Foreign Exchange in Denis Johnson's The Stars at Noon

TLDR: The Stars at Noon as mentioned in this paper is a novel about the exchange of goods, people, information, and other symbols between individuals and governments of countries foreign to each other; exchange of human subjectivity or recognition; and exchange between reader and text.

Abstract: In his first novels, Angels and Fislcodoro, Denis Johnson takes readers into foreign territory: the borderland that characters on the edge of society inhabit in Angeis and the post-apocalyptic southern Florida of Fiskadoro are outside most readers' familiarity. In The Stars at Noon Johnson takes readers into a country, Nicaragua, that is literally foreign. Johnson originally intended to write a non-fiction article on Nicaragua, but his visit there changed his mind. The impression of Central America that persisted was one of atmosphere,1 and in The Stars at Noon the atmosphere (the weather and the metaphysical atmosphere of Hell) is the only element of stasis. All else is movement. As Johnson develops his plot and characters, we realize that the movement signifies exchange. The novel's instances of foreign exchange include the exchange of currencies; the exchange of goods, people, information, and other symbols between individuals and governments of countries foreign to each other; exchange of human subjectivity or recognition; and exchange between reader and text. 2 Johnson's anatomy of the ptinciple of exchange that governs all social action prompts a reassessment of the novel's genre—the international tale—and an unsettling of the reader's relation to the text. Johnson's unnamed narrator originally entered Nicaragua with a phony press card issued by Eyes for Peace, a human rights watch group with whom she signed on as a contact person. But in less than a week she lost her stomach for observing poverty, torture, and death, abandoned her job as observer, and moved to Managua. When she wanted to leave, the Nicaraguans, desperate for hard currency, would take only