A thing about the novella "Train Dreams" by Denis Johnson

Starting around the turn of the century, this fiction novella chronicles the adult life of northwestern laborer Robert Grainier. Denis Johnson's colloquial, often spartan prose endows Grainier and his story with simplicity. At this time the pace of change in life and society was gaining speed but Grainier, for the most part, remains insulated from all that in living his unexamined reclusivity from a woodsy outpost. But he isn't in hiding; in his life Grainier finds love, is found by tragedy; he comes to know the ache of time, the fury of nature; and from the margins he sees innovation and flirts with moral decay. Reading, we aren't driven by the plot or even the characters. Train Dreams feels like a writing exercise and succeeds with the down, diminished beauty of its prose.

Might be looking for more by Denis Johnson.