Gary Storhoff. Understanding Charles Johnson.

Gary Storhoff. Understanding Charles Johnson. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2004. 272 pp. $34.95.

Gary Storhoff's Understanding Charles Johnson is another addition to the Understanding Contemporary American Literature series. Storhoff considers all of Johnson's major fiction published up until the time of the writing. (Johnson's most recent major work, Dr. King's Refrigerator: and Other Bedtime Stories [2005], is not discussed.) Storhoff wisely limits his focus to several dominant themes in Johnson's work. He particularly concentrates on Buddhist elements in Johnson's fiction, exploring connections between Buddhism and language and Buddhism and race. Though Buddhist perspectives dominate Storhoff's study, he also explores other common Johnson themes, such as his use of anachronisms, his interest in the significance of the mundane, and his approach to individual and collective history.

Storhoff devotes his first chapter to providing background information useful to both the casual reader and the Johnson scholar. He discusses the requisite authorial matters, including Johnson's upbringing and his parents, as well as his early work outside of writing fiction. He also usefully touches upon Johnson's interest in the martial arts, a matter he returns to in his analysis of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, wherein he claims that "karate represents for Johnson a form of art through which, in creating an alternative world, the artist does not work but 'plays' at the creation of his or her own body" (113). Most notably, this first chapter introduces the reader to the role that Buddhist philosophy and practice play in all of Johnson's work. Even before he begins his study, Storhoff informs the reader that he shares his subject's Buddhist perspective. He goes on to note that, though Buddhism plays a seminal role in Johnson's fiction, the author is never overly pedantic. Johnson's philosophical musings are always just under the surface (and sometimes couched in humorous prose), which makes his work accessible to most readers.

Johnson's Buddhist perspective accounts for much of what can be understood from his fiction. Storhoff explores how Johnson's "fiction points to how a person will be transformed by a close, directed attention to everyday experience--defined by Buddhists as mindfulness" (7). We can also reflect on how Buddhism's central doctrine (all things are in constant flux) can account for Johnson's often chaotic fictions. Storhoff references Buddhist teachings, philosophy, and terminology in his discussion of all of Johnson's fiction. For example, in his analysis of Middle Passage, Storhoff defines the novel's trajectory as Rutherford Calhoun's "emotional separation from Falcon, toward a Buddhist understanding of emptiness and dependent origination" (168). He also explores the Buddhist resonances and attributes of the Allmuseri tribe. Referring to Dreamer, Storhoff defines Martin Luther King, Jr., as "Johnson's consummate symbol of Buddhist mindfulness as he accepts the world's bitter divisions" (205). Storhoff had earlier discussed King's embrace of "ahimsa," the Buddhist term that refers to "the refusal to harm other living things" (183). As a relative beginner in the understanding of Buddhist philosophy--although my mother is a practicing Buddhist and I do own The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Buddhism--I found Storhoff's discussion of Buddhist terminology to be both user friendly and extremely thoughtful and helpful in understanding Johnson's fiction.

Applying Buddhist language and terminology to his discussions of Johnson's fiction, Storhoff is always mindful of defining the terms for the newcomer. He also makes connections between Buddhism and race, noting that "for Johnson, the only way to liberate oneself from essentialism is to accept the illusory nature of the race and rejoice in its emptiness" (22). Johnson's writings have often referenced the essential emptiness of racial difference and racial thinking. In his critical prose study Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970, published in 1988 (not a source of analysis in Storhoff's book), Johnson claims that "anyone knowledgeable about genetics ... can show you that if you go back 50 generations in the life of any person, he or she shares a common ancestor with every other person on this planet. None of us can be less closely related than 50th cousins. 'Race' dissolves when we trace the gene back to A. D. 700" (43).

While Buddhism is clearly a foundation of much of Storhoff's analysis, other themes are also evident in his discussion. Many readers of Johnson's fiction are familiar with his antirealist approach and use of anachronisms. Regarding the former, Storhoff labels Johnson "a metaphysical antirealist," claiming that "Johnson's antirealism teaches readers the folly of thinking that we can understand reality properly with judgments, categories, or vast systems that explain 'hidden' meanings" (12). This contention is clearly proved in Johnson's fiction--and perhaps all fiction as well. Storhoff's discussion of the magic realist aspects of Faith and the Good Thing is particularly effective as he connects Buddhism and antirealism.

It is no surprise to find anachronisms in Johnson's work, considering his antirealist approach. Readers of Middle Passage and Oxherding Tale can readily find a number of anachronisms. In regards to Johnson's fiction, Storhoff claims that "because of dependent origination, all things exist in a relational matrix throughout history" (18). "For Johnson," the author later claims, "the idea of past as opposed to present and future is only one more dualism to be overcome, if we open ourselves to the various possibilities of the specific moment" (63). When reading Johnson's fiction, one is often reminded of Ishmael Reed's concept of "hoodoo time."

Another particularly interesting focus of Storhoff's work concerns Johnson's concentration on the everyday, mundane aspects of life. (Regarding this focus, one might be interested in seeking out the title story of the recently published Dr. King's Refrigerator: and Other Bedtime Stories.) The individual moment, regardless of how basic it might seem, is, for Johnson, important in itself but also a part of a fluid and ongoing process. Storhoff notes that there "are no heroes, no larger-than-life characters performing superhuman feats" in Johnson's fiction (25). Storhoff traces Johnson's interest in the mundane in most of his works. It accounts for the great humanity of many of the author's characters, be they sinister or estimable.

Other themes common to Johnson's work concern personal and universal freedom (a theme that Storhoff focuses on in his discussion of Oxherding Tale and Dreamer) and the nature/consequences of history. Storhoff analyzes ways that history and texts are fluid, not static. He connects text and history in his analysis of Oxherding Tale, where he notes that "Johnson tests the contemporary thematic validity of older literary works and genres to establish a sense of continuity between the present and earlier periods" (58). Similarly, in discussing Middle Passage, Storhoff claims that the past is "a continuous and evolving creation in the present movement" (149). In those novels, as well as in Soulcatcher and Other Stories, we are able to comprehend how fiction can forcefully make history's points.

Ultimately, Storhoff's study is extensive and always readable. Though there is the rare awkward phrase ("Johnson made books his best friend" [2]) and even rarer odd attack (criticizing Johnson's dialogue writing in Soulcatcher and Other Stories), Storhoff's concentration on several repeated themes in Johnson's works successfully provides the reader with a context for reading all of Johnson's fiction. He offers us persuasive close readings of the primary texts. Johnson readers will find much to like and learn from Storhoff's analysis.

Marc Steinberg

Abraham Baldwin College