I really want to appreciate Denis Johnson. After hearing glowing and jubilant reviews about his works, such as "Jesus' Son" and his later novel "Tree of Smoke", I felt tempted to read one of his ambitious works before tackling the lengthy Vietnam War opus "Tree of Smoke".
To me, "Already Dead" read and felt like a blur to me.
On the positive side, the prose that Johnson uses is stellar throughout. Seemingly every sentence that he writes and pieces together flows with melodic precision, one of my favorite lines being: "The sunset tossing the headstones up out of black shadows, and the green graves of all the dead strangers." (pg. 210) During my reading, I got the feeling that the story read poetically throughout. I also found it interesting that the book switches between first and third person throughout several points, especially in mid-chapter. I managed to find a lot of insightful themes during my reading, such as the concept of Van Ness' being 'already dead' in a sense.
What I found flawed about "Already Dead" was that... prose was the only factor that seemed to be there. As beautiful as his prose is, and will always be, I feel that there did not seem to be much storytelling or... flow of storytelling going on as well. Or if there was, I felt it was not only hard to follow (You're welcome to agree or disagree with me on my view), but not enough attention is paid to the story.
And then comes my critical view of the prose... that's all there was in this piece. The prose also managed to make my reading of "Already Dead" a lot slower. As much as I love detail and beautifully written sentences when I read... there comes a point where I say in my head to the author, "Okay. We get it." That is what happened to me when I got halfway through the story.
To those who are interested in checking out Denis Johnson's works, I'd say start with his earlier works, such as the aforementioned "Jesus' Son" and one of his earlier short stories, titled "Emergency".
If you like prose done poetically and beautifully, give "Already Dead" a checkout at your local library. You can give this piece a purchase, but prepare to treat yourself through a 400+-page anthem reeking of prose... and trust me, it will drag on if you're not prepared to stick with it.