in America's deeply weird West Coast.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0060187379
• ISBN 13: 9780060187378
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 435