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Tree of Smoke: A Novel
by: Denis Johnson

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Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780374279127
ISBN: 0374279128
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 624
Publication Date: September 04, 2007
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Release Date: September 04, 2007
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sales Rank: 18154

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:

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.

Amazon.com Review:
Amazon Significant Seven, September 2007: Denis Johnson is one of those few great hopes of American writing, fully capable of pulling out a ground-changing masterpiece, as he did in 1992 with the now-legendary collection, Jesus' Son. Tree of Smoke showed every sign of being his "big book": 600+ pages, years in the making, with a grand subject (the Vietnam War). And in the reading it lives up to every promise. It's crowded with the desperate people, always short of salvation, who are Johnson's specialty, but despite every temptation of the Vietnam dreamscape it is relentlessly sober in its attention to on-the-ground details and the gradations of psychology. Not one of its 614 pages lacks a sentence or an observation that could set you back on your heels. This is the book Johnson fans have been waiting for--along with everybody else, whether they knew it or not. --Tom Nissley

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- 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 ... Read More

Rating:

- not another vietnam novel
The book has some patches of good writing, and it does suck the reader in. However, one soon realizes that one is trapped in a swamp of shallow characters and murky events. The portrayal of the war seems to owe more to repeated watching of Apocalypse Now than any direct or original insights. The reality is much more weird and stunning than fiction, so you're better off reading histories and biographies.

Rating:

- 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 ... Read More

Rating:

- 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 ... Read More

Rating:

- 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 ... Read More

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