Combining sadness and light like an ancient psalm, Denis Johnson (1949–2017), an acclaimed classic of modern American literature, tells the story of Robert Grainier, a reluctant hermit whose life, spanning almost two-thirds of the 20th century, passed among the hills, rivers and railroads of Northern Idaho. This is a story about a world in which, despite the suffering that overwhelms it, the transcendental beauty breaks through every now and then: it is beyond the power of the main character to comprehend, capture, express it in words - it can only be witnessed by someone free from thoughts and memories, from worries and hopes, from speech, from language itself. This could be the dream that the train had - if trains could dream.