SOURCE: Parrish, Timothy L. “Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son: To Kingdom Come.” Critique 43, no. 1 (fall 2001): 17–29.

In the following essay, Parrish examines the recurring themes of transformation and redemption in Jesus' Son, drawing attention to Johnson's preoccupation with transcendence.

At the end of Denis Johnson's first novel, Angels, the lawyer whose client is about to be executed for murder experiences a revelation about his future career and, ultimately, his identity. He recognizes that he is still young enough to be the elected official “to something or other” that he had assumed he would eventually become, but he realizes that his client's death has changed him. Instead of achieving respectable political office, he knows that he will “probably continue the rest of his life as a criminal lawyer because, in all honesty, a part of him wanted to help murderers go free” (209). Although there is reason to believe that his client's...