{"product_id":"the-name-of-the-world-by-denis-johnson","title":"'The Name of the World' by Denis Johnson","description":"\u003ch4\u003eA haunted novel about grief, dislocation, and the big afterlife of ordinary days. \u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIts narrator, Michael Reed, is a middle-aged academic drifting through a Midwestern university after the deaths of his wife and daughter. He attends meetings, lunches, parties, half-conversations; he moves through campuses, hotel rooms, bars, offices and dinner tables with the numbness of someone who is technically still alive but no longer fully convinced by the world around him.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt has Johnson’s usual gifts — menace without melodrama, spiritual exhaustion, sentences that feel plain until they suddenly open a trapdoor. Less sprawling than \u003cem\u003eTree of Smoke\u003c\/em\u003e and less mythic than \u003cem\u003eJesus’ Son\u003c\/em\u003e, this is one of his quieter, more interior books: almost like campus novel as ghost story, desire as a small and dangerous attempt to re-enter life. A strong one for readers of late-life masculinity novels, campus unease, spare American fiction, and fiction about loss that refuses sentimental repair.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHardback first edition, HarperCollins, 2000, with full number line. Very good condition from photos, with clean boards\/pages and only light handling to the dust jacket. Printed on acid-free paper.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45708042076243,"sku":null,"price":28.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/thebowerbooker-2026-06-17T151510.520.png?v=1781673377","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/the-name-of-the-world-by-denis-johnson","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}