until last weekend, i had never heard of jesus’ son – luckily, i hang around people who prevent me from falling into a monochromatic void filled with technobabble. anyhow, in a perfect example of attentive filtering, i just ran across this review of the new movie based on the book:
“Alison MacLean’s film may appear to be another in a rather truncated and peculiar line of movies that perhaps began with Drugstore Cowboy: the needle nostalgia film. These are movies about people shooting heroin and questing for meaning in the seventies, made, one surmises, for people who
may or may not have quested for meaning and shot heroin in the late eighties and early nineties while
wearing seventies clothes. I hope this doesn’t sound too glib and dismissive, however, because Maclean’s
movie, like the much-revered short-story collection by Denis Johnson on which it is based, happens to be a real work of art, which these days is about as rare as finding someone who still shoots heroin, as opposed to snorts it.”