Nobody Move

by Denis Johnson

From the National Book Award–winning, bestselling author of Tree of Smoke comes a provocative thriller set in the American West. Nobody Move, which first appeared in the pages of Playboy, is the story of an assortment of lowlifes in Bakersfield, California, and their cat-and-mouse game over $2.3 million. Touched by echoes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, Nobody Move is at once an homage to and a variation on literary form. It salutes one of our most enduring and popular genres—the American crime novel—but with a grisly humor and outrageousness that are Denis Johnson’s own. Sexy, suspenseful, and above all entertaining, Nobody Move shows one of our greatest novelists at his versatile best.

Genres: Fiction, Crime, Noir, Mystery, Novels, Thriller, Audiobook

196 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Poet, playwright and author Denis Johnson was born in Munich, West Germany, in 1949 and was raised in Tokyo, Manila and Washington. He earned a masters' degree from the University of Iowa and received many awards for his work, including a Lannan Fellowship in Fiction (1993), a Whiting Writer's Award (1986), the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from the Paris Review for Train Dreams, and most recently, the National Book Award for Fiction (2007).

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a spare, well-crafted crime novel with great laconic dialogue, believably seedy characters, and a satisfying--although far from pat--resolution.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so I'll take back my fifteen-year-old pronouncement based on nothing but adolescent prejudice, and finally admit it: Denis Johnson is a really good writer. I wish I could write like Denis Johnson, unless that'd mean I'd also have to dress like Denis Johnson, and start going around in the off-channel-quickly-canceled-nineties-cop-show style purple blazer he's wearing in his author's photo. In that case I guess I'll just go on writing like me, and live with the depressing and thoroughly unexciting consequences of this.

I really enjoyed this book! I don't see how anyone who doesn't like any crime fiction at least a little bit wouldn't. It made me think of that trend over the past few years in trendy upscale restaurants, of presenting lowbrow American classics in somewhat gussied-up forms. You know, like White Castle-style Sliders but with free-range Niman Ranch beef, or S'mores made with organic chocolate and home-baked graham crackers and locally-grown marshmallows.... you know? Nobody Move was free-range, Farmers' Market Elmore Leonard, which is not at all to say Johnson's a better writer than Leonard, just that this felt like it cost a lot more per plate.

Or per word, which it did, and that brings me to the problem: PORTION SIZE, DENIS! I know short can be sweet and that size shouldn't matter, but if I'd paid the $23 for this advertised "novel" instead of getting it from the library, I would've been pissed. I would've felt like I'd just been cut out of my portion of an embezzled $2.3 million, and hopped in my distinctive automobile to embark on a mad and ruthless quest for revenge.... I started the book this morning on my commute to work, and I finished it before I reached my station on the way home this evening. Okay, so to be fair I did a good amount of traveling around at work on the train today, but still. This is the personal preference of a helpless blabbermouth who obviously believes that more is more despite evidence against it, but I didn't feel I spent quite enough time with these characters to get to know them how I wanted to, which is sort of a compliment.

Anyway, despite all my whining, I did think this was great. I wouldn't pay for it, though. Borrow this from the library, and bring an extra book along in case you finish so you don't get stranded. Have you ever gone out to a fancy restaurant then stopped by the Dairy Queen for a Blizzard later because you were still hungry? That might happen here. Still, it tastes terrific while you're eating, and I do recommend it.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Denis Johnson has always been comfortable with criminals, down-and-outers, outsiders, drug addicts, but this book is his first explicitly noir crime novel. It reminds me of the single books that other fiction writers have written, such as Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice or Robert Bolano's Savage Detectives, a chance to be Dashiell Hammett. This is one of those books with no redeeming characters, and is mostly neo-noir tough guy dialogue. The plot is not the point. The point is seedy atmosphere.

Nobody Move is what criminals say when they want to rob a bank, but the main guy here is always on the move, shot in the leg, accompanied by a woman, faced with equally determined killers. If the plot is thin, okay, but the dialogue is great, and there's a dark sense of noir humor running through it that
appreciate, not the same sense of humor and more brutal than Hammett and Chandler, but still fun, and well done.

[Kemper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two word review: Very meh.

Unexpected side effect during or after reading: Urge to read a better crime novel.

New thing I learned from reading this book: Singers in barber shop quartets may not be as wholesome as they seem.

General observations: The jacket notes on this book gave me heartburn right off the bat:

"Touched by echoes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, Nobody Move is at once an homage to and a variation on literary form. It salutes one of our most enduring and popular genres—the American crime novel—but does so with a grisly humor and outrageousness that are Denis Johnson’s own."

In other words, Denis Johnson is a National Book Award winner and would never lower himself to writing a crime novel. But if he does an homage, that's cool.

Frankly, he should stick to the serious 'liter-a-ture'. Because this isn't that great. It starts off with a lot of promise and some great characters, but I didn't get 'echoes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett'. To me, it read like Johnson was flipping channels one day, caught a rerun of Pulp Fiction or maybe Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead, and decided he could throw together a couple of hundred pages like that and call it an homage.

I had a lot more fun and got more satisfaction out of reading recent Hard Case Crime novels by writers who didn't act like they were slumming.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been a big fan of Denis Johnson ever since being blown away by his short story collection Jesus' Son, and have been impressed with some of his other novels too, but this run-of-the-mill crime novel is seriously lacking in what makes him great. It's not a bad novel, and is really dialogue-heavy, but it feels like I've come across the same formula a million times before - whether that be TV, film or book - and this doesn't add anything new to the mix.

There is a large sum of money involved.
There are gangsters, lowlifes, and those cheep motels that have neon sings that flicker because they don't work properly.
We have a kind of anti-hero, and a sort of Femme fatale.
It takes a lot from the hardboiled noir of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain to name two.

It was a quick and easy read that I blitzed through in under a day, and thought the best thing about it was less about the characters - although they are presented well enough, and more about Johnson's descriptions of the bars, the booze, the small town streets, the motels, and the drugstores, which really captured a certain mood. For fans of modern day noir crime fiction it does tick the right boxes, but just don't expect to be blown away, because it's certainly nothing special.

[D. Pow · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a damn good read. It combines the cheap thrills and casual violence of a typical noir with the perfectly crafted sentences and deft-characterization found in a literary novel. The book is brief, maybe too brief(my ARC copy was 195 pages set in giant type with massive swathes of blank bordering) but maybe that’s a good thing after Johnson’s most recent door stop of a novel `Tree of Smoke’, a massive, tedious lunge at the great American Novel, that to me, failed miserably. `Nobody Moves’ is tight, concise and is not weighted down with the heavy freight of `Serious Literature’(say it with me now in a stuffy Boston Brahmin accent-think of John Houseman in ‘The Paper Chase’) that `Smoke’ labored under. And while the new book is a light entertainment it also is saturated with off-handedly brilliant prose, characters that come alive with a few deft strokes and the sort of action-packed plotting and explosive dénouement that less talented thriller writers would give up their collective left nuts for. Highly recommended.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic. Originally written on deadline for Playboy, Nobody Moves reads like a strong pairing of Cormac McCarthy with Jim Thompson. It doesn’t matter if you like your novels literary or hard-boiled, everybody eats well here.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

If this was written by Graham Greene it would have been subtitled an “entertainment”. Johnson has used noir tropes before but never purely for the purpose of creating this much malicious fun. A black humored noir with outrageously great dialogue and little of Johnson’s druggy weirdness, deep rooted melancholy and poetic overload (though much of the writing is still beautiful). Fans of the Coen Brothers, and McCarthy and Pynchon recent decisions to write full throttled noir ( I wish more literary heavyweights would change it up like this, other examples are Stone’s Dog Soldiers, Delillo’s Running Dog, Faulkner’s Sanctuary, and off course Greene.) should eat this up. You can read it in an afternoon.

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bakerfield, California. Jimmy Luntz works for Gambol who in turn works for Juarez. Luntz loves a beautiful alcoholic Indian girl called Anita Desilvera. They are all petty thieves. One time, they got a big haul from a bank: $2.5M. This book is about greed and who should get how much. Of course, there has to be someone to chase them so here comes Mary the army medic who has been hunting for Gambol since time immemorial.

Notice the names: Jimmy is the main protagonist and Jimmy is a "common name." The villains have Mexican names. The army medic chasing the bad guys has an American name. I don't want to nitpick but this stereotyping is just too predictable.

Denis Johnson won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2007 for Tree of Smoke (3 stars). That book was also one of the Pulitzer finalists for that year. I liked that book so I picked up this one.

I am not really disappointed. The clipped gritty dialogues that I liked in his Tree of Smoke are also here. You know, for almost a month now, I am into completing all the available (I am in Manila so this is a challenge) books by Truman Capote. So, all this gayish (but fun, don't get me wrong) language is now a normal reading fare. The most disturbing so far is when he said in his Answered Prayers this line: "Your mouthwatering dick..." Huh? I was like, how can a dick be mouthwatering? So, reading this manly book by Johnson was like a good break from reading Capote and it helped me (for a while since I am still into that Capote quest) to bring back to my senses. The book is peppered with "Fuck!" or its longer version "Fuck, if I know!" that was also there in his award-winning Tree. All the while, Johnson was cleansing my funny thoughts about Capote until I got to this another disturbing line. This time courtesy of Johnson: "I will cut your balls and if you die, it is your own decision." Huh?

It's funny how male novelists can make use of their own genitalia to spice up what I thought would have otherwise been boring works. Maybe because Answered Prayers was first serialized in Esquire and Nobody Move in Playboy and both of them are male magazines?

It's different in Anne Enright's case though.

[Kuszma · Rating 4 out of 5]

"- Nem mondtam, hogy kinyírlak - magyarázta Juarez. - Csak levágom a golyóidat. Ha belehalsz, az a te személyes döntésed."

Két ember, akit csak az köt össze, hogy parádésan el van baszva a napjuk. Meg még pár ember, akik mindent megtesznek azért, hogy még jobban el legyen baszva a napjuk. Vérbeli noir a vidéki Amerikából, a motelek és benzinkutak provinciális világából, ahol az államügyészek korruptak, a bandavezéreket meg minimum Juareznek hívják, és az adósaik heregolyóit eszik reggelire. No most tény, hogy a főszereplők finoman szólva is a moralitás szürke zónájában bóklásznak (eufemizmussal élve: esendő emberek) - csak azért tudunk szorítani nekik, mert ellenfeleikkel összevetve mégiscsak jámbor báránykának tűnnek. Csak hát hogy, hogy nem, addig simliskedtek, amíg egy ragacsos hálóban találták magukat, és most nagyon kell kapálózniuk, hogy kiszabaduljanak onnan. Ha lehet, az összes létfontosságú szervük birtokában.

Szerintem ez egy alulértékelt regény. Pedig jó vibe-ja van, kellemesen szikár és kaotikus, pont mint az a bizonytalan, veszélyes világ, amiben a szereplők - főleg saját rossz döntéseik folyományakért - boldogulni kénytelenek.

[Jason Pettus · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

As heavy readers know, it's common for authors of big, giant, important, award-winning tomes to follow them up with something light and short, for a variety of reasons: as a literary 'cleanser,' to avoid burnout as a writer, to pre-deflate high audience expectations. But this turns out to be a real hit-and-miss proposition, also as heavy readers know; because sometimes you end up with, say, Michael Chabon's delightful genre experiment Gentlemen of the Road (his follow-up to the supposedly astounding Yiddish Policemen's Union, which believe it or not I still haven't gotten a chance to read), but then sometimes you end up with a book like Jonathan Lethem's truly dreadful You Don't Love Me Yet (his follow-up of sorts [there was a book of essays in between:] to the also supposedly astounding Fortress of Solitude, which I also still haven't gotten a chance yet to read).

And now we have our latest example to judge, Denis Johnson's short pulp-fiction exercise Nobody Move (originally published serially last year in Playboy), his first book since the mindblowing 2007 National Book Award winning Tree of Smoke (which I've also reviewed here in the past, and whoo man what a phenomenal freaking book that is). And how is Nobody Move? Well, in a cliched nutshell: He shoots, he scores! And that's because Johnson does here what Chabon did as well, but Lethem simply did not -- he takes the light cleanser project just as seriously as he did the giant important award-winning one, even with them designed from the start to serve two very different purposes, honoring those intentions and taking a lot of care to get the details right. For example, just like most pulp projects, Johnson's novel is a look at a series of petty criminals and lowlife losers (in this case centered around the central California town of Bakersfield), which of course was one of the big things to originally differentiate the genre from the lurid crime tales of the Victorian Age that came right before it; that instead of featuring criminal masterminds or fiendish supervillains, the characters in pulp tales live out on the edges of society, too stupid and cowardly to go for the big score but rather sticking to the petty schemes they know definitively to work, trying to get away with them as long as possible without getting caught, while nonetheless always dreaming of the day their ship finally comes in.

In this case, for example, there is the weasely schlub Jimmy Luntz, the closest thing we have to an 'antihero' if any of them can be called that; then there's the aging enforcer Gambol, who spends the book chasing Luntz after getting shot in the leg by him in the first five pages; there is Anita, the unusually attractive Native American alcoholic who has just gotten busted embezzling several million dollars from the company she works for (in actuality a frame-up by her ex-husband, plus the crooked judge who granted him a divorce), who drunkenly hooks up with Luntz while both are on the run; there is Juarez, Gambol's boss who Luntz screwed over not too long ago (hence Gambol being on his trail), a Middle Easterner who tells everyone he's Hispanic and who dresses like a gangsta rapper; and then there's Mary, a former army medic dispatched at the beginning of the story to go find Gambol and quietly patch him up, who just happens to be Juarez's ex-wife and who just happens to now hate him but needs his money. And then the thing that brings them all together is not much more than a MacGuffin, and not actually very important to the story at all (you know, like the glowing briefcase in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction), with the point instead to spend 200 pages watching these people all chase each other around, while spouting unbelievably great lines of dialogue at each other.

Because that of course is one of the most well-known things about Johnson's writing style, what generates so many admirers but what you need to look out for as well; that if you're not already a fan of people like David Mamet, who attempt to boil stories down to the absolute minimum amount of words needed to make their point, you need to stay the hell away from Johnson no matter how much your friends keep recommending him, or else suffer a fit of self-righteous eye-rolling so bad that it will threaten to induce a seizure. And in fact Johnson delivers not only his usual brilliant yet controversial clipped dialogue here in Nobody Move, but even sometimes very cleverly skips over big sections of action-text when he thinks the audience doesn't need it; to cite one infamous example that I've already mentioned, how the opening scene of the book is of Gambol and Luntz riding in a car together, Gambol telling Luntz not to mess with the shotgun he's accidentally discovered in the back seat, while in the very next paragraph Gambol is now laying in the desert with a bullet in his leg, with it only then that we learn that he had been taking Luntz out somewhere desolated in order to do him some kind of unspecified harm.

This is why fans of the genre love pulp fiction, after all, because it's storytelling taken to its most terse, rat-a-tat extreme; a meaty yet bare-boned way of telling a tale, like watching a couple of scrawny yet professional lightweight boxers duke it out, a chance to admire the literary arts at its most stripped-down and essential. And this is certainly the case with Nobody Move, with a series of developments that I won't divulge any more of but let's just say are always unexpected, funny and horrifying at the same time just like pulp fiction should be, held together with sparkling gritty dialogue and just the general scuminess of the entire milieu. And I don't have a lot more to say about it, actually, because frankly there isn't a lot more to say about it -- when all is said and done, it is nothing more than a genre tale, never once straying from the well-known tropes that define pulp fiction, which is why it's getting an above-average but not spectacular score today; yet is pulled off almost perfectly, which is why it gets a boost in its rating specifically for those who are existing fans of, say, Raymond Chandler. If you're the kind of person who likes reading only one or two pulp tales a year, this should be one of them; and of course for those who like the genre more than that, this title is absolutely not to be missed.

Out of 10: 9.2, or 9.9 for lovers of pulp fiction

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Original review: If I was grading this on the scale that I apply to a lot of books, I might give it something closer to a three. But the thing is, I don't think there's an easy way to have a scale that applies to all books. I'm sure some people do. They have their criteria and they work from that, and maybe for all intents and purposes, that suits them just fine. For me, I'll admit, there's plenty that goes into that star rating up there, even if it seems that all I ever do is rate books a four - but ultimately, it's a gut feeling. There are a lot of fours for me in this world - books that I love and enjoy but that I'm hesitant to call perfect - but I enjoy and love a lot of books, even still. I'll be the first to admit that I'm fairly easy to please.

Nobody Move is a fairly straight-forward caper about a man and woman who cross paths and are - perhaps not so coincidentally - both in a tight spot with varying types of law and/or its enforcement, as it were. There's not a ton here that you're going to be able to analyze or that's going to strike on an emotional fault and render you incapable of human interaction for a time. That's just not this book, and for me those are the kinds of books that tend to get the higher ratings.

And yet...

Johnson has this way of giving you little threads to yank at, to see if the tapestry comes undone to reveal something else hidden behind it. While the funny part about Nobody Move is that, despite the title, everyone is pretty much constantly in motion, much of the story takes place around a river that has this River Styx boundary between life and death thing going on, and much like the characters, you're drawn to that river, to know what it looks like, to see its color and its depth.

Nobody Move is filled with details that, like that river, set it apart from stories that might otherwise feel similar. Gay criminals, a mobster whose display of power is to chop off a guy's balls and eat them. It's weird, dark, and funny in a way that makes me want to see a film version of this as directed by Quentin Tarantino. Seriously, Johnson's agent, please pitch this. It'd be perfect.

I haven't read a lot of noir - though I'd like to - so I can't say how it stacks up to the standards or classics of the genre, but I can say that, as compared to Train Dreams , it's clear that Johnson can write in whatever the hell kind of way he wishes. Where Train Dreams was light and ethereal, Nobody Moves is gritty and harsh. One thing both have in common is Johnson's dark humor, which thus far hits that perfect spot of making you feel bad for laughing, and yet, not too bad.

Mostly, Nobody Move is fun, and at the time, I needed a fun read. I've read a lot of books I've enjoyed lately, but nothing that was fun in the way that I wanted, hoped, or needed it to be. This is a quick and dirty job for when you've got a plane ride or an afternoon to kill and you're procrastinating on reading your book club book for the month, or cleaning your house, or whatever else it is you might be not totally dedicated to doing at that exact moment.

Nobody makes me feel the way Steinbeck does, but the best thing I can say for what I've read of Johnson thus far is that he comes close to that place, where a circle and an arrow has been drawn on all of humanity's flaws and it makes us feel both worse but also better for them, somehow. He just doesn't quite hit that emotional depth, or at least, he hasn't for me, yet. But it's there, even if it's not as potent. If the rest of it wasn't enough (though it probably would be), for that alone, I'll look for more by him.

-------

Second read review:

I was a bit nervous going into the second read on Nobody Move, because suspenseful reads can sometimes take a huge hit on another go 'round when you already know what's coming.

What struck me on my second go through, however, was how truly wonderful all of the characters are, and how happy I was to be spending time with them again. Johnson has done an incredible job of creating people that both feel completely plausible but also a little more unique and interesting than the average Joe Schmo. He also does a credit to the phrase "easy to read" in that this book is proof that that doesn't have to be a derogatory term to mean "bad" or "simple" - there's depths and layers to Nobody Move without reading it feeling like a chore or a drag at any time, an impressive feat the more I think about it.

I'll be curious to hear with the others in my book group think of it, but personally I fell in love with this book all over again, and can see this being a book that I'll continue to reread for the pure, indulgent pleasure of it. I also really hope that someone makes a movie out of it. It'd be such a great film in the right hands.

[Allan MacDonell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’d seen Nobody Move—a palate-cleansing trifle (relatively speaking) from Denis Johnson—on bookstore shelves for around four years, and I consumed its 196 pages within half a day. The dark noir novel caters to an appetite for violence of the bloody style committed with caustic verbal flair in a skeeve-screw-skeeve kind of world. Nobody Move won’t strike the chords of existential dread ringing out from Angels; its environment is not the deeply rendered and disturbed alternative Eden of Already Dead or the cosmos of confusion navigated in Resuscitation of a Hanged Man. The book won’t induce Tree of Smoke’s epic historical hangover or Jesus’ Son’s aftereffect of mournful nostalgia, to name a few of my favorite Denis Johnson things. But before this quick book is closed for good, Nobody Move scrambles with the effervescent pleasure of a delight that is gone almost as soon as you taste it, a literary amuse-bouche that only a dope would spit out or criticize on grounds of insufficient calories.

[Andy Weston · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has a very powerful opening chapter and continues to be action-packed and thrilling throughout. Johnson's novel concerns Jimmy Luntz, and is as fine an example of American noir as I can think of, it has those key ingredients, seedy motel rooms, action on and off the freeways, and the slang dialogue. You are never sure who to empathise with, if anyone. Just as you start to warm to Jimmy he does something that makes you think the opposite. The other key characters, Juarez (who Jimmy owes money to), Gambol (who is hunting him), Mary, and Anita (who teams up with Jimmy), are wonderfully well described.

Johnson is a master of including that bit of humour into his writing, yet managing to keep it so dark. I think that skill is the one that wins in the end, the one that makes Nobody Move stand out in its genre.

Train Dreams stands apart from me as a Johnson novel. It is by far his best, yet can't be compared to something like this as they are so different. This is the best noir novel I have read by him, but luckily for me, I still have a few, including Tree of Smoke, to go.

[Edward Rathke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's the thing about Denis Johnson:

I don't love any single book he's written but I really love him as a writer. He's super versatile and does all kinds of styles and genres, but none of his attempts--that I've read yet--has been the kind of book that I can't imagine living without. Of course, I'd also recommend every single book I've read by him, and this is no exception.

It's hilarious, it's violent, it's complex, it's seductive, it's mysterious, and it's just fun. Johnson's take on noir is pretty interesting and reminds me of Takeshi Kitano (Sonatine) mixed with Martin McDonagh (Seven Psychopaths).

But, yeah, I liked it. Definitely worth checking out.

Also, the last three Johnson books I've gone through have been as audiobooks, and they've all been narrated by the same guy. I just think it's worth mentioning that he's an awesome and versatile narrator.

[Kirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, quick, dirty---but don't mistake that for good or compelling. You definitely get a sense of Johnson slumming here. Well, maybe not slumming. How about channeling. Channeling testosterone. There's so much of it flowing through this noir diversion my back hair thickened before page 30. Because real men eat each other's testicles for lunch, see. They blow each other's melons open. The simple social graces are opportunities to cock-woggle. Ask a dude his name and he replies, "Fuck Off." Is that Russian or Ukranian? Aw, who cares. Let's say "tits" a few times. It's fun and I can't do it either at work or church. Even the chicks in this book are tough! Oral sex is "a face full of fuckwad." There in a single line goes any bi-curious temptations my subconscious was entertaining. Another way in which I'm not John Cheever... The most sensitive guy in this book, of course, is a raging queen named Sol Fuchs. Or Sally Fucks to his friends. Haha--get it? Gay dudes are so gay.

There are some funny moments. I laughed out loud when the chalk outline of a guy blown away on his knees was described. And the opening bit about singing in a men's chorus. (Sidenote: If Glee went noir, I might watch it). And the villain named The Tall Man who's worth a giggle because DJ Jazzy Johnson is, you know, Hammettin' it up. But really, by the end, you don't give a shit about the characters. Should you in noir? I don't know.... but I do know I'm sucker for that sense of poignancy that ends "The Maltese Falcon" or "The Drowing Pool." Christ, "The Drowing Pool"---the way it ends with that great scene of Archer and the local police dude knocking each other down until they stagger off in each other's arms, or Doc McCoy's deep but necessary sorrow at the inevitable marital adjument he must make in "The Getaway".... yeah, well, none of that fluffy stuff is here. This book is all stank, Hank. I'm not sure if it's a compliment or not that after reading it I wanted to go dig up a copy of "The Secret Life of Bees" to convince myself I had an iota of sensitivity left. (Don't worry. I got over the temptation. Real quick. Thanks, Maker's Mark....)

I'm not ragging Denis Johnson. I love me some Denis Johnson. So much so I make a point not to spell it Dennis. It's like lovin' Poe enough not to spell it Allen. (Hope my students have that much love some day). I suspect this book was the quick crap DJ needed after a decade's constipation with Tree of Smoke. A little literary Milk of Magnesia, which is fine. At this point, DJ has earned the right to go wherever he wants and I'll ride. But let's face it, this isn't a homage to Hammett or Chandler; it's more of a Mickey Spillane with a chaser of self-aware wit. It's not even "Pulp Fiction"--more like From Dusk till Dawn. Indulgently dumb, almost daring you not to forget it.

Again, I didn't dislike it. It was something to do on a Friday night that didn't involve a bail bondsman. But even as we praise grit and toughness we ought to interrogate this American fascination with ugly and venal. It may help us all feel we're not hopelessly bourgeois, but sometimes it's nice to think we're capable of feeling, too.

Only not too much. Because that would make us pussies.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lean little crime novel, that I'm giving 5 stars (genre rating). No big messages here (though I toyed with the idea that Johnson was saying something regarding Mercy, but then backed away from that, since such pondering messes with the mean fun of the novel). It is what it is. A cast of (well drawn) losers, all hooking for the big score. Not one ounce of fat, and great dialogue throughout. It reminded me a lot of a really good Leonard novel. Anita Desilvera is a great character (with some of the best lines), and one I wouldn't mind seeing again in a future novel, though I doubt that's going to happen, since Nobody Move reads like a one and (wonderfully) done effort.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since I had never read Denis Johnson before, and this book was quite short, it seemed an excellent way to check his work out. Knowing his reputation as a serious novelist with awards for his work, I did not expect this fast-paced and entertaining update of pulp fiction. The book was originally serialized in four parts in Playboy, which does not interrupt the propulsive narrative. Jimmy and Anita are a couple of down-and-out characters dealings with debt collectors, crooked ex-spouses and other assorted lowlifes offered by the city of Bakersfield, California. Their twists and turns make for a narrative that never lets up. A great read for anyone who misses the pulps of olden days.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am working my way through a publication order (re-)read of all of Johnson’s poetry, short stories and novels. I mention this because the novel he published prior to this one was the 600-page monster that is "Tree of Smoke". Coming on the back of that, this 200-page fast paced crime caper feels very different. Where "Tree of Smoke" took us through the whole Vietnam era and watched several people’s lives unravel, here we have gamblers, gangsters, thugs and generally unpleasant people doing, or trying to do, unpleasant things to one another.

It has the feel of an author who wanted to have some fun after writing something as serious and heavy as "Tree of Smoke".

Basic set up: Jimmy Luntz owes Juarez money. Gambol is the man who collects for Juarez and arrives at the start of the book to take Jimmy for a ride. Just a couple of pages later, Luntz has shot Gambol and is on the run. Unfortunately for Jimmy, Gambol survives and sets off in pursuit of Jimmy. Meanwhile, there’s a girl. Of course there's a girl. This one, Anita, has been framed by her husband to take the fall for his multi-million pound embezzlement. She's not happy about it and she's not the kind of woman you want to cross. She and Luntz meet up, get together and set off with the idea of getting the money from Anita’s husband.

There follow about 200 pages of a wild ride in which, even though the book is called “Nobody Move”, it seems that nobody ever actually stays still. Originally, this novel was written as a four part serial for Playboy magazine and it does feel a lot like Johnson has set out to entertain. There’s some sex and quite a lot of violence. There’s some squalor (there’s always squalor in a Johnson novel). But there’s also (black) comedy galore and some very poetic writing. (I think my favourite little bit of poetic writing was the description of walking through a night time city after rain that says "Ruthless neon on the wet streets like busted candy"). It’s also interesting that there are passages where we see the same action from two different characters’ points of view and Johnson is very clever in the way he writes to give the perspective of each (one cool, experienced in violence, one panicking).

The blurb talks about Cormac McCarthy and Raymond Chandler. It also, very appropriately I think, references Tarantino. This has the feel of a Tarantino movie. Or maybe a Tarantino movie made by the Coen brothers, if that makes any sense.

It’s a lot of fun, whichever way you look at it.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this short, stylish noir first serialized in PLAYBOY. The dialogue, while snappy and pointed, is sometimes hard to follow, or maybe I was just too sleepy. For some reason, the opening pages reminded me of Richard Brautigan's writing, especially the tone, but then the story settles into a wicked noir stoked with double-crosses, violence, and black humor.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a huge Denis Johnson fan. May he rest in peace..

Nobody writes like Denis Johnson. I never know where the plot is going in his stories and love that about all his works. He also writes highly realistic dialogue about people you normally would not care about, a lot like John Steinbeck in that regard. He makes the uninteresting interesting.

This novel is more of a modern day film noir than his other works.

I liked the main character Luntz and nurse Mary the most. I felt they were well rounded characters and highly realistic, like I knew them in a past life. The other characters were a little superficial.

4 stars

[Jim Thomsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's tempting to try to look at NOBODY MOVE in two ways at the same time: as a noir novel, and as a Denis Johnson novel. As a noir novel, it's pretty good: a sun-blasted Southern California Satan-scape of drifters and deadly career criminals in a cinematic loop of loose money and burning vengeance. As a Denis Johnson novel, you'd be forgiven as seeing this work from the much-fetishized author of JESUS'S SON and TREE OF SMOKE as kind of ... ordinary. And not like it much because the last thing you expect Denis Johnson to be is ordinary.

But doesn't he have that right? We can debate that one all day without getting anywhere, so let's concentrate on the noir. The story is perfectly ... well, ordinary, yes. But what lifts it a cut above is language, and this is where the Johnson that Johnson fans love comes out to play every now and then. Some favorite lines:

"If he could keep his eyes open, he wasn’t dead. Lying on his belly he stared at the red spectacle of his life as it traveled past his face and headed away from him through the dust. That’s all he needed to do now. He needed to keep seeing his blood."

"A slouchy guy, a skinny guy. He wasn’t wearing a Hawaiian shirt at the moment but undoubtedly possessed several."

"After the film it was raining, a light, steady rain. Ruthless neon on the wet streets like busted candy."

"He put his hands in his pockets and smiled. He wasn’t that good-looking. He simply had this way about him that suggested it was his party, and the human race was lucky to be his guest."

“You don’t know what you are. He’ll know. And he’s a sick old man. He’s just a sack of cancer.”

All of which is to say, if you're open to it, NOBODY MOVE is a novel exactly as enjoyable as it is dispensable. Your move.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the epic, messy sprawl of his last book, the ambitious yet uneven Vietnam novel Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson returns to the spare leanness of his best work with this deliberately minor key modern noir. Like my three favorite Johnson books (Angels, Jesus' Son, and Already Dead: A California Gothic), this one is about unsavory characters and societal outcasts getting into trouble. Nobody Move is at once a modern updating of '40s hardboiled crime fiction with nods to Chandler and Hammett and a violent story for our current economically ruinous times. Set in the small towns, rivers, and isolated stretches of highway near Bakersfield, California, the story follows a degenerate gambler and barbershop quartet member on the run from his bookie's thugs and his chance meeting with a woman who's just taken the fall for the millions she embezzled with her powerful ex-husband and his accomplice, a dying judge. Neither of them have been on the run before, and they don't know what they're doing. Bad things happen. I stayed up all night with a glass of bourbon, reading it. You should, too.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

read this in two days- a perfect noir- did he write this to make a bunch of dough from a screenplay? denis johnson's tender touch with language and the exstatic moments of human consciousness (sickness, near-death, sex, exhaustion, adrenaline, etc), but packed into a shoot-em-up genre-convention.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I like my boys to be agile, mobile, and hostile.” Jake Gaither, Florida A&M football coach, 1945-1969.

That pretty much sums up the characters in this taut, entertaining story, both to their benefit and detriment.

[Esteban del Mal · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story starts with a kidnapping in Bakersfield by a big guy named Ernie. He's mean and gets the girl. (Just not the way you'd like.) I'm tired of being stereotyped.

[Alejandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Re reading. Never finished it a few years ago

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book's a bright disappointment, a Playboy pastiche of Elmore Leonard. It has sticky passages of hilarity, barbed dialogue as punctured as epigrams, and the usual motley minor misfits entangled by emotional aphasia and pluck. The plot's shot full of holes, sliding off the page like brainbits of a murdered lover, rolling into corners like severed testicles – and what remains by the end manages, after a few raw chortles, to strangle itself with its own colostomy bag.

[Pat Settegast · Rating 5 out of 5]

While the experts may claim there is no such thing as a perfect crime, Nobody Move is a perfect crime novel - full of moral mazes, messy murders, and topped with a dark and drunken femme fatale. Perhaps the most exciting element is Johnson's subtle and continuous probing into the inner depths of his characters - a significant plot point all too often dropped by strength of the inherent limits of the genre. The sentence-by-sentence quality of his words is unrelenting. And, since this is Denis Johnson, the ending is a deft mix of a Kafkaesque punchline and moral legerdemain.

I will probably read Nobody Move a second time. In light of the ending, the relationship between the plot and the characters is complex enough to merit a second pass for additional clues. This complexity is fascinating when taken in the light of the major criticism of the whodunit narrative; namely that they withstand only a single read - like a joke - never to be interesting again. Nobody Moves manages to deftly trump this charge. It will remain a lasting piece of America's single contribution to the catalog of genre: the crime novel.

[Marc Nash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Video review https://youtu.be/Hzu93GcDO2w