Jesus’ Son is a collection of stories revolving around a lost soul known as fuckhead. The book was published in 1992, and in 1999 was made into a movie by the same name. The book’s title comes from The Velvet Underground‘s song Heroin.
When I’m rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus‘ son…
Comments:
While the main theme (or at least thematic motif) found throughout the stories is drugs, this novel offers a different experience to Welsh‘s rebellious, trashy Trainspotting, and although sharing certain existential ideas, different also to such beat novels as Burroughs‘ Junky.
There is something powerful in these stories, something that manages to imply meaning without being reducible to nostalgia.
Sometimes this is easier to place, as when the narrator is at the hospital (following a car crash) he witnesses a woman (who is just told that her husband has died in the crash) scream. He says that the scream made him feel alive. He’s spent the rest of his life looking for that feeling again.
There’s something that resonates with the reader. Je ne sais quoi?
Misc. Quotes:
He’d wasted his entire life. Such people were very dear to those of us who’d wasted only a few years. (Out on Bail)
I felt the beauty of the morning. I could understand how a drowning man might suddenly feel a deep thirst being quenched. (Emergency)
I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us. (Beverly Home)
