Tree of Smoke: A Novel | Denis Johnson | On The Cutting Edge of Reality

Tree of Smoke: A Novel | Denis Johnson | Vietnam, receding in the rear-view mirror

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Tree of Smoke: A N...

	Tree of Smoke: A Novel Denis Johnson Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007 - 624 pages average customer review:based on 86 reviews view larger image
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Once upon a time there was a war . . . and a young American who thought of himself as the Quiet American and the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but who eventually came to witness himself as the Real American and finally as simply the Fucking American. That?s me.

This is the story of Skip Sands?spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong?and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, and its gritty, sympathetic portraits of men and women desperate for an end to their loneliness, whether in sex or death or by the grace of God, this is a story like nothing in our literature.

Tree of Smoke is Denis Johnson?s first full-length novel in nine years, and his most gripping, beautiful, and powerful work to date.

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On The Cutting Edge of Reality

"Tree of Smoke" is long, yes, and mostly talk. Especially for a war book, keep in mind that it's mostly talk. It's also compelling and riveting in its own unique way. I don't know what I would compare it too, but it's dense like Ken Kesey or Charles Dickens and epic like, say, "Catch 22." It works on the fringes of the war, as one character calls it, "on the cutting edge of reality, where it turns into a dream."

So, a caution right up front: if you are looking for Vietnam war action like the movie "Platoon," look elsewhere. This book takes place, for the most part, above and around the war. There are a few exceptions, but the book seems to be as much about what it takes to fight and to win a war. It's about the psychological warfare, deception and spies. But at every level, "Tree of Smoke" examines what it takes to go to war, to conduct a war, to believe in war. "We've lost the war, we've lost the heart," says one character and we all know where Vietnam ends up, so the arc is predictable but Johnson's ability to imagine these conversations and these characters is what keeps you going.

I think what Johnson is saying more than anything is that it takes faith and firm belief to wage war and to win one.

Recommended for readers who enjoy a long, thoughtful and hearty meal. This is the opposite of a quick-paced thriller; it's slow and contemplative.

One note: I listened to this book on audio CD. I've seen some other comments about Will Patton's performance being less than stellar. Hardly. Patton's delivery is brilliant. Terrific and subtle nuances in his delivery made each character distinct - a Brit, a Filipino, the Americans, the Vietnamese - and his inflection was nearly as brilliant as the dialogue. What a great book to listen to, particularly with Patton as your guide.

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Vietnam, receding in the rear-view mirror

"Tree of Smoke" is big, convoluted, and meant to be consumed whole in a long read, immersing the reader in the reflections of a fun-house mirror, the military's disintegrating role in Vietnam. There's a flood of imagery, an exhausting descriptive style that one appreciates or soon is overwhelmed by. In its 600 pages are characters that, true to the times, seem to be aimless, or at least helpless in the way of unfolding disaster.

Johnson has some heady company in writing about the watershed event of the 1960s, but at this remove from the events of 1963-1970 (the span of time covered in "Tree of Smoke") Vietnam is less a place of combat than a canvas to spread his cast of characters. Reviewers and many readers were dazzled by the novel's hallucinogenic tone ("whacked-out" was another positive accolade) in which plot is secondary to the effect of the author's spiraling prose.

Like many of its characters, the novel loses its way. The intent is to convey the undeniably chaotic forces at work in this unwinnable war; every man must find reasons for his survival, or work toward his redemption. Some find nothing but the heart of darkness. But survival or redemption requires a moral certainty, and here there is none. The characters only become more obscured in their jungle hell, and the Vietnam war oddly recedes from view as the novel progresses. The war remains central to the action, but as a refraction of the country's moral dilemma. For a novel with so much technical detail, which is considerable, Johnson manages to make Vietnam into a Hollywood abstraction.

Much has been written about the book's echoes of Graham Greene in "The Quiet American," his tale of Vietnam during the French colonial period of the 1950s, and the character of Skip Sands does share some of the optimistic idealism of that novel's Alden Pyle. Both men have their dreams turn dark as their idealism fades. But this is just one aspect of "Tree of Smoke," and the two books describe different eras. Greene's story revealed itself in its British reserve; Johnson's novel is overstuffed with meaning, and spins with centrifugal force, filled with characters we have a hard time knowing, or much caring about.

A big topic, a big book: reviewers and readers have given Johnson a large pass for this, but many of them may mistake the book's sheer weight for seriousness. Through the smoke and confusion we learn little about war or the human condition we don't already know, and of Vietnam even less.

For more about "Tree of Smoke," visit BellemeadeBooks at Blogger.com

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Vietnam Collage

Tree of Smoke, Johnson's sprawling novel about Vietnam, is structured around the narratives of many characters, which include The Colonel, a hybrid of Colonel Kurtz and Lt. Colonel Bill Kilgore from Apocalypse Now (a dash of Hannibal from the A Team); Skip Sands, the Colonel's nephew and fellow CIA operative; Kathy Jones, a humanitarian worker from Canada; brothers Bill and James Houston; Lt Storm, an insane violent psychedelic dervish who supports The Colonel; and Vietnamese men Trung, a Buddhist Vietcong double agent, and How, a Saigon businessman working with the Americans.

TOS has many great things about it. As those familiar with Johnson's work will attest, the prose is electric - engaging, energetic, fresh. The characters of the Houston brothers and Skip Sands stand out as especially strong, distinct, and moving. Brothers James and Bill are the typical down and out, edge of respectable society guys that Johnson is so good at bringing to life. Skip Sands also comes across well. He is an introspective man, educated, morally conscious. His struggle is the struggle of the nation, full of good intentions and patriotism, faith in God, etc, which all come under fire when confronted with ludicrous nature of the war.

TOS's main weakness is it tries to accomplish too much with too many different points of view. The result is too much expository writing, too much generalization. Overall Johnson grapples with many themes - religion, patriotism, horror, innocence, death. These are big issues, better dealt with obliquely, through the specificity of characters and their situations. As a result of generalization, many of the characters feel flat. Colonel Sands is a complete stock character taken right out of a mediocre movie. Lt Storm speaks like a bad television movie - "this is getting psychedelic, man!" The Vietnamese characters are never fully penetrated, and feel as though they are placed in the novel to provide some sort of balance to the American perspective. Kathy Jones only comes alive at the very end of the novel.

I found the book worth reading all the way through. The total perspective on the Vietnam War is nothing new, and in no way compares to classics like Herr's "Dispatches" or most of Tim O'Brien's oeuvre. There is a directionless to the book that I found frustrating, but flashes of greatness as well.

One word of note, the plot definitely picks up at the end, and I found the last third by far the best - so keep reading.

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Very long, very dense

I'm a fan of Denis Johnson, and I was looking forward to reading this. It turned out to be a more arduous experience then I anticipated, and not really in a good way.

There's a lot in here cribbed from other sources (Conrad's Heart of Darkness for one, and, by extension, Apocalypse Now). I was hoping that Johnson's voice would bring something new to the table; unfairly, perhaps, I was interested in seeing the aesthetic of Jesus' Son brought to bear on Vietnam, and that's not what this is.

Johnson is a fundamentally strong writer who typically finds interesting ways around a sentence. The language is shaped well, and there are more than a few scenes that are very vividly crafted. It's a Denis Johnson novel, so if you find his literary voice appealing, you find much of this as well.

On the negative side, I didn't find myself responding emotionally to much in this story. The main character's journey from company man to wild outsider was not convincing, nor was his relationship with the missionary. I wasn't engaged like I had hoped, or expected, to be.

The reviews for this book are generally positive, and it's picked up some nice award nominations. It is by no means a bad book- most of it is quite good. I just found that the whole was much less then the sum of its parts.

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