#working-class-life

#working-class-life

Grainier, an orphan sent to Idaho by train at the age of 6 or 7 with a destination pinned to his coat, is an ordinary person-a laborer who makes a living building railroads, joining seasonal logging crews, and, as an older man, hauling freight with a wagon. "He'd had one lover-his wife, Gladys-owned one acre of property, two horses, and a wagon," Johnson sums up Grainier's life, near the end of the novella, in a catalog of experience that neatly pins him as a creature of his time, class, and place:

Train Dreams, Clint Bentley's glorious rendering of Denis Johnson's elliptical novella borders on visual poetry as it profoundly observes one man's existence. It's a transcendent experience that echoes the best elements of Terrence Malick's films, particularly in how a wandering camera caresses and gazes at the awesomeness, and danger, of nature. But Train Dreams never gets manacled by arc creative pretensions, resisting the urge to surrender to opaqueness (which doesn't always happen in Malick's films).

Typically I avoid telling people where I'm from. Especially now that I live on the West Coast, the perception of the Hamptons is so different from my childhood and young adult experience that I'd rather just tell people I'm from Long Island than explain the reality of growing up in an area notorious for its status as a playground for the rich and famous with sky-high real estate prices and club entry fees in the hundreds of dollars.