Train Dreams by Denis Johnson A short, fabulous book

 Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

A short, fabulous book

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson is a really exciting book, moving at a fast pace with an intriguing hero.

„Hero” is associated with a man or woman that has positive characteristics and in one comprehension it refers to a role model.

Nevertheless, we have a more complex situation here, that we can deduce from the very first pages of the book.

Robert Grainier is involved in an attempted murder of a Chinese man, right from the start, even if we may find attenuating circumstances.

We can say

-              These were the times

-              Prejudices were so deeply ingrained that people could not see the truth because of them

But that is a serious situation and Grainier has found himself in other rather unpleasant, perhaps even immoral situations.

When he was a teenager, he met a vagrant near a river, who was badly hurt and said he was dying very soon

-              Hear what I have to say before I pass away

-              I was killed by this man and you need to tell the sheriff

Robert Grainier never went to the law, but this encounter with extreme poverty, suffering and death has had an impact.

After this meeting, the young man decides to get a job, becomes a serious person and avoids what could have been a wasted life.

The book is impressive with its account of death, hardship endured by the men who work in the woods.

Cutting trees is a difficult job and one cutter has this version whereby a tree is your friend if you let it be, but it is war when you hit with the ax.

Grainier has some terrible experiences that i will not mention here, just in case anybody reads this and then decides to pick up the book, which is unlikely, but why not take into account even that one in a million possibility.

Life in or very near the wild can be very hard, especially when we consider the time frame of this story.

People were even more superstitious near the end of the ninenteenth century, although you find many today believing in ghosts and conspiracies.

Grainier acts reasonably for most of the time, even if he haapens to stumble and actually drive in his cart a man who says that he had been shot by his own dog, on account of the latter hooking up with a she-wolf that is part human, part beast, if I got it right.

That conversation, coupled with the fact that the myth was talked about in the area, made the main character of this book imagine, or see things that are not real, outside his own mind- I guess.

There are some funny moments, like the one where he meets a widow that makes him somewhat ashamed and embarraseed.

The woman thinks that due to the rarity of female presence in those wild parts, any woman is held up as very valuable and that Grainier, with his attitude of not making any extra effort would never find another woman to marry again.

We also meet at a gas station a man who says:

-              I am God

And Robert Grainier thinks there is nothing you can add to that, ecxcept:

-              Then you must know what I am thinking

And indeed, the self-proclaimed god knows that he came for some gasoline for a man that „god”calls the devil.

„...In his time he’d traveled west to within a few dozen miles of the Pacific, though he’d never seen the ocean itself, and as far east as the town of Libby, forty miles inside Montana. .—owned one acre of property, two horses, and a wagon. He’d never been drunk. He’d never purchased a firearm or spoken into a telephone. He’d ridden on trains regularly, many times in automobiles, and once on an aircraft. During the last decade of his life he watched television whenever he was in town. He had no idea who his parents might have been...”