Enigmatic and fable-like, the novel is set in DC, and reviewers at the time compared it to James Joyce\u2019s take on Dublin in his works. Thereafter Johnnie is structured to mirror Milton\u2019s Paradise Lost. Narrated from a future after the fall of the American empire, it tells the story of a family split by incest\u2014a metaphor for slavery, the nation\u2019s original sin.<\/p>\n
Critics loved it: A New York Times review declared that it belonged in the company of Alice Walker\u2019s The Color Purple, Toni Morrison\u2019s Beloved, and Gloria Naylor\u2019s Linden Hills. But the book never found a big audience. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t fall comfortably into any one particular genre,\u201d says Jeremy Davies, the editor who oversaw the reissue. \u201cIt\u2019s extremely ambitious. It takes in a whole bunch of registers and literary approaches, from biblical to classical to poetic to supernatural and science-fictiony.\u201d<\/p>\n
Herron was born and raised in the District; her mother was a longtime science teacher in the public schools. But Herron gravitated toward literature\u2014she was the kind of precocious reader who around ten years old discovered Paradise Lost at the Carnegie Library. Herron has since taught at a number of colleges, including Harvard and Mount Holyoke. She returned to DC full-time in 2017, when Howard hired her.<\/p>\n
The city has changed in major ways since she painted such a rich portrait in her novel. (The Carnegie Library, for example, now contains an Apple Store.) Still, Herron doesn\u2019t spend a lot of time contemplating the state of modern-day Washington. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s the classics part of me, or maybe I have a fog over my eyes,\u201d she says. \u201cIt feels like I\u2019m in 1975 looking toward 2075.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thereafter Johnnie predicts a grim end to America, but the author doesn\u2019t expect its dystopia to arrive soon, current events notwithstanding. \u201cAs a classicist, I know that no empire lasts forever,\u201d Herron says. \u201cBut I want to give a message of peace rather than one of descent. Rome did not fall in a day. It took many hundreds of years and many bad leaders\u2014not just one.\u201d<\/p>\n