Tree of Smoke: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Denis Johnson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  84 reviews
Sales Rank: 11732
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 624
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.9
ISBN: 0374279128
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780374279127
ASIN: 0374279128
Publication Date: September 4, 2007
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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
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.
Book 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 America. That's me." This is the story of Skip Sands—spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Viet Cong—and the disasters that befall him on account of 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 and into a war where 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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| Customer Reviews: Read 79 more reviews...
 not another vietnam novel October 6, 2008
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.
Vietnam Collage September 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Vietnam, receding in the rear-view mirror September 23, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
"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
 On The Cutting Edge of Reality September 14, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"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.
The American Anabasis September 5, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Dennis Johnson's Tree of Smoke is mythopoetic in its reach and ambition, excavating through the different levels the postwar American involvement in Asia. Johnson's narrative shifts through time, place and people as he attempts to tell an allegorical tale that mirrors the American anabasis through Asia in the 20th century. Through the haunting passion of Skip Sands and his legendary uncle the story is one of the CIA itself- the hope, dreams, pain and innocence that went into that noble war. But it is so much more than that. By taking in the grand scope Johnson's book shows us the consequences both moral and physical of the American engagement in Southeast Asia- but not in the way most would assume. In many ways Johnson succeeds maybe where he never intends: He makes noble the dreams and idea that drove America into Asia- As Michael Herr wrote in another time and place "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there, American and essentially adolescent, if the energy could have been channelled into anything more than noise, waste and pain it wold have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."
Johnson's Tree of Smoke is like the Tree of Life we glimpsed in that corridor between California and Vietnam- that road that was our anabasis our "march up country" towards nobility and hope. The Tree of Smoke is a poetic tribute to the spook war, the grunts and the Vietnamese. Its about the fantasies and freedom that most men never know. Its a haunting reminder of those lost to headquarters but who loved the Vietnamese with their brains- and their hearts. Its about the ops they ran or dreamed of running only to find the ideal had become reality and was being run back on them-obscured and disfigured. But as Johnson shows history changes baby, and war took on a life of its own and the dreamers became as Herr noted so hauntingly and which Johnson makes flesh: "the saddest casualities of the sixties, all the promise of good service on the New Frontier either gone or surviving like the vaguest salvages of a dream, still in love with their dear leader, blown away in his prime and theirs-" The Tree of Smoke.
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