Tree of Smoke: A Novel
Winner of the National Book Award
One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year
Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Amazon.com, Salon, Slate, The National Book Critics Circle, The Christian Science Monitor. . . .
Tree of Smoke is the story of William "Skip" Sands, CIA--engaged in Pschological Operations against the Vietcong--and the disasters that befall him. It is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert and into a war where the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In the words of Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times, Tree of Smoke is "bound to become one of the classic works of literature produced by that tragic and uncannily familiar war."
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
Tree of Smoke: A Novel Accessories
 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Then We Came to the End: A Novel
The Savage Detectives: A Novel
Out Stealing Horses: A Novel
The Gathering (Man Booker Prize)
Bridge of Sighs: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)
Man Gone Down: A Novel
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Jesus' Son: Stories by
Tree of Smoke: A Novel Reviews
There is no comparison with Tree of Smoke to The Things They Carried or a dozen other Vietnam War works. I was greatly disappointed, but somewhat entertained. Tree of Smnoke is much too much in its length, bloated prose, and too little in the soul of those who fought this misguided war. Ron Lealos author of Don't Mean Nuthin' It had garnered praise from the reviewers and been nominated for awards. Having written a novel about the Vietnam War and read every fictional account of the tragedy, I picked up Tree of Smoke with great anticipation.
Well, I may be way off on this one but I am willing to state that I do not think this is a good book regardless of the author's past accomplishments and I would not recommend it. But after reading about 200 pages I began to realize that I wholeheartedly disagreed with these people and couldnt for the life of me figure out what they saw in this book. A novel should flow, not confuse the reader, and should contain interesting characters and storylines that the reader is still thinking about hours after he/she stops reading. Johnson's writing is unique and sometimes very good - but a novel is supposed to be more than stringing together well crafted sentences and seemingly unrelated thoughts and situations.
Perhaps because Mr. I've read hundreds of novels and I have never been moved to write a review one way or the other, but purchasing and attempting to read "Tree of Smoke" changed that. Nobody wants to be the one who says they don't like it for fear they will appear to be too daft to appreciate it.
Johnson wrote books in the past that were considered "literature" as opposed to just run of the mill novels - its possible some critics are hesitant to bash subsequent works by the author because they want to appear as if they "get it" - even when the book is terrible (sort of an emporer has no clothes situation). I can appreciate that Mr. I bought this book because I have always enjoyed historical fiction involving past American wars and I was also swayed somewhat by the high praise heaped upon the book and its author by friends and acquaintances. Of all of the books I've read I can't think of any one of them that I put down and couldn't finish - but that's exactly what I did with this book.
Winner of the National Book Award for 2007 and praised by critics in most major publications save one that I was able to find, B. War is hell, the Vietnam War and all others. The writer Chaim Potok said once in an lecture I heard him give that a librarian had told him, when he, as a youngster, was checking out a book by Evelyn Waugh whom he thought was a woman that one should always give a book he didn't like 100 pages before quitting reading if the writer was a respected author. Occasionally I heard Hemingway, but certainly never Whitman, in the sex scenes between Skip and Kathy I hesitate to call them love scenes. Johnson, a recovering drug addict, sees the universe as pretty depraved. Vince Passaro's review in NEWSDAY, where he heard in this novel "Whitman in his erotic excess," has to be the strangest comments any reviewer has made about TREE OF SMOKE.
Johnson pretty much sums up his novel in a passage on page 192: "Deals struck in a half dozen languages, sinister rendezvous, false smiles, eyes measuring the chances. R. Tolstoy would have not. Potok's advice many times while reading TREE OF SMOKE all 614 pages although I soldiered on, hoping against hope that it would get better. (You can go back and correct everything in a review except the rating. One character describes a situation as "Disneyland on acid.". There is enough sex and cynicism to go around.
She couldn't return now to the missionaries in Bac Se. It has many characters including Skip Sands who works for the CIA, his bigger-than-life uncle, Colonel Francis Sands, two redneck brothers in arms, Billy and James Houston, an Adventist nurse named Kathy, several North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese characters as well as many bit players. Following breakfast the next morning she left for Baca Se on her black bicycle, and Skip never saw her again." This passage could have been straight out of A FAREWELL TO ARMS. Much of this far-too-long novel is tedious although occasionally brief passages stand out but they are too few and far between.
I thought of Mr. I meant to give this novel three stars). Kathy comes closest to the moral center in this novel although it very well may be outside this story. Psychos, wanderers, heroes. Myers' review in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY, TREE OF SMOKE is about Vietnam and covers a span of years from 1963, the year of President Kennedy's death, to 1970 and then skips to 1983. Johnson's description of Skip Sands' grief and guilt, upon learning belatedly of the death of his mother, for example: "Then remorse crushed him physically, the blood pounded in his head, he struggled for breath he hadn't called, hadn't written, left her to ride to her death on a gurney all alone in helplessly polite apologetic midwestern confusion and fear.". It is one of violence and betrayal. Lies, scars, masks, greedy schemes." Charles Bukowski would have liked this novel.
Case in point: "It rained again, and then it was night. Almost to a person the characters are not sympathetic. They slept together side by side, without sheets, she in one of his rough hand-washed T-shirts and he in boxer undershorts.
National Book Award. I kept waiting for the corner to be turned and for there to be a tremendous payoff, but I finally ran out of steam and did something I rarely do. With slightly more than 100 pages to go, I simply lost my will to care. It was a worthy effort, but in the end, arguably, a failed attempt. Although Johnson has captivating scene followed by captivating scene, the book as a whole is bloated and over-written.
I gave up after 500 pages. Really. But in stepping back from this impressive tome, I'm not sure he has fully accomplished what he set out to do: to look at all the complicated and confusing aspects of the Vietnam War and put them into a cohesive narrative. Really. He goes about it in the right way he selects beautiful tiles, in this case, interesting scenes and brilliant dialogue.
Johnson is attempting to put together a mosaic.
There's Skip who is a CIA agent. I found it impossible to follow the plot. And this 1997 book had absolutely rave reviews. Everyone here is a loser. I can't resist novels about Vietnam. There are two young brothers in the American army who just can't make it in the outside world. Now, 702 pages later, I'm sorry I did.
There's a Canadian nurse who provides a bit of romance for Skip. There are no bad guys and no good guys either. Reviewers called it a masterpiece. Despite the rave reviews of the critics I cannot recommend this book at all. And the only satisfaction I got out of slogging through this long and tedious read is to be able to review it and say, "well - I tried". It even won the National Book Award. The most characteristic thing about the book though is that it is confusing.
There are two Vietnamese men, one from the north and one from the south, who become part of the covert operations. The book starts in 1963 and spans about 20 years. During this time we see various characters go through their sad lives.
There are other characters too, all of them sad and angry. If you attempt to read it, don't say I didn't warn you. I just HAD to read it. I hated it. That's actually the theme of the book - sad and angry.
Reading this book is a downer. There's his uncle who's a colonel, a war hero who's something like the part Marlon Brando played in Apocalypse Now. And all the characters seemed to blend together and I kept mixing up who was who. This book was just plain awful.
|
