Last Encounter with the Enemy

Greg Johnson's latest collection of stories offers insights both subtle and startling into the workings of the human heart, from a child's-eye view of marital strife and a thoughtless betrayal of first love to the expansive reveries of complicated, conflicted adults looking ahead to new lives or back on past missteps and misfortunes. Johnson also delves into his literary roots with tales of imaginary encounters with Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, and Flannery O'Connor--who, in the title story, engages in a fierce battle of wills with a precocious eleven-year-old boy. Through it all, Johnson demonstrates his gift for describing that telling detail--a sentence, a gesture, a memory--that instantly reveals a personality, as if illuminated by lightning. Praise for I Am Dangerous: "A bravura literary performance. He rings a hundred changes on the emotional issues with which he deals, keeping them always interesting, always mysterious, changing and evolving before our eyes."--Pinckney Benedict, Chicago Tribune Book World