Analysis of 'Work' by Denis Johnson

My new year's resolution was to write more but I decided to wait a month before writing. I started in February instead of January.

Today I am writing about Denis Johnson's story 'Work' from Jesus' Son.

At the beginning of 'Work' the narrator is not in a good place. He has lost his girlfriend after a fight and he is feeling pretty crappy. He goes to a bar called The Vine where he meets an old friend named Wayne. Instead of passing out in a corner as he planned, our narrator accompanies Wayne on a job. The two men drive in a sixty-dollar Chevrolet to a riverbank next to a dozen abandoned houses. The narrator assumes that this is a burglary job but Wayne asserts, "You can't burgulate a forgotten, empty house." The legality of what is taking place is somewhat unclear but we can probably assume that this job is more honest than the work our narrator is used to doing. There are no victims that we can identify except for the house itself which is of course abandoned and forgotten. If the wires in the house were valuable, they would already have been taken.

Later on we learn that the house belonged to Wayne at one point in time. We are left to imagine what must have happened to Wayne to make him desperate enough to tear down the walls of his own house for the copper wires. The narrator vomits because the work is hard. A boat drives by with a naked woman attached by rope to a kite one hundred feet in the air. This woman is Wayne's wife.

The narrator earns $28 for the copper wire he collected. He goes back to The Vine with Wayne who accuses "the biggest, blackest man in Iowa" of cheating at cards. Wayne somehow survives this confrontation without injury. The narrator admits to this being one of the best days of his life. This sentiment felt a bit strange to me at first since this story is not exactly uplifting. The narrator is feeling much better about himself because he is with his buddy Wayne and he feels tired from working. Not to mention the bartender has been generous when pouring drinks.

I'm most impressed by Johnson's writing style in this story. There are many small moments in this story that appeared unimportant at first but seemed more meaningful on a second reading. The main theme that Johnson explores here is the effect of time passing. The narrator is looking into the past as he tells this story with knowledge of what will happen in the future. The Vine will be demolished and the bartender will be beaten by her boyfriend. These are tragic events but the narrator chooses to focus on why this day was meaningful for him. It's important to find moments of happiness when life is tough.

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