Jesus' Son

The majority of the stories in Jesus’ Son feature non-linear narratives. However, beyond just reordering the events of his stories to center around theme rather than chronology, Johnson fully breaks down the line between real-world, linear events, hallucinations, and anticipations. For instance, at the end of “Car Crash While Hitchhiking,” the narrative takes a sharp turn away from the fairly linear story to jump into the future, when F**khead is hallucinating during a detox. The ending lines of the story further demonstrate this breakdown of traditional temporal order, as the story disintegrates even its perspective, moving from a traditional first-person perspective into a direct address to the reader: “Gigantic ferns leaned over us. The forest drifted down a hill. I could hear a creek rushing down among rocks. And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you” (10).

In a traditionally ordered narrative, each event is causally linked: Everything that happens in a piece of fiction is typically the direct consequence of a previous action or event. In Jesus’ Son, many of the stories feature events that are causally disconnected, so a story in this collection can contain many different anecdotes, which, instead of being linked by direct plot events or character actions, are instead linked by the relationships of feeling/emotion and theme.