Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures tells the complete story of Denis Johnson's life, his thrill-seeking trips into war zones as a magazine correspondent, his battles with addiction, his live-it-before-you-write-it style of fiction.
A mixed bag ... There is something tentative here. A certain amount of critical texture is absent. But he captures Johnson’s lonely intelligence and gets the story told. It’s hardly uninteresting.
Enjoyable, narratively brisk, and compassionate ... Geltner does for Johnson what Johnson did in his best fictions, offering us a deep, honest vision of a complicated, and often quite selfish, man while still bringing out what was most moving, generous, and poetic about him.
