Alex Gordon, a Chicago-based editor and journalist, joins the program.
He is the perfect guest host to join The Lonely Voice for an episode about Train Dreams by Denis Johnson.
This is a podcast where we celebrate the short story. That means we explore the worlds that authors build in just a few pages. We’ve taken that idea to heart so much, we’ve even veered before into one episode about poetry.
Every once in a while, a piece of fiction comes along that is too complex for a single story, yet too distilled to be an expansive novel. It lives in that haunting middle ground genre of the novella.
A book that many critics call the "perfect novella" is our focus today. We’re talking about Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams. Originally published in The Paris Review and later a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, this slim volume manages to pack an entire American century into just about 116 pages. It’s a story that doesn’t just sit on your shelf; You don’t forget about it after you close the book. It lingers in your mind like a dream.
Doesn’t it stand to reason that someone would eventually adapt a movie from the novella?
Train Dreams is the story of Robert Grainier, a laborer in the American West during the early 20th century. We follow him through the logging camps and the construction of the Great Northern Railway. But this isn’t just a historical chronicle. It’s a meditative, even disorienting journey through grief, isolation, and the terrifying beauty of a wilderness that is slowly being erased by progress.
We’ll be discussing Denis Johnson’s impressionistic storytelling, how we drift through time and memory. He shows us a man who survives unspeakable tragedy only to become a ghost in his own life — or to quietly and temperately resist that fate.
Alex Gordon enlightens us on some of the back-story of Denis Johnson’s research for the book. And we’ll see how those elements and scenes figure in the film.
Clint Bentley directed the movie and co-wrote the screenplay with Greg Kwedar. Joel Edgerton plays Robert Grainier.
We’re not film experts, but we love movies —especially those inspired by short works of fiction —or that lend themselves to a podcast like ours where we just want to talk about stories. You know us —that’s what we’re all about.
Whether you have read the book ten times or have seen the movie three or four times — or are hearing about them for the first time today, grab a coffee and settle in. Let’s head into the Idaho Panhandle.
Denis Johnson is the author of Train Dreams.
GUEST: Alex Gordon is a Chicago-based editor and journalist, who most recently has detoured into the realm of marketing and media services.
