Train Dreams

At the turn of the 20^th century, day laborer Robert Grainier lays down railroad track to support his wife and infant daughter. When he loses them to a tragic fire, he becomes adrift in the American west, burying himself in back-breaking work and meeting all manner of strange folks while the country changes before him.

Denis Johnson was a poet before he turned to fiction writing, and his work never lets you forget that. At its best, Johnson’s writing is bold, vibrant, and strange, full of powerful, jagged details that create texture and push the emotional envelope. At its worst, it is plotless, puffed-up prose that frustrates and alienates. Fortunately Train Dreams is far closer to the former than the latter.

The 2011 novella (expanded from an earlier short story) is a lean 128 pages, but it is not light reading. Through striking landscape descriptions, Johnson creates a setting – the rugged, merciless Northwest – that casts a long shadow over the proceedings. As mankind works hard to tame it, nature finds a way to fight back: through logging accidents, fires, harsh winters, and more. Johnson also imbues the story with a strong sense of mythology. It begins with an alleged curse cast by an ill-fated Chinese laborer, and it very nearly ends with a feral wolf-child appearing in Grainier’s midst.

Of course, there is more to Train Dreams than mere theatrics. Though Grainier is intentionally drawn as a bit of an everyman, he is not an empty vessel. His past as an orphan and, later, a widower, make him every bit the ideal human counterpart to his unyielding surroundings. And though his life is ultimately a sad one, there is a certain admirable dignity in the way he carries his grief. Incidentally, this makes him the perfect foil for the more outrageous characters (i.e. a man who was shot by his dog).

If there is one aspect of Train Dreams that misses the mark, it is the novella’s structure. The disjointed nature and frequent time skips do evoke a dream-like quality, but they also take us out of the narrative just when we’re starting to become immersed. Further, by skipping over the (SPOILER ALERT) last years of Grainier’s life, Johnson undermines his own protagonist. Plotting has never been the author’s strong suit, and while it isn’t as bad here as it was in prior works, Johnson still struggles to make his evocative set pieces more than the sum of their parts.

Occasional narrative derailment (pun intended) aside, Train Dreams makes for an appropriate late-October read. It will haunt you, in a good way.

8.25/10