Train Dreams

Combining, like an ancient psalm, sorrow and light, the book by the renowned classic of contemporary American literature Denis Johnson (1949–2017) tells the story of Robert Grainier, a reluctant hermit, whose life, spanning nearly two-thirds of the 20th century, unfolded... among the hills, rivers, and railroads of northern Idaho. This is a tale of a world where, despite the overwhelming suffering that fills it, transcendent beauty occasionally breaks through: to comprehend, capture, and express it in words is beyond the main character — it can only be witnessed by someone free from thoughts and memories, from anxieties and hopes, from speech, from language itself. Such could be the dream that a train might have — if trains could have dreams. In 2012, the book "Train Dreams" became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in literature.