magiadoreal

Leonard Gardner. Foto: Alissa Valles By Matt Bell Novels have two primary ­sources: writers’ life experiences or their art experiences — ­although I suppose more religious writers might also make room for divine inspiration. While it’s popular in publicity to focus on the life experience that informs a book, a writer’s art experiences are just as responsible for how a story emerges from the imagination and eventually appears on the page. As Cormac McCarthy once said: “The ugly fact is books are made out of books. The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.” Influential books come and go, but one notable survivor is Denis Johnson’s linked story collection, “Jesus’ Son,” published in 1992 and adored by two decades’ worth of writers, including myself, ever since I first read it as a 20-year-old college dropout. As I started writing, “Jesus’ Son” was an outsize influence, easily overwhelming all others, and might have ruined me as a writer if the right oth