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Jonathan Gibbs

Jonathan Gibbs was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize 2013. He has since published a novel, Randall or the Painted Grape (Galley Beggar Press).



Articles Available Online


Jessie Greengrass’s ‘Sight’

Book Review

February 2018

Jonathan Gibbs

Book Review

February 2018

Jessie Greengrass’s debut story collection caught my eye with its delightfully extravagant title, An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to...

feature

May 2016

Cinema on the Page

Jonathan Gibbs

feature

May 2016

Film is a bully. It wants to make its viewers feel, and it has the tools to do so....

‘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

Contributor

August 2014

Jonathan Gibbs

Contributor

August 2014

Jonathan Gibbs was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize 2013. He has since published a novel, Randall or...

The Story I'm Thinking Of

fiction

April 2013

Jonathan Gibbs

fiction

April 2013

There were seven of us sat around the table. Seven grown adults, sat around the table. It was late. We had eaten, and we had...

READ NEXT

fiction

May 2016

See Inside for Holiday Special

Joanna Quinn

fiction

May 2016

We are not tourists. We are journalists. We fly out from Heathrow, Bristol, Glasgow and Newcastle to foreign airports...

poetry

September 2011

The Cinematographer, a 42-year-old man named Miyagawa, aimed his camera directly at the sun, which at first probably seemed like a bad idea

Michael Earl Craig

poetry

September 2011

Last night Kurosawa’s woodcutter strode through the forest, his axe on his shoulder. Intense sunlight stabbed and sparkled and...

fiction

June 2017

Turksib

Lutz Seiler

TR. Alexander Booth

fiction

June 2017

The jolts of the tracks were stronger now and came at irregular intervals. With my arms outstretched, I held...

 

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