Binging Contd.

When one confesses to binging, one typically holds back something out of extra guilt. Like when you tell people that you binge ate, you leave out the fried chicken or tatsuta age. I held back something when I said I binged on American fiction: an early nineties short story collection called Jesus Son, by Denis Johnson. Some of you may have seen the movie, still you should forget that and just read the collection. I read a few pieces before (Dundun, Car crash while hitchhiking), but felt guilty because it is inexplicable having read those, I didn't seek and grab the collection to read the others. Now I have, and what fun. The title is from Lou Reed's "Heroin". The author borrows that in his writing, dreams and hallucinations (or was it reality?); he is the "dark poet of drugs, drink, and alienation", and describes some vicious, blinding instances.

ps: Rick Bass says about the book: "I read these stories with great thrill --- they cleaned out the tired old ways of the mind like a 50000-volt kick to the head; they cleared my sinuses. ... These stories terrify, warn and instruct."