Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams was first published in 2002 as a short story in the Paris Review. When it was reissued as a standalone novella almost a decade later, it was shortlisted for the Pulitzer prize. While the book did not win that year, somewhat strangely neither did anything else – for the first time in 35 years, the panel refused, without explanation, to choose a winner.
I have always liked this story because it brings to life the eerie and unsettling world of the American frontier. Train Dreams is a novella where each event and detail seems significant, fused into a larger tapestry of meaning.
And yet, by the end of the book, the reader struggles to explain exactly what has happened. The effect is one of deep disturbance – somewhere between alienation, curiosity and longing. I imagine it bewitching the Pulitzer panel, stunning them into indecision.
