Review: "Train Dreams" by Denis Johnson

 

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson Picador, 2012   Johnson’s novella, which was published originally in The Paris Review in 2002, captures the transformative years of the early-20th Century in the Northwest United States. A time when industrialization and technology—telephones, automobiles, electricity, and then television—overran the isolation of the American West. It is told in the form of one Robert Grainier. Grainier, born in 1883, was orphaned as a boy and raised by his aunt and uncle in Idaho’s panhandle. His cousins have differing stories about how his parents died, and even how (or if) he is related to their own family. Robert failed to ask his aunt and uncle his genesis story while they were living and so Grainier, without ever really knowing who he is, makes his way in a changing world. The tale begins in 1917 with Robert caught up in a group of railway workers attempting to kill a Chinese laborer for stealing from the company—an act he regrets all his life. Robert, as his way, then moves on to lumberjacking before acquiring his own rig, a wagon and two horses, for his own freight hauling service. Along the way Robert marries, has a child, but never really stops being alone. Train Dreams is an astonishingly vivid tale about the American West. It is lonely and melancholy, lyrical and realistic. Grainier’s murky ancestral roots, or his lack of predestined identity, is a perfect metaphor for the 18th and early-19th Century West where a man could, at least mythically, disappear and reinvent themselves. Robert’s solitary lifestyle allows him to act as an observer of a changing culture and landscape while giving him an almost immutable place in this world. There is a sad tenderness to Train Dreams, but Robert Grainier’s lonely passage across the pages provides a rich and realistic drama and even brings a little meaning to our own lives. *                *                * One of my goals for 2025 is to expand my leisure reading beyond the genres where I usually spend time. Train Dreams fits nicely in contemporary literature, with an exquisite western flair that will appeal to most male readers. It is the kind of book that reads easily (and that’s a compliment), but can also be read deeply.

Check out Train Dreams at Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.