Tree of Smoke: A Novel by Denis Johnson
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Book Reviews of Tree of Smoke: A Novel
Book Review: Quiet American: an encore
Summary: 4 Stars
Between Kleist and Conrad, I need to look at contemporaries once in a while, just for fairness to the new writers and for keeping updated.
I have frequently picked up award winners like this one (National Book Award for fiction in 2007) and have found them a mixed crop, as could be reasonably expected. I met some good writers this way, and I have been disappointed a lot as well. (Maybe most of all by the fairly recent German Nationaler Buchpreis.)
Where is Denis Johnson in this scenario? I would say, on the 'not bad' shelf, but not quite on the 'great' shelf. What have we got? A Vietnam novel, always a subject that interests me. Actually, there is a broader scope, it goes back to the Philippines with roots into WW2.
The 'story' is a multiplicity of stories, you can read each chapter as a short story if you want, but they are all interconnected and they span a time line of 20 years. Each story is in itself fairly simple, none has a traditional 'ending', I guess because real life does not offer stories with an ending.
You have a multiplicity of characters from all sides, but the main theme is taken from Graham Greene's Quiet American. Greene's 'hero' Pyle's real life model Lansdale has a cameo appearance here. That book is even quoted by one of the characters (a Canadian missionary; she also mentions the 'Ugly American', a quite different story, which Johnson's hero misunderstands.)
The writing is deceptively simple, the plot is more complex. Once in a while the simple writing develops special charms, when I have to chuckle over an observation or admire a simile.
'Are you sober? Slightly.'
Not knowing anything about the author before starting this book, I looked around here in amazon among the other reviews and also looked up information on his other books. It seems, Johnson has a reputation for writing under the influence, or let's say, dreamworlds are part of his world. Actually, more often this text here is more sober than one would wish it to be, though most of his protagonists are not sober quite a lot of their time.
What does the title mean? It is from Joel 2,30, and refers to the judgement day. My English version of the Bible has it as 'columns of smoke', but apparently 'trees' is an accurate translation of the Hebrew text. As you might have guessed, out secret service heroes use the term for one of their clandestine operations.
What did Greene write about Pyle, in the words of the journalist who is narrating the story (Michael Caine in the recent movie)? I never knew a man who had better motives for the trouble that he caused. The problem with the progress of history is that even these simple categories get blurred.
Book Review: Dense, slow, but powerfully written. Won't appeal to all readers.
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a powerful, well-written book, and one of the best I've ever read about the Vietnam war, though it's less about the direct experience of war, and more about the madness, surreality, and moral confusion that swirls around war's fire (the "tree of smoke"). Johnson is a writer's writer. His prose is poetic and psychologically rich, full of passages I that I sometimes rewound my audiobook just to hear again. His dialogue and description are often lifelike, surreal, profound, and quotable all at once. The book's central figure, The Colonel, an old school warrior with a blunt-spoken, avuncular manner and a powerful (and renegade) sense of personal mission, is one of the most colorful characters I've come across in a while. Johnson's window into the world of counterintelligence offers a rich perspective on a United States driven by a sense of post-World War Two clarity and purpose that becomes more mythical and mirage-like as his characters find themselves foundering in uncertainty.
Read the sequence about teenage American soldiers newly arrived in Vietnam and perhaps you'll understand what I mean. They act exactly like you'd expect teenagers to, immature, without a clue what's going on, but determined to maintain their teenage bravado, even as the veteran soldiers mess with them. These scenes are effective, darkly funny, and totally believable; after reading them, I wondered how so many other authors managed to get teenage American soldiers so *wrong*.
However, there's no denying that Tree of Smoke will repel some readers. It's a depressing book, and portrays a war seemingly lost in the souls of those conducting it, as their convictions drive them into murky moral paradoxes and places of existential isolation. Few of the characters are very likable or even very knowable, particularly the young infantryman James, who, aside from the rush of sex and combat, dwells in a vacuum of indifference. The novel's also long, meandering, and full of sequences that, like the characters themselves, seem to wander for pages and pages without clear purpose (e.g. Jimmy Storm's bizarre quest into the jungles of Malaysia at the end of the book, long after the war is over). In fact, one could remove entire chapters without significantly altering the overall plot or changing the message Johnson has to impart.
Yet, this is a haunting, searing, mesmerizing work, touching on many significant themes, though they never quite coalesce into an easily digestible whole. Tree of Smoke is a book to read for the vivid, hazy intensity of Johnson's vision. If you appreciate writers like Faulkner or Cormac McCarthy, check this one out; if pulp like Tom Clancy is more your style, then stay, stay, stay away.
Book Review: The Imprint of War
Summary: 4 Stars
Near the end of TREE OF SMOKE, the character Kathy Jones ruminates about her experiences as a nurse and relief worker in the Viet Nam war. "Kathy reflected, certainly not for the first time, that the war hadn't been only and exclusively terrible. It had delivered a sense, at first dreadful, eventually intoxicating, that something wild, magical, stunning might come from the next moment, death itself might erupt..."
Basically, this idea--that Viet Nam, as well as the war on communism, was a thrilling but gruesome misadventure that never made much sense--is the subject of TREE OF SMOKE, as well as the principle that animates its major characters. This means that ToS is probably not for you if you're looking for a character-driven novel that explores personal and moral choice, such as THE QUIET AMERICAN. Instead, the characters in ToS find weird fulfillment in the rush of arbitrary and deadly war. Thereafter, they might try to justify that fulfillment. But it's a tree of smoke.
Readers of ToS will find sections of powerful prose, where Denis Johnson demonstrates that he can place a character perfectly into a scene. Illustrating this ability is the battle near Cao Phuc in 1968, where the character James Houston experiences his first combat. But such set pieces are infrequent, with Johnson, in this long novel, primarily using his prose to convey the strange and deadly elusiveness of Viet Nam and its aftermath. This is why, in my opinion, the poetic quality of Johnson's writing becomes apparent only with Jimmy Storm, a psychological operations soldier who speaks as if amped on drugs. In this crazed perspective, Johnson's prose tightens. Otherwise, this book feels deliberately rough and a little slow, forcing this reader to circle names, dates, locations, and any other fact--as if this were a history--to keep his mind in the narrative.
Johnson is very strong in his final few pages, illuminating his themes and even explaining the behavior of Skip Sands, a major character who was otherwise incomprehensible to me. This strong end helped to part the smoke and earned this novel a fourth star.
Book Review: CIA Intrigue in Vietnam
Summary: 4 Stars
This novel is part of my ongoing effort to upgrade my reading list, having won a National Book Award in 2008. I found it to be generally very well written and captivating, but suffering from periods of dense prose and underediting.
I must say that the review profile is one of the most unusual I've ever seen, an almost reverse bell curve. Readers either love it or hate it, which is somewhat surprising, because I really found it relatively easy to read and can't imagine what would compel anyone to give it a one or two star rating.
In any event, the novel centers on the Vietnam War, however very little actual fighting is mentioned. Instead, intrigue by the CIA and various other intelligence agencies provide the basis for the story, which follows several disparate plot lines, some of which never seem to intersect.
I've seen references to Apocalypse Now and the novel is deeply influenced by the character of Colonel Francis X. Sands, an old line CIA operative who has gone renegade and surrounded himself with accolytes to do his bidding. To these accolytes, Sands is a demi-god, much in the mold of Colonel Kurtz. Sands's nephew, Skip, is the primary character in the story. His interaction with the various other characters and the establishment's efforts to reign in "the Colonel" are what tie the novel together.
At 614 pages of small typed, full pages, this is a relatively long book, at times in need of editing, in my opinion. There are a couple of story lines that don't seem to go anywhere, primarily those of Kathy Jones (I guess every book needs a love interest) and the brothers from Arizona, that while very entertaining don't seem to have any relevance to the story other than to interject the ugly, seedy world of the front line grunt.
I've got to think that there is an outstanding 500 page novel somewhere in this book, but the periods of pretentious, dense prose (thankfully few and far between) and the filler material drags it down below the highest standard. A very worthwhile read nonetheless.
Book Review: A very good Vietnam war era read.
Summary: 4 Stars
The tree of smoke is a crazy drug addled ride through the Vietnam war. It easily could have become a derivative of such Vietnam classics as Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" or Robert Stone's "Dog Soldiers." But the author is able to take similar elements from these and other books about this subject and turn out something different. The plot roams and rampages about, which will probably be disconcerting to some, but it is really just a metaphor for the craziness of war, and this war in particular. It's the story of the American experience in Vietnam and is particularly timely given the current situation in Iraq. The story follows Skip, a CIA operative, Young and eager to prove himself and defeat communism. Skip believes in the American dream of democracy for everyone and the essential goodness of America and America's interest in Vietnam. I do not like to give too much away in my reviews but suffice to say Skip Witnesses the brutalities of war and sees things that question is allegiances. He learns that not all is black and white.
This is not the first book on the follies of war and surly will not be the last. Overall it deserves five stars even though the plot is unwieldily at times. The greatness of this book is how the author was able to bring the reader back to the hallucinogenic era of that bloody little war and display the fallout on his characters psyche. This is a must read! this was my favorite read of the summer! This was my first Denis Johnson novel, now I am going to order Jesus' Son: Stories by and Fiskadoro.