What do you think?
Rate this book
Tree of Smoke
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.
Tree of Smoke was the 2007 National Book Award Winner for Fiction.
Tree of Smoke was the 2007 National Book Award Winner for Fiction.
614 pages, Hardcover
First published September 4, 2004
1,411 people are currently reading
23.8k people want to read
About the author
Denis Johnson
50books2,260followersPoet, playwright and author Denis Johnson was born in Munich, West Germany, in 1949 and was raised in Tokyo, Manila and Washington. He earned a masters' degree from the University of Iowa and received many awards for his work, including a Lannan Fellowship in Fiction (1993), a Whiting Writer's Award (1986), the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from the Paris Review for Train Dreams, and most recently, the National Book Award for Fiction (2007).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,592 reviews
June 5, 2010
It's here folks!! How to Win the National Book Award for Dummies! Denis Johnson has pulled heavily from this publication for his novel Tree of Smoke. Let's highlight the recommendations he used to win the Book Award for fiction.
#3. Explore a topic of great controversy for the country and its people.
Johnson: the Vietnam War.
#6. Story must be sweeping, at least 500 pages.
Johnson: 614.
#7. Include at least 5 main characters with individual story threads.
Johnson: 8.
#8. Story should span several years.
Johnson: Takes place from 1963-1983.
#11. Use realistic, pejorative language--with plenty of slang and local color and colloquialisms.
Johnson: Military jargon.
#12. Some characters should fall in love (and the other character shouldn't find out until years later by receiving letters from death row in Malaysia, but five years after being hung at the gallows, being caught for running guns).
Johnson: Followed to a 'T.'
#17. If appropriate to story, use substantial violence.
Johnson: Check.
#19. Include scenes of sexual relations.
Johnson: Check.
#20. Some characters must die.
Johnson: Check, check, check.
#23. Include many breaks within your chapters; pace yourself.
Johnson: At least 20 breaks in all Chapters.
#33. Chapters should remain untitled, or labelled with minimal reference to story.
Johnson: Chapters labelled by dates only.
#34. Story should include a written letter.
Johnson: 15+.
Advanced Techniques
#37. Story can be crazy, twisted, and leave the reader feeling like they smoked a water bong.
Johnson: Used to great extent.
#44. Story can actually make no sense at all, as long as it seems like it's going somewhere.
Johnson: Check.
#46. Some of the characters can be unlikeable.
Johnson: All of them
#49. Reader should be able to get all the way to page 595, then take a week break and throw up a little in his mouth to read the last 19 pages. This technique provides angst, uncertainty, and a palpable sense of dread in the reader.
Johnson: Okay.
Super Advanced Techniques
#55. Bewilder the critics with writing that seems novel, insightful, ageless, and emotive, when in reality the writing is:
FOR ME, this was a waste of 614 pages worth of reading time that I could have spent more favorably on a 2- or even 3-star book. Halfway through the book, I couldn't distinguish between several of the characters. This book was a battle of wills, not a battle of wits--who can outlast the other, reader vs writer. It's an extremely forgetful book. Look at the numbers on ŷ. Out of 3.5 million members only 2100 people have read it. This is what happens when critics--and their oversized need to be first to herald a novel--read books instead of you or me. I'm done with this review. I'm at a loss.....just don't read it.
#3. Explore a topic of great controversy for the country and its people.
Johnson: the Vietnam War.
#6. Story must be sweeping, at least 500 pages.
Johnson: 614.
#7. Include at least 5 main characters with individual story threads.
Johnson: 8.
7.a. Threads should intertwine but not entirely.
Johnson: Check.
7.b. A few threads should be independent entirely.
Johnson: 6.
7.c. Some characters should be related.
Johnson: Father and son.
7.d. Characters should be male and female.
Johnson: One female.
7.f. One character should suffer a breakdown.
Johnson: Yep, a crazy one who thinks himself a pagan god.
7.j. One character should be hung.
Johnson: Check.
7.k. Character can be foreign.
Johnson: One.
#8. Story should span several years.
Johnson: Takes place from 1963-1983.
#11. Use realistic, pejorative language--with plenty of slang and local color and colloquialisms.
Johnson: Military jargon.
#12. Some characters should fall in love (and the other character shouldn't find out until years later by receiving letters from death row in Malaysia, but five years after being hung at the gallows, being caught for running guns).
Johnson: Followed to a 'T.'
#17. If appropriate to story, use substantial violence.
Johnson: Check.
#19. Include scenes of sexual relations.
Johnson: Check.
#20. Some characters must die.
Johnson: Check, check, check.
#23. Include many breaks within your chapters; pace yourself.
Johnson: At least 20 breaks in all Chapters.
#33. Chapters should remain untitled, or labelled with minimal reference to story.
Johnson: Chapters labelled by dates only.
#34. Story should include a written letter.
Johnson: 15+.
Advanced Techniques
#37. Story can be crazy, twisted, and leave the reader feeling like they smoked a water bong.
Johnson: Used to great extent.
#44. Story can actually make no sense at all, as long as it seems like it's going somewhere.
Johnson: Check.
44.b. As a cover for the story going nowhere, and if it's a story about the Vietnam War, you can use as subject matter a thread about Psychological Operations--that way the story can be written as an outgrowth of the zany and clandestine techniques used by the PsyOps soldiers.
Johnson: Right on.
44.e. The book could be written so that the reader can remove any 5 pages at random and reinsert them at a different place in the book, and it would make absolutely no difference to the story overall. (Remember, this is an advanced technique)
Johnson: Really, you can do that? I'll overexert myself with this one.
#46. Some of the characters can be unlikeable.
Johnson: All of them
#49. Reader should be able to get all the way to page 595, then take a week break and throw up a little in his mouth to read the last 19 pages. This technique provides angst, uncertainty, and a palpable sense of dread in the reader.
Johnson: Okay.
Super Advanced Techniques
#55. Bewilder the critics with writing that seems novel, insightful, ageless, and emotive, when in reality the writing is:
55.a. Boring.
55.b. Uninspired.
55.c. Overworked.
55.d. Unaffective.
55.e. Especially disorganized, discordant, and disagreeable.
Johnson: Agree with all.
FOR ME, this was a waste of 614 pages worth of reading time that I could have spent more favorably on a 2- or even 3-star book. Halfway through the book, I couldn't distinguish between several of the characters. This book was a battle of wills, not a battle of wits--who can outlast the other, reader vs writer. It's an extremely forgetful book. Look at the numbers on ŷ. Out of 3.5 million members only 2100 people have read it. This is what happens when critics--and their oversized need to be first to herald a novel--read books instead of you or me. I'm done with this review. I'm at a loss.....just don't read it.
August 25, 2023
C’ERA UNA VOLTA UNA GUERRA
”Se non stiamo dalla parte di nessuno, nessuno si fiderà di noi. Rimarremo in mezzo. Quelli che si comportano così finiscono sempre rinchiusi in qualche campo, indipendentemente da chi vince.�
“E così ti sei messo con gli americani. Se gli americani vinceranno, potremo restare.�
“No. Gli americani non vinceranno. Non combattono per la loro patria. Vogliono solo essere buoni. Per essere buoni, devono solo combattere un po� e poi andarsene.�
C’� un soldato americano di diciotto anni a caccia nella giungla filippina. La giungla è quella subito dietro il bar dove il giovane ha ampiamente scolato bicchieri e bottiglie. Vede una scimmia aggrappata a un ramo e senza pensarci due volte la inquadra nel mirino e spara. Poi corre a prenderla in braccio e:
Si accorse, dapprima rapito, poi orripilato, che l’animale stava piangendo. Aveva il respiro rotto dai singhiozzi e le lacrime gli sgorgavano dagli occhi a ogni battito di palpebre. Guardava qua e là senza mostrare un particolare interesse per il marinaio.
Una delle rappresentazioni della colpa più potenti che io abbia mai letto.
C’� un giovane vietnamita più o meno della stessa età, forse un paio d’anni in più. Si da fuoco nella giungla dietro casa. Non come i monaci che si auto-incendiano in pubblico, per dimostrare, per protestare: questo ragazzo si auto-immola in privato, lontano dai riflettori. A stento si viene a sapere della sua morte, del suo sacrificio.
C’� un prete cattolico, è americano, ma vive da così tanto tempo nella giungla filippina che è più a suo agio con i dialetti locali che con la sua lingua madre. Sogna gesù senza volto, riflette molto su Giuda e il suo tradimento, ragiona sul senso di colpa, e a me evoca tanto Graham Greene. Fa una marcia di due giorni interi in compagnia di musulmani, buddisti, confuciani: ma non credo sia per questo che la CIA lo tiene sotto osservazione.
Buttavano bombe a mano dentro le capanne amputando braccia e gambe a contadini ignoranti, salvavano cuccioli affamati e se li portavano a casa, in Mississippi, nascosti sotto la camicia, incendiavano interi villaggi e violentavano bambine, rubavano jeep cariche di medicine per salvare la vita agli orfani.
A pagina duecento il romanzo e io lettore arriviamo a casa: comincia la parte vietnamita. Dopo 200 pagine di Filippine, Hawaii, Arizona, California e altro, la vicenda approda al luogo che si attendeva dal principio. Godimento estetico e struggimento morale.
E ben presto è chiara la missione che accomuna i protagonisti, americani e vietnamiti: la missione di mappare i tunnel dei vietcong. E riempirli di sostanze psicotrope inodori: tipo scopolamina, LSD� E così:
Quei bastardi correranno fuori dai loro buchi con il cervello fuso di brutto.
Ora, ricordando che anche gli altri bastardi, quelli che volevano fondere il cervello dei vietcong erano uomini col cervello piuttosto spappolato e fuso da quello che buttavano giù e buttavano dentro di loro sponte e da quello che le loro autorità senza chiedere il permesso gli somministravano: ora direi che la missione più che far parte delle Psy Ops nel senso di operazioni psicologiche, fa parte delle operazioni psichiatriche.
A cavallo tra The Quiet American di Graham Greene (anche questo ambientato in Vietnam, anche questo spy story immersa nel mistero) e il capolavoro di Joseph Heller Catch 22 con la sua satira corrosiva e le deliranti situazioni al limite del paradosso e dell’assurdo:
”Non immaginavo cosa potesse fare una guerra.�
“Dopo un po� diventa divertente. Non sto scherzando. Sei talmente fuori di testa che cominci a ridere.�
E qui mi pare si agganci, quasi automaticamente, un altro capolavoro, Dispatches - Dispacci di Michael Herr.
Ma Johnson non ha fatto la guerra del Vietnam, non è diventato scrittore per raccontare la sua esperienza bellica, e il suo mastodontico romanzo è apparso (2007) quando ormai sembrava si fosse detto tutto su questo episodio storico: e però si portò a casa il National Book Award, che non è un premio qualsiasi.
Il novantanove per cento della merda che mi passa per la testa tutti i giorni è contro la legge. Ma qui no. Qui la merda che ho in testa “è� la legge, nient’altro che la legge.
Questo Tree of Smoke (chiaro riferimento al fungo atomico), data la mole, verrebbe da definirlo fluviale. O torrenziale. Ma a me non pare che il ritmo sia così impetuoso: ci sono, sì, fulminee accelerazioni, ma anche vari momenti di stagnazione e galleggiamento.
Però, per restare nella metafora acquatica, parlerei di “mare dell’essere�, e di affluenti ed emissari, corsi narrativi che si immettono nella storia principale o che da essa gemmano.
Di conseguenza è facile intuire che i personaggi sono tanti: ma rimangono tutti impressi, tutti ben incisi, ciascuno con le sue peculiarità.
Dal 1963 al 1970 - con una struggente coda ambientata nel 1983 - si snoda il racconto di Johnson che regala insieme al romanzo di guerra, alla storia di spie e alla satira feroce già segnalate, anche una “meditazione spirituale�, qualche esercizio di critica letteraria (Artaud, Bataille, Cioran, William Carlos Williams�), prosa di viaggio (Johnson fu reporter per il New Yorker e altre testate), una bella storia di sesso e amore. E si candida a essere la madre di tutte le storie di guerra in Vietnam. E a chiudere il cerchio. Ogni innocenza persa.
Bè, per un po� ti dispiace per i bambini, per un mese, due mesi, tre mesi. Ti dispiace per i bambini, ti dispiace per gli animali, non ti fai le donne, non ammazzi gli animali, ma poi ti rendi conto che sei in una zona di guerra e che tutti quanti ci sono in mezzo. Te ne freghi se questa gente domani sarà viva o morta, te ne freghi se tu stesso domani sarai vivo o morto, e allora prendi a calci i bambini, ti fai le donne, spari agli animali.
Albero di fumo
”Se non stiamo dalla parte di nessuno, nessuno si fiderà di noi. Rimarremo in mezzo. Quelli che si comportano così finiscono sempre rinchiusi in qualche campo, indipendentemente da chi vince.�
“E così ti sei messo con gli americani. Se gli americani vinceranno, potremo restare.�
“No. Gli americani non vinceranno. Non combattono per la loro patria. Vogliono solo essere buoni. Per essere buoni, devono solo combattere un po� e poi andarsene.�
C’� un soldato americano di diciotto anni a caccia nella giungla filippina. La giungla è quella subito dietro il bar dove il giovane ha ampiamente scolato bicchieri e bottiglie. Vede una scimmia aggrappata a un ramo e senza pensarci due volte la inquadra nel mirino e spara. Poi corre a prenderla in braccio e:
Si accorse, dapprima rapito, poi orripilato, che l’animale stava piangendo. Aveva il respiro rotto dai singhiozzi e le lacrime gli sgorgavano dagli occhi a ogni battito di palpebre. Guardava qua e là senza mostrare un particolare interesse per il marinaio.
Una delle rappresentazioni della colpa più potenti che io abbia mai letto.
C’� un giovane vietnamita più o meno della stessa età, forse un paio d’anni in più. Si da fuoco nella giungla dietro casa. Non come i monaci che si auto-incendiano in pubblico, per dimostrare, per protestare: questo ragazzo si auto-immola in privato, lontano dai riflettori. A stento si viene a sapere della sua morte, del suo sacrificio.
C’� un prete cattolico, è americano, ma vive da così tanto tempo nella giungla filippina che è più a suo agio con i dialetti locali che con la sua lingua madre. Sogna gesù senza volto, riflette molto su Giuda e il suo tradimento, ragiona sul senso di colpa, e a me evoca tanto Graham Greene. Fa una marcia di due giorni interi in compagnia di musulmani, buddisti, confuciani: ma non credo sia per questo che la CIA lo tiene sotto osservazione.
Buttavano bombe a mano dentro le capanne amputando braccia e gambe a contadini ignoranti, salvavano cuccioli affamati e se li portavano a casa, in Mississippi, nascosti sotto la camicia, incendiavano interi villaggi e violentavano bambine, rubavano jeep cariche di medicine per salvare la vita agli orfani.
A pagina duecento il romanzo e io lettore arriviamo a casa: comincia la parte vietnamita. Dopo 200 pagine di Filippine, Hawaii, Arizona, California e altro, la vicenda approda al luogo che si attendeva dal principio. Godimento estetico e struggimento morale.
E ben presto è chiara la missione che accomuna i protagonisti, americani e vietnamiti: la missione di mappare i tunnel dei vietcong. E riempirli di sostanze psicotrope inodori: tipo scopolamina, LSD� E così:
Quei bastardi correranno fuori dai loro buchi con il cervello fuso di brutto.
Ora, ricordando che anche gli altri bastardi, quelli che volevano fondere il cervello dei vietcong erano uomini col cervello piuttosto spappolato e fuso da quello che buttavano giù e buttavano dentro di loro sponte e da quello che le loro autorità senza chiedere il permesso gli somministravano: ora direi che la missione più che far parte delle Psy Ops nel senso di operazioni psicologiche, fa parte delle operazioni psichiatriche.
A cavallo tra The Quiet American di Graham Greene (anche questo ambientato in Vietnam, anche questo spy story immersa nel mistero) e il capolavoro di Joseph Heller Catch 22 con la sua satira corrosiva e le deliranti situazioni al limite del paradosso e dell’assurdo:
”Non immaginavo cosa potesse fare una guerra.�
“Dopo un po� diventa divertente. Non sto scherzando. Sei talmente fuori di testa che cominci a ridere.�
E qui mi pare si agganci, quasi automaticamente, un altro capolavoro, Dispatches - Dispacci di Michael Herr.
Ma Johnson non ha fatto la guerra del Vietnam, non è diventato scrittore per raccontare la sua esperienza bellica, e il suo mastodontico romanzo è apparso (2007) quando ormai sembrava si fosse detto tutto su questo episodio storico: e però si portò a casa il National Book Award, che non è un premio qualsiasi.
Il novantanove per cento della merda che mi passa per la testa tutti i giorni è contro la legge. Ma qui no. Qui la merda che ho in testa “è� la legge, nient’altro che la legge.
Questo Tree of Smoke (chiaro riferimento al fungo atomico), data la mole, verrebbe da definirlo fluviale. O torrenziale. Ma a me non pare che il ritmo sia così impetuoso: ci sono, sì, fulminee accelerazioni, ma anche vari momenti di stagnazione e galleggiamento.
Però, per restare nella metafora acquatica, parlerei di “mare dell’essere�, e di affluenti ed emissari, corsi narrativi che si immettono nella storia principale o che da essa gemmano.
Di conseguenza è facile intuire che i personaggi sono tanti: ma rimangono tutti impressi, tutti ben incisi, ciascuno con le sue peculiarità.
Dal 1963 al 1970 - con una struggente coda ambientata nel 1983 - si snoda il racconto di Johnson che regala insieme al romanzo di guerra, alla storia di spie e alla satira feroce già segnalate, anche una “meditazione spirituale�, qualche esercizio di critica letteraria (Artaud, Bataille, Cioran, William Carlos Williams�), prosa di viaggio (Johnson fu reporter per il New Yorker e altre testate), una bella storia di sesso e amore. E si candida a essere la madre di tutte le storie di guerra in Vietnam. E a chiudere il cerchio. Ogni innocenza persa.
Bè, per un po� ti dispiace per i bambini, per un mese, due mesi, tre mesi. Ti dispiace per i bambini, ti dispiace per gli animali, non ti fai le donne, non ammazzi gli animali, ma poi ti rendi conto che sei in una zona di guerra e che tutti quanti ci sono in mezzo. Te ne freghi se questa gente domani sarà viva o morta, te ne freghi se tu stesso domani sarai vivo o morto, e allora prendi a calci i bambini, ti fai le donne, spari agli animali.
Albero di fumo
May 12, 2008
From this book I learned to carefully check materials before checking them out of my local library. When I saw Tree of Smoke on the shelf, I happily checked it out and couldn't wait to get it home and start reading it. I am a fan of Denis Johnson's work, and this was his first novel in about nine years.
When I flipped to the title page, there was what looked like a flattened booger on it. I really wanted to read the book so I quickly flipped the page and started reading anyway. A few minutes later I looked down and saw the flattened booger thing ON ME! I flung it away, but it made me gag.
Anyway, I enjoyed the book, but the whole time reading it I was wary of finding any additional surprises. Thankfully, there were none.
This is a story about the Vietnam War told in chapters titled with the years 1963 through 1970. The last chapter takes place in 1983. One of my favorite passages was as follows, and I think it rings true for many places in our world today:
"They were born into a land at war. Born into a time of trial that never ends.
What I don't think has been talked about is the fact that in order to be Hell, the people in Hell could never be sure they were really there. If God told them they were in Hell, then the torment of uncertainty would be relieved from them, and their torment wouldn't be complete without that nagging question - "Is this suffering I see all around me my eternal damnation and the eternal damnation of all these souls, or is it just a temporary journey?" A temporary journey in the fallen world."
When I flipped to the title page, there was what looked like a flattened booger on it. I really wanted to read the book so I quickly flipped the page and started reading anyway. A few minutes later I looked down and saw the flattened booger thing ON ME! I flung it away, but it made me gag.
Anyway, I enjoyed the book, but the whole time reading it I was wary of finding any additional surprises. Thankfully, there were none.
This is a story about the Vietnam War told in chapters titled with the years 1963 through 1970. The last chapter takes place in 1983. One of my favorite passages was as follows, and I think it rings true for many places in our world today:
"They were born into a land at war. Born into a time of trial that never ends.
What I don't think has been talked about is the fact that in order to be Hell, the people in Hell could never be sure they were really there. If God told them they were in Hell, then the torment of uncertainty would be relieved from them, and their torment wouldn't be complete without that nagging question - "Is this suffering I see all around me my eternal damnation and the eternal damnation of all these souls, or is it just a temporary journey?" A temporary journey in the fallen world."
March 29, 2008
I am not reviewing this book, as I consider myself to be utterly unqualified and am not sufficiently infatuated with my own sense of taste. I liked it. A lot. Hence the stars. There.
What I'm really delighting in right now, however, is how thoroughly unqualified B.R. Myers proved himself to be as well. His Atlantic Monthly review (found at: ) of "Tree of Smoke" is a display of such blind zealotry that I can't decide between crying out for him to be publicly horsewhipped and merely laughing my ass off. But I am struggling to be humane.
Being a critic, Mr. Myers is not troubled by such concerns. He is unremittingly cruel, and clearly shocked at the rest of the world's (and most especially, as will be seen, Philip Roth's) refusal to follow suit. His complaints about Johnson's prose amount to little more than petulant squealing against impressionism in literature, with every example given being backed up either by his glaring misinterpretations of the text, or simply not at all. Because it's so obvious, you see. Yes.
His status as one who has long ago vanished up his own asshole is most glaringly confirmed in his declarations concerning what people can and can not feel. For the sake of space I'll ignore his charming notion that eighteen-year-old soldiers do not behave irrationally "during a sudden and intense firefight" (and not just "a", Mr. Myers, but the lad's very first), or address the questionable ethics behind his constant ignoring of any sort of context. (I'm in danger of committing some of his crimes here, I know--please be patient.) Myers apparently considers the limiting of variety in human experience a proof of how very far-reaching is his wisdom in all things literary. From the aforementioned implication as to the inability of American youths to have strayed beyond a certain range of behavior during their time in tropical Vietnam, to the impossibility of deranged persons being anything other than blind to all of human nature--with a gem somewhere in the middle as to every living male's being incapable of describing their respective genitalia in terms not centered around massiveness--it was difficult to resist the notion that, if pressed, Myers could count off the differences that are manifested in humanity with the aid of his digits, and without having to take off more than one of his oxfords.
And woe unto the unsuspecting hack who should dare to claim otherwise! And further woe unto the nation that supports such hackdom, for that nation shall summon forth no other than George W. Bush to punish it for such despicable ignorance! That's right, my friends: G-dub himself is our karmic retribution for our abominable literary taste! I quote, because it's just too lovely to avoid:
"It would be foolish to demand another Tolstoy, but shouldn’t we expect someone writing about the Vietnam War to have more sense and eloquence than the politicians who prosecuted it?
Those two qualities are linked. There can be no deep thought without the proper use of words, as our current president never fails to demonstrate. This is why it is dangerous to hold up bad English as good[punctuation missing]and why Philip Roth should know better than to announce that Johnson writes 'prose of amazing power and stylishness.' There are people who will take that seriously...
The 'application of word to thing' has been rotting for some time now, and in the very terms described. The social and political consequences are all around us. Literati who contribute to the rot[punctuation missing]whether to preserve a writer’s reputation, to stimulate the book market, or simply to go with the flow[punctuation missing]have no right to complain about incoherent government."
I shit you not. The man's nuts, a total whack-job. He shames barrels of monkeys.
In truth, I can find no more convincing praise for Denis Johnson's fine work than the spastic ravings of such a one as B.R. Myers; had I come across this review beforehand, I would have scooped up "Tree of Smoke" immediately and filled myself up with the poetry and humanity the novel is so rich with, if for no other reason than to make of myself one more harbinger of that inept critic's personal Apocalypse. At this late date, all I can do is embrace my role as a "Tree of Smoke" supporter, and from this become the catalyst for every instance of political misfortune and artistic dissolution that Myers can imagine.
This I do unabashedly and with great joy.
[note: Lest I be accused of pettiness, I should state that I more than suspect the points of missing punctuation that run rampantly through his review to be a fault related to the website. They are, unfortunately, still there, and I've no paper copy available to aid me in their correction. They're probably hyphens.]
What I'm really delighting in right now, however, is how thoroughly unqualified B.R. Myers proved himself to be as well. His Atlantic Monthly review (found at: ) of "Tree of Smoke" is a display of such blind zealotry that I can't decide between crying out for him to be publicly horsewhipped and merely laughing my ass off. But I am struggling to be humane.
Being a critic, Mr. Myers is not troubled by such concerns. He is unremittingly cruel, and clearly shocked at the rest of the world's (and most especially, as will be seen, Philip Roth's) refusal to follow suit. His complaints about Johnson's prose amount to little more than petulant squealing against impressionism in literature, with every example given being backed up either by his glaring misinterpretations of the text, or simply not at all. Because it's so obvious, you see. Yes.
His status as one who has long ago vanished up his own asshole is most glaringly confirmed in his declarations concerning what people can and can not feel. For the sake of space I'll ignore his charming notion that eighteen-year-old soldiers do not behave irrationally "during a sudden and intense firefight" (and not just "a", Mr. Myers, but the lad's very first), or address the questionable ethics behind his constant ignoring of any sort of context. (I'm in danger of committing some of his crimes here, I know--please be patient.) Myers apparently considers the limiting of variety in human experience a proof of how very far-reaching is his wisdom in all things literary. From the aforementioned implication as to the inability of American youths to have strayed beyond a certain range of behavior during their time in tropical Vietnam, to the impossibility of deranged persons being anything other than blind to all of human nature--with a gem somewhere in the middle as to every living male's being incapable of describing their respective genitalia in terms not centered around massiveness--it was difficult to resist the notion that, if pressed, Myers could count off the differences that are manifested in humanity with the aid of his digits, and without having to take off more than one of his oxfords.
And woe unto the unsuspecting hack who should dare to claim otherwise! And further woe unto the nation that supports such hackdom, for that nation shall summon forth no other than George W. Bush to punish it for such despicable ignorance! That's right, my friends: G-dub himself is our karmic retribution for our abominable literary taste! I quote, because it's just too lovely to avoid:
"It would be foolish to demand another Tolstoy, but shouldn’t we expect someone writing about the Vietnam War to have more sense and eloquence than the politicians who prosecuted it?
Those two qualities are linked. There can be no deep thought without the proper use of words, as our current president never fails to demonstrate. This is why it is dangerous to hold up bad English as good[punctuation missing]and why Philip Roth should know better than to announce that Johnson writes 'prose of amazing power and stylishness.' There are people who will take that seriously...
The 'application of word to thing' has been rotting for some time now, and in the very terms described. The social and political consequences are all around us. Literati who contribute to the rot[punctuation missing]whether to preserve a writer’s reputation, to stimulate the book market, or simply to go with the flow[punctuation missing]have no right to complain about incoherent government."
I shit you not. The man's nuts, a total whack-job. He shames barrels of monkeys.
In truth, I can find no more convincing praise for Denis Johnson's fine work than the spastic ravings of such a one as B.R. Myers; had I come across this review beforehand, I would have scooped up "Tree of Smoke" immediately and filled myself up with the poetry and humanity the novel is so rich with, if for no other reason than to make of myself one more harbinger of that inept critic's personal Apocalypse. At this late date, all I can do is embrace my role as a "Tree of Smoke" supporter, and from this become the catalyst for every instance of political misfortune and artistic dissolution that Myers can imagine.
This I do unabashedly and with great joy.
[note: Lest I be accused of pettiness, I should state that I more than suspect the points of missing punctuation that run rampantly through his review to be a fault related to the website. They are, unfortunately, still there, and I've no paper copy available to aid me in their correction. They're probably hyphens.]
December 15, 2015
This book was my own personal Vietnam. An unwinnable war of attrition which I nevertheless remained committed to winning for an almost absurd amount of time. More significant things happened in my own life during the time I was reading it than happened in the first 400 pages of the book itself. Okay, objectively that's a lie, I suppose. But that's how it seemed!
Denis "Missing a Letter" Johnson is supposed to be a great writer, and I can almost believe he is, but that's just what it would be: a belief. Because I saw no evidence of real, actual good writing in this book. The language was competent but not interesting. The characters were bland ciphers and caricatures. The dialogue was Delillo-esque, but in a crank-turner way, not in a good way.
I'm going to go a step further and say this book reawakened in me a vague, sneering disdain for "serious" literature that had been lying peacefully dormant for the entire time I've been using this site.* It made me hate and fear the act of reading itself. So I'm going against my normal custom of finishing books no matter the cost--because this time the cost is too great.
Is there any way I can tag Paul Bryant here? Because I've never felt like I had more in common with him than I do right now.
*I can actually pinpoint the exact moment when this disdain receded into a forgotten corner of my mind. It was in March of 2008, after years of reading nothing more literary than The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when I read the first page of Infinite Jest and realized I'd made a terrible mistake.
Denis "Missing a Letter" Johnson is supposed to be a great writer, and I can almost believe he is, but that's just what it would be: a belief. Because I saw no evidence of real, actual good writing in this book. The language was competent but not interesting. The characters were bland ciphers and caricatures. The dialogue was Delillo-esque, but in a crank-turner way, not in a good way.
I'm going to go a step further and say this book reawakened in me a vague, sneering disdain for "serious" literature that had been lying peacefully dormant for the entire time I've been using this site.* It made me hate and fear the act of reading itself. So I'm going against my normal custom of finishing books no matter the cost--because this time the cost is too great.
Is there any way I can tag Paul Bryant here? Because I've never felt like I had more in common with him than I do right now.
*I can actually pinpoint the exact moment when this disdain receded into a forgotten corner of my mind. It was in March of 2008, after years of reading nothing more literary than The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when I read the first page of Infinite Jest and realized I'd made a terrible mistake.
March 23, 2025
This is not a Vietnam War novel in the way Platoon or Full Metal Jacket were Vietnam war movies; it's not even close. For one thing this starts early in the 60s and ends in the early 80s, taking in south-east Asia and America, and has very little actually fighting: it is more focused on planning rather than execution in regards combat. I can only remember one piece of actual combat, and that may or may not have even been waged against the real enemy. Johnson's focus lies in what goes on in the shadows; in the background, politically and cunningly speaking: the CIA. Basically the novel is awash with deceit where, just like certain characters, the reader is left in the dark as to who is really doing what; whether a double (agent) is in fact a triple; and where just when you think a major revelation could occur, he puts it again under lock and key: This is not about revelations or missions actually being accomplished. Johnson alternates between a Kurtz-like Colonel and his nephew, Skip; an aid-worker and activist who ends up having a love affair with Skip; a North Vietnamese recruited as a double; and the fucked-up Houston brothers, James & Bill, both members of the American military, which sees Bill returning to the States much earlier than James, who is at the sharp end of the conflict. So many other characters come and go too. Johnson crams in a hell of a lot of dialogue, which can go on for absolutely ages; sometimes with the feeling that it's contributing nothing at all, yet on the whole I thought it some of the finest dialogue of recent times in an American novel. I found its 600+ pages also, felt more like a 1000, so it's easily Johnson's most sprawling and toughest book to get through. Like it says inside the cover (which is absolutely spot on) it's like Joseph Heller and Don DeLillo collaborated on a Vietnam novel, with, for me, Graham Greene's The Quiet American somewhere in the background. I've always admired Johnson; Jesus' Son in particular blew me away, and this was a mightily dense effort that I personally didn't think he had it in him to write. I personally thought it was great, and even months on from reading it, parts are still vividly flashing through my mind: some of the journeys through nature were simply stunning, but I get why there are those that will hate it. It's not like Gravity's Rainbow; not by a long shot, but it is that sort of novel that will set off either a love or hate relationship; there isn't really any middle ground.
October 19, 2023
Tree of Smoke: The Lords of Fear & Discord
'Tree of Smoke': the title could be a metaphor for Johnson's accomplishment with this novel. If the 'smoke' is the stylistic mastery of prose he's always possessed, the 'tree' would be the solid, organic story at the novel's core. He's always had more substance behind his narrative than some of the other great American stylists, like Don Delillo; but Tree of Smoke is far richer in character and plot than anything he's written before. The naysayers can go fuck themselves. This novel deserved the National Book Award more than any novel written in the past decade.
Denis Johnson has given convincing evidence of his utter mastery of prose with 'Jesus' Son', his collection of inter-connected stories about a young man drifting across the American landscape, ravaged by various addictions, and accumulating tragedies along the way. 'Already Dead', 'Angels', 'Resuscitation of a Hanged Man', 'The Stars At Noon': every one of these titles feature writing that is effortlessly poetic, but never pretentious or arrogant, the trap that several great writers have been unable to avoid. The novels of Don Delillo, for example (since I've already started picking on him), are marred by his swaggering, 'I'm a fucking genius super-writer' attitude.
Denis Johnson, looking justifiably smug about the National Book Award. "I'm a literary icon. I only hang out in front of buildings that match my shirt.":
Even the greatest writing needs a plot that pulls the reader along, a framework of characters and motivations to build the story up. While Don Delillo remains one of the English language's foremost stylists - alongside Michael Ondaatje, Charles Frazier, Cormac McCarthy and Ron Hansen - Johnson is both a natural stylist and a natural storyteller. He is a rare breed of writer, and only McCarthy displays those same preternatural gifts.
In Tree of Smoke, Johnson has created a masterpiece of historical fiction, a brilliant and complex tale of the CIA's involvement in Southeast Asia and Vietnam in the years leading up to the war. It follows Bobby 'Skip' Sands, fresh out of an intensive training regime that taught him the language and cultural understanding he would need on his vague assignment. He finds it difficult to make sense of his work for 'The Colonel' - who is also his uncle - a charismatic and superficially gregarious man that Sands has little in common with.
The Colonel has a great deal of blood on his hands, and some radical ideas about using psychological warfare to demoralize the enemy. His patriotism is like a weight that is crushing his soul; he has a maudlin sentimentality when he starts drinking, but as he gets drunker, his rambling takes on an ugly, nihilistic tone.
As Skip begins to worry about the Tree of Smoke - a massive collection of cards containing names, places, dates, religious beliefs, superstitions, indigenous flora and fauna, local foods, tribal medicines, political leanings, etc, which he is tasked with categorizing and cross-referencing into a pre-digital intelligence database - he is warned by a peer to distance himself from his uncle, due to some mysterious proposal that has his superiors questioning his mental fitness.
Oooo, a fancy diagram! No I have not given you any reason to care about the details it contains. But... it's topical and it looks all serious and shit. Look out! He's got diagrams and he's prepared to use them!
Sands feels himself more isolated than ever, but finds some solace in a sad affair with a Canadian relief worker whose husband disappeared in the jungle, likely the victim of any one of the many human predators who hunt there. It also tells the story from another side, that of the Houston brothers, who left the desolate future they saw for themselves in exchange for a senseless nightmare. Their experiences are initially woven into the larger tale as anecdotal digressions, as one brother leaves the small, impoverished hometown, and makes glancing contact with the Colonel and Sands. Then the younger brother finds his way to the hell that is simmering in Southeast Asia, becoming more directly entangled in the madness that has already taken root in the heart of the CIA and PsyOps.
Johnson found in Tree of Smoke the story that will establish him as one of the great English-language writers. Regardless what's said about it on ŷ, where it currently has 3.57 stars out of five, 'Tree of Smoke' will endure. If you're looking for a 'fun read', just keep on walking. This isn't entertainment, this is big-L soul-scorching Literature. It's compelling, and it's intellectually nourishing, a story that will tattoo itself on your bones and fatten up your neurons.
'Tree of Smoke': the title could be a metaphor for Johnson's accomplishment with this novel. If the 'smoke' is the stylistic mastery of prose he's always possessed, the 'tree' would be the solid, organic story at the novel's core. He's always had more substance behind his narrative than some of the other great American stylists, like Don Delillo; but Tree of Smoke is far richer in character and plot than anything he's written before. The naysayers can go fuck themselves. This novel deserved the National Book Award more than any novel written in the past decade.
Denis Johnson has given convincing evidence of his utter mastery of prose with 'Jesus' Son', his collection of inter-connected stories about a young man drifting across the American landscape, ravaged by various addictions, and accumulating tragedies along the way. 'Already Dead', 'Angels', 'Resuscitation of a Hanged Man', 'The Stars At Noon': every one of these titles feature writing that is effortlessly poetic, but never pretentious or arrogant, the trap that several great writers have been unable to avoid. The novels of Don Delillo, for example (since I've already started picking on him), are marred by his swaggering, 'I'm a fucking genius super-writer' attitude.
Denis Johnson, looking justifiably smug about the National Book Award. "I'm a literary icon. I only hang out in front of buildings that match my shirt.":
Even the greatest writing needs a plot that pulls the reader along, a framework of characters and motivations to build the story up. While Don Delillo remains one of the English language's foremost stylists - alongside Michael Ondaatje, Charles Frazier, Cormac McCarthy and Ron Hansen - Johnson is both a natural stylist and a natural storyteller. He is a rare breed of writer, and only McCarthy displays those same preternatural gifts.
In Tree of Smoke, Johnson has created a masterpiece of historical fiction, a brilliant and complex tale of the CIA's involvement in Southeast Asia and Vietnam in the years leading up to the war. It follows Bobby 'Skip' Sands, fresh out of an intensive training regime that taught him the language and cultural understanding he would need on his vague assignment. He finds it difficult to make sense of his work for 'The Colonel' - who is also his uncle - a charismatic and superficially gregarious man that Sands has little in common with.
The Colonel has a great deal of blood on his hands, and some radical ideas about using psychological warfare to demoralize the enemy. His patriotism is like a weight that is crushing his soul; he has a maudlin sentimentality when he starts drinking, but as he gets drunker, his rambling takes on an ugly, nihilistic tone.
As Skip begins to worry about the Tree of Smoke - a massive collection of cards containing names, places, dates, religious beliefs, superstitions, indigenous flora and fauna, local foods, tribal medicines, political leanings, etc, which he is tasked with categorizing and cross-referencing into a pre-digital intelligence database - he is warned by a peer to distance himself from his uncle, due to some mysterious proposal that has his superiors questioning his mental fitness.
Oooo, a fancy diagram! No I have not given you any reason to care about the details it contains. But... it's topical and it looks all serious and shit. Look out! He's got diagrams and he's prepared to use them!
Sands feels himself more isolated than ever, but finds some solace in a sad affair with a Canadian relief worker whose husband disappeared in the jungle, likely the victim of any one of the many human predators who hunt there. It also tells the story from another side, that of the Houston brothers, who left the desolate future they saw for themselves in exchange for a senseless nightmare. Their experiences are initially woven into the larger tale as anecdotal digressions, as one brother leaves the small, impoverished hometown, and makes glancing contact with the Colonel and Sands. Then the younger brother finds his way to the hell that is simmering in Southeast Asia, becoming more directly entangled in the madness that has already taken root in the heart of the CIA and PsyOps.
Johnson found in Tree of Smoke the story that will establish him as one of the great English-language writers. Regardless what's said about it on ŷ, where it currently has 3.57 stars out of five, 'Tree of Smoke' will endure. If you're looking for a 'fun read', just keep on walking. This isn't entertainment, this is big-L soul-scorching Literature. It's compelling, and it's intellectually nourishing, a story that will tattoo itself on your bones and fatten up your neurons.
January 5, 2025
This is one hell of a masterpiece. A head trip, descent into a visceral hell that doesn't let go from it's horrific grip. Denis Johnson has written one of the greatest war novels about disillusionment I've read.
I would pair this book with that cinematic masterpiece, “The Deer Hunter�, and Tim O Brien’s “The Things they Carried� as three of the great Vietnam stories I’ve read/seen.
This gripping piece of literature tells the interlocking stories of Skip Sands and the Houston Brothers, James and Bill.
The supporting cast includes Vietnamese and Filipino operatives, sex workers, a traumatized nurse named Kathy; a depressed and concerned mother, families against the Vietnam War, for the Vietnam War; the setting during a horrific time in American History- a world swept away trying to protect an ideal that becomes a living nightmare day by day for the GIs who have been indoctrinated in its violent and harrowing world.
The three suffer "the tree of smoke, note similarity to mushroom cloud" (Johnson 289) where they live a haze of never ending heartache and senselessness, "none of us are going to come out of here any too happy, we've lost this war. We've lost heart" (Johnson 487).
Skip and the brothers all face different demons and suffer PTSD in varying degrees of death wishes that disturb the mind and haunt the reader. Mr. Johnson has written some of the most detailed and beautifully rendered sentences of horror and trauma that I've read.
An example of this includes, "The wanton history of the Southeast Asian night, he loved it as passionately as he loved America, but secretly with dark lust, and he admitted to himself without evasion that he didn't care if he never went home" (Johnson 189).
With brutal honesty, one gets used to violence and the grim everyday casualties of war that it becomes a part of their bones, "I try not to get attached. If you're not careful, it can turn into your eye, the only dream you see through" (Johnson 94).
This is a masterful book with passages that are so beautiful and somber, so beautiful and harrowing to read that to reread it might be a traumatic experience- but to slowly savor its language is the best way to process the experience of delving into the lives of three damaged souls.
Postscript: Somehow in 2017 I found myself invited to a memorial for Mr. Johnson after his death, and managed to meet actors like Mike Shannon and Billy Crudup who were friends of his, deliver eulogies that moved me to tears.
I would pair this book with that cinematic masterpiece, “The Deer Hunter�, and Tim O Brien’s “The Things they Carried� as three of the great Vietnam stories I’ve read/seen.
This gripping piece of literature tells the interlocking stories of Skip Sands and the Houston Brothers, James and Bill.
The supporting cast includes Vietnamese and Filipino operatives, sex workers, a traumatized nurse named Kathy; a depressed and concerned mother, families against the Vietnam War, for the Vietnam War; the setting during a horrific time in American History- a world swept away trying to protect an ideal that becomes a living nightmare day by day for the GIs who have been indoctrinated in its violent and harrowing world.
The three suffer "the tree of smoke, note similarity to mushroom cloud" (Johnson 289) where they live a haze of never ending heartache and senselessness, "none of us are going to come out of here any too happy, we've lost this war. We've lost heart" (Johnson 487).
Skip and the brothers all face different demons and suffer PTSD in varying degrees of death wishes that disturb the mind and haunt the reader. Mr. Johnson has written some of the most detailed and beautifully rendered sentences of horror and trauma that I've read.
An example of this includes, "The wanton history of the Southeast Asian night, he loved it as passionately as he loved America, but secretly with dark lust, and he admitted to himself without evasion that he didn't care if he never went home" (Johnson 189).
With brutal honesty, one gets used to violence and the grim everyday casualties of war that it becomes a part of their bones, "I try not to get attached. If you're not careful, it can turn into your eye, the only dream you see through" (Johnson 94).
This is a masterful book with passages that are so beautiful and somber, so beautiful and harrowing to read that to reread it might be a traumatic experience- but to slowly savor its language is the best way to process the experience of delving into the lives of three damaged souls.
Postscript: Somehow in 2017 I found myself invited to a memorial for Mr. Johnson after his death, and managed to meet actors like Mike Shannon and Billy Crudup who were friends of his, deliver eulogies that moved me to tears.
December 5, 2007
(My full review of this book is much longer than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)
So before anything else, a little history lesson...
From the mid-1800s until World War II, the Asian country now known as Vietnam was in actuality controlled by France and operated as a colony; during WWII, then, the Japanese invaded the area so as to install a Vichy-style fascist government. It was the Vietnamese, in fact, who eventually rose up and ran this group out of the country at the end of the war, led and funded by local communists who were being secretly supported by Soviet Russia; at this point the French tried to come back in and re-establish colonialism, but the 'Viet Minh' were having none of it. That led to what's now known as the 'First Vietnam War,' or 'Indochina War' if you want to get technical, which lasted for roughly a decade and which the French (backed secretly by US resources) lost; it led in 1954 to a splitting of the country into a North and South Vietnam, with a referendum two years later that was supposed to politically reunify them again. The referendum never happened, though, because of the US continuing to stockpile more and more military in the southern half of the country; it soon led to the 'Second Vietnam War,' the enemy now known as the Viet Cong, the war many more Americans are familiar with, the one that many people say we lost as well at the end of 1973 (which was more about us giving up fighting, which is why it's contested whether we should call it "losing a war"). And thus did the entirety of Vietnam become communist in the mid-'70s, which was kind of a disaster until 1986 when the country first embraced free-market capitalism; now in 2007 they're one of the economically fastest-growing countries on the planet, certainly of the so-called "third world," and last year hosted over three and a half million international tourists.
I bring you this little tutorial, of course, because you'll need it in order to get through the absolutely mindblowing Tree of Smoke, the latest novel by revered writer Denis Johnson, and a few weeks ago officially the recipient of this year's National Book Award. It. Is. An. Astounding. Book., make no mistake, one that floored me in a particular way a novel hasn't done to me in years; but it's also a book that asks a lot out of you as a reader, not the least of which is a good four to six weeks of commitment, not to mention a fairly good understanding of 20th-century Vietnamese history before starting, plus of course with it presenting a challenge to many radical liberals as to how to think of the very concept of "war" itself. It's one of those big books, you know, and by "big" I mean in a grand, old-skool, James Michener or Herman Wouk kinda way; a book with a dozen main characters, two dozen other minor ones, all of them scattered around the planet and coming to the same central core of a story from a dozen different backgrounds and mindsets. There are good things about such books and bad things; in this case, in my opinion, a lot more good than bad, but that's partly because I'm a big fan of these kinds of novels in the first place. It's certainly one of those books that people love giving awards to, because it feels good to give an award to a book like this; it's a hefty one, not only emotionally and intellectually but also its sheer physical weight, something that makes you feel like you really accomplished something by making it all the way through.
So why does Johnson's name ring a bell, you're thinking? Well, because...
So before anything else, a little history lesson...
From the mid-1800s until World War II, the Asian country now known as Vietnam was in actuality controlled by France and operated as a colony; during WWII, then, the Japanese invaded the area so as to install a Vichy-style fascist government. It was the Vietnamese, in fact, who eventually rose up and ran this group out of the country at the end of the war, led and funded by local communists who were being secretly supported by Soviet Russia; at this point the French tried to come back in and re-establish colonialism, but the 'Viet Minh' were having none of it. That led to what's now known as the 'First Vietnam War,' or 'Indochina War' if you want to get technical, which lasted for roughly a decade and which the French (backed secretly by US resources) lost; it led in 1954 to a splitting of the country into a North and South Vietnam, with a referendum two years later that was supposed to politically reunify them again. The referendum never happened, though, because of the US continuing to stockpile more and more military in the southern half of the country; it soon led to the 'Second Vietnam War,' the enemy now known as the Viet Cong, the war many more Americans are familiar with, the one that many people say we lost as well at the end of 1973 (which was more about us giving up fighting, which is why it's contested whether we should call it "losing a war"). And thus did the entirety of Vietnam become communist in the mid-'70s, which was kind of a disaster until 1986 when the country first embraced free-market capitalism; now in 2007 they're one of the economically fastest-growing countries on the planet, certainly of the so-called "third world," and last year hosted over three and a half million international tourists.
I bring you this little tutorial, of course, because you'll need it in order to get through the absolutely mindblowing Tree of Smoke, the latest novel by revered writer Denis Johnson, and a few weeks ago officially the recipient of this year's National Book Award. It. Is. An. Astounding. Book., make no mistake, one that floored me in a particular way a novel hasn't done to me in years; but it's also a book that asks a lot out of you as a reader, not the least of which is a good four to six weeks of commitment, not to mention a fairly good understanding of 20th-century Vietnamese history before starting, plus of course with it presenting a challenge to many radical liberals as to how to think of the very concept of "war" itself. It's one of those big books, you know, and by "big" I mean in a grand, old-skool, James Michener or Herman Wouk kinda way; a book with a dozen main characters, two dozen other minor ones, all of them scattered around the planet and coming to the same central core of a story from a dozen different backgrounds and mindsets. There are good things about such books and bad things; in this case, in my opinion, a lot more good than bad, but that's partly because I'm a big fan of these kinds of novels in the first place. It's certainly one of those books that people love giving awards to, because it feels good to give an award to a book like this; it's a hefty one, not only emotionally and intellectually but also its sheer physical weight, something that makes you feel like you really accomplished something by making it all the way through.
So why does Johnson's name ring a bell, you're thinking? Well, because...
June 17, 2022
Denis Johnson is an interesting writer and his take on Vietnam is fascinating. I have read two collections of short stories, - this one I found was sort of like if William S Bourroughs had written Trainspotting - and - this one was more poetic and reflective. In , I found a blend of these two characteristics - the battle scenes and the rough lifestyle particularly of the Houston brothers and the realistic, rapidfire dialogue of the former and the interior dialog particularly of Skip as in the latter. In fact, I would say that the book is predominantly dialog and the realism of the exchanges, a nearly Hemingway quality to them, is what pushed me to give this one five stars. I think that I found this book, a Pulitzer runnerup, superior to the Pulitzer winner of 2008 which was ok, but not as powerful or as well written as this one.
The protagonist, Skip, is a young agent of the CIA whose father was killed at Pearl Harbor and is stationed in the Philippines. His uncle is a Colonel and Skip's mentor and boss. A dark mission goes down which Skip is unwittingly a part of before heading to Vietnam. The relationship between the Colonel and Skip is the central one in the book. There is a galaxy of other interesting characters to enrich the story. I enjoyed the battle scenes as well as the descriptions of the various locales where the story takes place.
amer came down the other side of the mountain onto a wide, level
Hell beaten smooth by carabao hooves. Gradually the way narrowed un.
til Carignan had to draw his arms to his chest in order to keep from be
ing savaged by thorns on either side. Saliling led the march, the tip ofhis
spear scraping the leaves overhead and knocking last night's rain into
Carignan's face. The two others crouched behind the priest. Suddenly
Sailing left the trail and lunged into a sea of elephant grass through
which, somewhere in the region of their feet, traveled a six-inch-wide
path. Now they had the sun bearing down from overhead and yet, be-
neath their progress, a thick red mud that seemed alive, clinging to
Carignan's shoes, building up on the soles, clambering up over the sides,
engulfing him up to the ankles. In their bare feet the others ambled over
it easily, while Carignan struggled along among them with his tennis
shoes encased in red cakes as heavy as concrete. He took off his Keds lest
they be stolen by the stuff, and joined them by the laces and dangled
them from his fist. (p. 72)
"The lady's remark set me thinking. We'd both had the same experi-
ence of the place: Here was something more than just an alien environ-
ment. We'd both sensed the administration of an alien God.
"Only a few days before that, couple of days before at the most, really,
Id been reading in my New Testament. My little girl gave it to me. I've
got it right now in my kit." The colonel half rose, sat back down. "But I'll
spare you. The point is -aha! yes! the bastard has a point and isn't too
damn drunk to bring it home- this is the point, Will." Nobody else ever
called him Will. "St. Paul says there is one God, he confirms that, but he
says, There is one God, and many administrations.' I understand that to
mean you can wander out of one universe and into another just by point-
ing your feet and forward march. I mean you can come to a land where
the fate of human beings is completely different from what you under-
stood it to be. And this utterly different universe is administered through
the earth itself. Up through the dirt, goddamn it.
"So what's the point? The point is Vietnam. The point is Vietnam.
The point is Vietnam."
On the whole, it is a compelling read and is one of my preferred novels that deals with the Vietnam War.
August 3, 2011
It's quite true that, from the United States' perspective, the Second World War was the last conflict that could be considered a feel-good success. Everything since has either yet to be concluded, or produced a stalemate or checkmate that provided, at best, a wan satisfaction; at worst, an inflamed and interminable bout of indigestion—and, of the latter, certainly none more painful and unsettling than those long years of struggle that encompassed the Vietnam War. To the nation that defended Southeast Asia from Japan's imperial dream in the mid-Forties it must have seemed that another glorious and successful partnership would be worked in ridding the area of the peril of expansionary communism; to have thus found themselves considered the aggressors, the imperialists, the baby-killers, worked some serious bad juju upon the mindset of America, one from which it took decades to recover its self-esteem; it has still to recover its equilibrium. So it was that upon recent consideration after a long spell of banishment in the shelves, Tree of Smoke held little appeal for me—who wants to revisit that theatre of epic futility, especially when it has seemingly been mined, in film and in print, for all its worth?—but the back cover blurb promising a main character who was a CIA operative engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong planted a seed of interest in my mind that blossomed forth a couple of days later with a strength and pull that I could not resist.
I thought this was really good. I wanted to love it, but I couldn't; I was afraid I might dislike it, but I didn't; it's a book that seems to have divided its readers into two passionate camps, both of whose arguments I can now appreciate—but I'm firmly aligned with its fans, holding this thick, smoky, filmic page-turner to be a flawed work of genius. I didn't care for some of the plot decisions and turns that Johnson opted for, and I was occasionally tempted—though I never acquiesced—to start skimming where I sensed that Johnson was going off on another lengthy and meandering tangent; but neither of these negatives amount to much compared to Johnson's ability to pen fiction of a cinematic quality, in sweltering jungle and arid desert locations, that chronicles the destruction and dissipation and obsessions of various interconnected individuals during the turbid chaos of the Vietnam War. His aptitude for flowing, verisimilar dialogue makes this a novel that is driven by its character's conversations; indeed, it is frequently jarring in that major situations or developments are delivered in succinct summaries at the onset of a new chapter, and the character's subsequent discourses the primary means of fleshing out the details of what exactly transpired and, more importantly, how its ripples will affect the large cast of characters who populate the pages.
Although the story unfolds across select years of the Vietnam War—and concludes with one of its aftermath—its themes are applicable across all modern day conflicts: Johnson's true setting is the Fog of War, and how, beneath its vast, disorienting, and vivifying blanket, all manner of individuals—be they religious care workers, patriotic intelligence officers, Vietnamese regime supporters or communist subversives, raw rookie volunteer infantrymen, or legendary heroic figures—can and do lose their way, become corrupted or degraded or upended or abraded to the degree that they no longer recognize themselves or the combination of means and ends that have seized control of their waking lives. This is a hallucinatory, smothering, violent demesne, with a CIA that is fractured, divided, and working out disparate and competing operations that break both the law and its agents' spirits; while the army is presented as a disorganized and chaotic presence, an arm that allows its soldiers the opportunity to engage in fucking up the Vietnamese, channeling their energies into a murderous violence that ofttimes slips beyond the control of a unit's officers. War is both a hellish nightmare and an ideal and exciting testing ground for men, particularly when they experience it young; every character—but one—eagerly anticipates entering Vietnam, each with various idealizations of what they are there to achieve and how they desire to implement these goals—and each will see these desires crumble, idealizations turn into doubts—everything become shambolic and corrosive. These individuals came into the war with the expectation of having the abstractions that etiolated their lives given definitive form, become reality—but the truth of the matter is that what reality had existed for them was stretched and thinned out, become abstract. Southeast Asia is a sweltering, humid, liquid environment, ripe for dark nights of the soul and diseases of both the flesh and the spirit. The bifurcation of the patient and enduring natives—having cast off the French and now chary of this new power arrived upon their shores—and what they desire for their sorely tested homeland, and the energized, well-intended Americans, with their competitive scheming and convoluted plotting always on the verge of breaking apart into warlordism, is nicely handled.
The story is driven by the trio of William "Skip" Sands, a CIA agent assigned to a Psy-Ops unit headed by his paternal uncle, The Colonel—a larger-than-life legend whose exploits prior to, during, and after the Second World War have taken on a mythological status—and the latter's perfervid and mindfuckery-minded disciple, Jimmy Storm, a sergeant on loan from the US Army. The Colonel has commandeered an Army platoon, a Vietnamese village and adjacent mountain-top Landing-Zone, and a substantial amount of bureaucratic interest and rivalry in his effort to implement a convoluted and precarious scheme to shatter the North Vietnamese Will-To-Fight at the very highest level. Riding escort duty is the intermingled tale of the Houston brothers—Bill, who never sets foot in Vietnam, though—or perhaps because—he is marked by early death experiences; and his younger brother James, an aimless teenager trapped in the dead-end, blue-collar tedium of Phoenix, Arizona, who views service in the war as an opportunity to effect some mayhem whilst collecting a steady paycheque and escape the stifling confines of an existence that scares him—and a spirited nurse for an Orphan's NGO, Kathy Jones, who provides a bit of Canadian fervor and the Calvinistic determinism that threatens to either damn or absolve these characters up front, depending upon which angle of Hell you viewed them from. These figures touch upon the lives of their Filipino and Vietnamese counterparts and servants, who are all working towards their own particular ends, ones that may—or may not—be aligned with a loyalty to their respective foreign benefactors and/or employers.
There is a long introduction that takes place within the Philippines, a prelude to the coming experience of Vietnam—and besides being a brilliantly detailed set piece, it completely and expertly delineates how both Americans and natives will be ruined by their immersion in a conflict without clear-cut borders, endowed with blurry endpoints and enframed by dubious philosophies. This is bookended with a lengthy epilogue in which the reader gets provided with snapshots of the destruction meted out by the passing of the years, the way this terrible tropical conflict has infected its character's lives, and how one particular mythological obsession has seared itself into the flesh; the cooling words of redemptive hope that drop the curtain after seven hundred and two pages offer a brief palliative to these terrible burns—but a palliative only: the scarring is permanent.
I thought this was really good. I wanted to love it, but I couldn't; I was afraid I might dislike it, but I didn't; it's a book that seems to have divided its readers into two passionate camps, both of whose arguments I can now appreciate—but I'm firmly aligned with its fans, holding this thick, smoky, filmic page-turner to be a flawed work of genius. I didn't care for some of the plot decisions and turns that Johnson opted for, and I was occasionally tempted—though I never acquiesced—to start skimming where I sensed that Johnson was going off on another lengthy and meandering tangent; but neither of these negatives amount to much compared to Johnson's ability to pen fiction of a cinematic quality, in sweltering jungle and arid desert locations, that chronicles the destruction and dissipation and obsessions of various interconnected individuals during the turbid chaos of the Vietnam War. His aptitude for flowing, verisimilar dialogue makes this a novel that is driven by its character's conversations; indeed, it is frequently jarring in that major situations or developments are delivered in succinct summaries at the onset of a new chapter, and the character's subsequent discourses the primary means of fleshing out the details of what exactly transpired and, more importantly, how its ripples will affect the large cast of characters who populate the pages.
Although the story unfolds across select years of the Vietnam War—and concludes with one of its aftermath—its themes are applicable across all modern day conflicts: Johnson's true setting is the Fog of War, and how, beneath its vast, disorienting, and vivifying blanket, all manner of individuals—be they religious care workers, patriotic intelligence officers, Vietnamese regime supporters or communist subversives, raw rookie volunteer infantrymen, or legendary heroic figures—can and do lose their way, become corrupted or degraded or upended or abraded to the degree that they no longer recognize themselves or the combination of means and ends that have seized control of their waking lives. This is a hallucinatory, smothering, violent demesne, with a CIA that is fractured, divided, and working out disparate and competing operations that break both the law and its agents' spirits; while the army is presented as a disorganized and chaotic presence, an arm that allows its soldiers the opportunity to engage in fucking up the Vietnamese, channeling their energies into a murderous violence that ofttimes slips beyond the control of a unit's officers. War is both a hellish nightmare and an ideal and exciting testing ground for men, particularly when they experience it young; every character—but one—eagerly anticipates entering Vietnam, each with various idealizations of what they are there to achieve and how they desire to implement these goals—and each will see these desires crumble, idealizations turn into doubts—everything become shambolic and corrosive. These individuals came into the war with the expectation of having the abstractions that etiolated their lives given definitive form, become reality—but the truth of the matter is that what reality had existed for them was stretched and thinned out, become abstract. Southeast Asia is a sweltering, humid, liquid environment, ripe for dark nights of the soul and diseases of both the flesh and the spirit. The bifurcation of the patient and enduring natives—having cast off the French and now chary of this new power arrived upon their shores—and what they desire for their sorely tested homeland, and the energized, well-intended Americans, with their competitive scheming and convoluted plotting always on the verge of breaking apart into warlordism, is nicely handled.
The story is driven by the trio of William "Skip" Sands, a CIA agent assigned to a Psy-Ops unit headed by his paternal uncle, The Colonel—a larger-than-life legend whose exploits prior to, during, and after the Second World War have taken on a mythological status—and the latter's perfervid and mindfuckery-minded disciple, Jimmy Storm, a sergeant on loan from the US Army. The Colonel has commandeered an Army platoon, a Vietnamese village and adjacent mountain-top Landing-Zone, and a substantial amount of bureaucratic interest and rivalry in his effort to implement a convoluted and precarious scheme to shatter the North Vietnamese Will-To-Fight at the very highest level. Riding escort duty is the intermingled tale of the Houston brothers—Bill, who never sets foot in Vietnam, though—or perhaps because—he is marked by early death experiences; and his younger brother James, an aimless teenager trapped in the dead-end, blue-collar tedium of Phoenix, Arizona, who views service in the war as an opportunity to effect some mayhem whilst collecting a steady paycheque and escape the stifling confines of an existence that scares him—and a spirited nurse for an Orphan's NGO, Kathy Jones, who provides a bit of Canadian fervor and the Calvinistic determinism that threatens to either damn or absolve these characters up front, depending upon which angle of Hell you viewed them from. These figures touch upon the lives of their Filipino and Vietnamese counterparts and servants, who are all working towards their own particular ends, ones that may—or may not—be aligned with a loyalty to their respective foreign benefactors and/or employers.
There is a long introduction that takes place within the Philippines, a prelude to the coming experience of Vietnam—and besides being a brilliantly detailed set piece, it completely and expertly delineates how both Americans and natives will be ruined by their immersion in a conflict without clear-cut borders, endowed with blurry endpoints and enframed by dubious philosophies. This is bookended with a lengthy epilogue in which the reader gets provided with snapshots of the destruction meted out by the passing of the years, the way this terrible tropical conflict has infected its character's lives, and how one particular mythological obsession has seared itself into the flesh; the cooling words of redemptive hope that drop the curtain after seven hundred and two pages offer a brief palliative to these terrible burns—but a palliative only: the scarring is permanent.
October 13, 2014
Another book from Les Plesko's (No Stopping Train) incredible book list, Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke almost reaches the level of literary sublimity and transcendence of Robert Stone's quintessential Vietnam book Dog Soldiers. Line for line precise, vivid, achingly beautiful, it's the interwoven stories of a double handful of characters beginning in the Phillipines just as Kennedy is assassinated, and moving through the Vietnam experience ending in the 1980's as the last characters are mopped up... The narrative centers, however, upon Skip Sands, the nephew of a CIA legend and somewhat of a Kurtzian figure in the Vietnam conflict. Skip teeters, in Johnson's words, between the Quiet American and the Ugly American, becoming just the fucking American--that is, looking for legend but fully becoming the mess that Vietnam was. Contrasting to Sands, who struggles with the essential issues of that war, who ponders, who sifts and thinks, are the Houston brothers, first Bill, and then the rougher, cruder copy, younger brother James. Who don't think, they act--and how the war is their undoing as well as it is Sands'.
The only thing that keeps this book from the heaven that is Dog Soldiers is the way the narrative is scattered among so many characters, including Sands, the two Houstons, a nurse with a missionary husband who is murdered by blowgun in the Phillipines and perhaps on the orders of hte CIA, Jimmy Storm, the legendary uncle's crazy right hand man, and a number of the vietnamese characters to boot... It is very difficult for a multiple protagonist book to squeeze down to a really resonant ending. But aside from this intrinsic and inescapable flaw, this is breath-held fiction for 700 pages. What verbal firepower, what mimicry, what tension. The first scene, in which hapless Bill Houston shoots a monkey, will burn in my brain for life.
P.S. For those who have been asking, the book list is at
The only thing that keeps this book from the heaven that is Dog Soldiers is the way the narrative is scattered among so many characters, including Sands, the two Houstons, a nurse with a missionary husband who is murdered by blowgun in the Phillipines and perhaps on the orders of hte CIA, Jimmy Storm, the legendary uncle's crazy right hand man, and a number of the vietnamese characters to boot... It is very difficult for a multiple protagonist book to squeeze down to a really resonant ending. But aside from this intrinsic and inescapable flaw, this is breath-held fiction for 700 pages. What verbal firepower, what mimicry, what tension. The first scene, in which hapless Bill Houston shoots a monkey, will burn in my brain for life.
P.S. For those who have been asking, the book list is at
June 24, 2015
"Tree of Smoke", in my opinion, is an all-or-nothing kind of book. You are either going to love it or hate. Claimed as the "Catch-22 of our times" - and given that the Heller novel is my all-time favorite - I suppose it is inevitable that I would love it.
As much as "Catch-22" was an anti-Vietnam hidden behind a WWII novel, "Tree of Smoke" can be read as an anti-Iraq novel hidden behind a Vietnam novel.
It is a gripping novel that opens with Kennedy assassination in 1963. It follows Skip Sands, a serviceman who spends a majority of the book undercover and completely confused by his mission and yet steadfast in his support of Vietnam; and the Houston brothers, mostly the younger James, and their enlistment and experiences serving in Vietnam.
As a Vietnam-era novel, Johnson allows a lot of the usual subjects to move the plot. We see the contrast in Sands' unwavering support of the effort versus his mother's question of justice; and minor characters such as Kathy who questions God versus the Houston brother's mother who is absolutely certain of God's support of the war effort.
Naturally, given the last two especially, the religious and thus moral conflict come into play. "Can there be war without God?" it is asked in the novel. With the various backgrounds, races and genders that scope the novel, everyone is forced to try and find answers to a war that raises a lot of questions. Though present, I didn't find the religious aspect to be heavy-handed but instead thought it offered a necessary frame for why characters held the opinions they did.
With no clear hero and no clear answer to questions raised, it makes sense that Johnson's novel garners a lot of negative reviews. We are forced to confront the unanswered questions and moral ambiguity that are natural elements to the human condition.
An amazing read but not for a person looking for a light read. I read this in paperback form and despite its intimidating size the pages flew by. Literally could not put it down.
As much as "Catch-22" was an anti-Vietnam hidden behind a WWII novel, "Tree of Smoke" can be read as an anti-Iraq novel hidden behind a Vietnam novel.
It is a gripping novel that opens with Kennedy assassination in 1963. It follows Skip Sands, a serviceman who spends a majority of the book undercover and completely confused by his mission and yet steadfast in his support of Vietnam; and the Houston brothers, mostly the younger James, and their enlistment and experiences serving in Vietnam.
As a Vietnam-era novel, Johnson allows a lot of the usual subjects to move the plot. We see the contrast in Sands' unwavering support of the effort versus his mother's question of justice; and minor characters such as Kathy who questions God versus the Houston brother's mother who is absolutely certain of God's support of the war effort.
Naturally, given the last two especially, the religious and thus moral conflict come into play. "Can there be war without God?" it is asked in the novel. With the various backgrounds, races and genders that scope the novel, everyone is forced to try and find answers to a war that raises a lot of questions. Though present, I didn't find the religious aspect to be heavy-handed but instead thought it offered a necessary frame for why characters held the opinions they did.
With no clear hero and no clear answer to questions raised, it makes sense that Johnson's novel garners a lot of negative reviews. We are forced to confront the unanswered questions and moral ambiguity that are natural elements to the human condition.
An amazing read but not for a person looking for a light read. I read this in paperback form and despite its intimidating size the pages flew by. Literally could not put it down.
May 23, 2022
1η δημοσίευση, Book Press:
Είναι κάποιες εποχές, κάποια ιστορικά γεγονότα που δείχνουν να έχουν ειδικό βάρος στο λεγόμενο συλλογικό ασυνείδητο. Αν και η ίδια τους η αξία καθ� εαυτήν μπορεί να μην είναι τόσο μεγάλη από υλικής πλευράς (αριθμητικά δεδομένα), ο αντίκτυπός τους παραμένει δυσανάλογος � όχι μόνο τη χρονική περίοδο που έλαβαν χώρα, αλλά και για μεγάλο διάστημα μετά το πέρας. Η «ιστορική επίγευση» διαδραματίζει εξίσου σημαντικό ρόλο στην υπερδομή (πολιτισμός, κουλτούρα), η οποία εκφράζει μια εναλλακτική πτυχή του φαντασιακού της κοινωνίας. Μπορεί η κοινωνία να είναι εκείνη που βιώνει και δημιουργεί ιστορία, όμως ο πνευματικός άνθρωπος ονειρεύεται τη ζωή της ενίοτε ως εφιάλτη, παράγοντας έργα τέχνης που εκφράζουν το άρρητο, ακόμα και το επώδυνο, εκείνο που η κοινωνία συχνά αρνείται να αντιμετωπίσει. Ο καλλιτέχνης τότε αίρει τις αμαρτίες της και στήνει τον καθρέφτη μπροστά της � ξανά και ξανά.
Ο πόλεμος του Βιετνάμ υπήρξε ένα τέτοιο γεγονός για τους Αμερικανούς. Αυτό το τραυματικό cul-de-sac προκάλεσε τεράστιες αναταράξεις στο εσωτερικό της υπερδύναμης. Ήταν δε τέτοια η εσωτερική αντίσταση στον πόλεμο και τις αθλιότητές του, που σταδιακά οδήγησε στην απομόνωση του στρατιωτικού-βιομηχανικού κατεστημένου, στην αναδίπλωση και τελική υποχώρηση της φιλοπόλεμης πολιτικής εξουσίας. Και ετούτο ήταν το μόνο θετικό της υπόθεσης: ότι ανέδειξε το τεράστιο δυναμικό της μεγάλης Δημοκρατίας, το απόθεμα αντίστασης στην αυθαιρεσία της εξουσίας, με μια ασύγκριτη μακροχρόνια αντίσταση, τέτοια που καμία χώρα της Δύσης δεν είχε να επιδείξει (αν ο Μάιος στο Παρίσι κράτησε χοντρικά λίγους μήνες, στις ΗΠΑ το υπέροχα πολυδιάστατο «Movement» μέτραγε ήδη 10 χρόνια!). Φυσικά, δεν θα μπορούσε να λείψει και η πρωτοπορία του πνεύματος, η οποία με έδρα της τις ΗΠΑ είχε πλέον γίνει παγκόσμια: μουσική, σινεμά, λογοτεχνία κ.ο.κ.
Έκτοτε, κατά καιρούς, οι πνευματικοί άνθρωποι επιστρέφουν σε εκείνον τον πόλεμο, θεωρώντας τον ως το «τέλος της αθωότητας». Όχι φυσικά γιατί καμία κρατική οντότητα είναι ποτέ αθώα (πολλώ δεν μάλλον μια υπερδύναμη), αλλά γιατί ο βρόμικος αυτός πόλεμος γκρέμισε για μεγάλη μερίδα πληθυσμού τις όποιες ψευδαισθήσεις. Αναρίθμητες ταινίες και βιβλία επαναφέρουν σε τακτά διαστήματα το θέμα αυτό, καθιστώντας το τοπικό παγκόσμιο, δεδομένης της πολιτιστικής επιρροής της χώρας, προσθέτοντας ανάλογα με το ταλέντο του εμπνευστή κάτι επιπλέον στο ήδη μεγάλο κτίσμα. Αυτή είναι η περίπτωση του Ντένις Τζόνσον και του βιβλίου με τίτλο «Δέντρο από καπνό». Ενός έργου που διαδραματίζεται κυρίως στο Βιετνάμ, αλλά και στις Φιλιππίνες, στην Ταϊλάνδη, τη Μαλαισία και τις ΗΠΑ, ξεκινώντας με την ημερομηνία δολοφονίας του Κένεντι το 1963 και φτάνοντας ως το 1983, οπότε ο πόλεμος είναι απλά ανάμνηση στις ζωές των ανθρώπων που συμμετείχαν. Ενός βιβλίου που έχει ομοιότητες με το «Οι Γυμνοί και Νεκροί» του Ν. Μέιλερ και αναφορές στο «Πόλεμος και Ειρήνη» του Τολστόι, αλλά και τον «Ήσυχο Αμερικανό» του Γκ. Γκρην, χωρίς βέβαια να είναι τίποτα από αυτά, αλλά κάτι sui generis, όπως θα δούμε στη συνέχεια.
Το λογοτεχνικό «λιθαράκι» του Τζόνσον
Το «λιθαράκι» που προσθέτει ο ταλαντούχος συγγραφέας (δυστυχώς έφυγε νωρίς), διαθέτει κοφτερές άκρες και εάν το παρατηρήσεις από κοντά, σου αποκαλύπτει μια μελετημένη δομή, πυκνά σχέδια και πρωταγωνιστές που κινούνται σε ένα αποκαλυπτικό τοπίο, αποκτώντας αντίστοιχα χαρακτηριστικά. Τι είδος πρωταγωνιστές είναι εκείνοι που περιφέρονται στην κόλαση, αν όχι οι ίδιοι οι κολασμένοι; Σε έναν κόσμο που ο Θεός αναφέρεται συχνά μεν, απουσιάζει παντελώς δε, η αθωότητα είναι μια ακόμα τυχαία λέξη στο λεξικό. Η απουσία νοήματος είναι ορατή σε όλα τα επίπεδα, όπως η σύγχυση ανθρώπων και εννοιών, η αδυναμία επικοινωνίας, με τον φόβο και την απομόνωση να κυριαρχούν. Ο δυτικός άνθρωπος δεν μπορεί να επικοινωνήσει ούτε με τον έτερο δυτικό, τουτέστιν με τον ίδιο του τον εαυτό, και εκεί ακριβώς ελλοχεύει το κακό. Η λέξη «σύγχυση» θεωρώ, για αρχή, ότι αποτελεί ένα από τα κλειδιά ερμηνείας του βιβλίου αυτού.
Στο μεταίχμιο της σύγχυσης εμφανίζονται οι πρωταγωνιστές, όπως ο Συνταγματάρχης. Μια άκρως λογοτεχνική, μη ρεαλιστική φιγούρα (θα μπορούσε να είναι ο Κουρτς των Κόνραντ και Κόπολα), προσωπικότητα bigger than life, ο οποίος στέκεται στο μέσο της δίνης. Προς στιγμήν ο αναγνώστης θεωρεί ότι ο χαρακτήρας αυτός είναι κάποιος με τον οποίο μπορεί να ταυτιστεί, προτού ο συγγραφέας που αρνείται τις ευκολίες της γραμμικής και απλοϊκής αφήγησης του καταστρέψει αυτή την παρηγοριά. Ο Συνταγματάρχης θέτει εαυτόν επάνω από τους νόμους της πατρίδας και της υπηρεσίας που υποτίθεται ότι εκπροσωπεί, πιστός (όπως κάθε αντι-ήρωας) στον προσωπικό του ηθικό και αξιακό κώδικα. Δική του ευθύνη και μέριμνα το περιβόητο «Δέντρο από καπνό», το οποίο ορίζεται ως εξής: «Δέντρο από καπνό, το καθοδηγητικό φως ενός ειλικρινούς σκοπού για τη λειτουργία των πληροφοριών � η αποκατάσταση της άγρας πληροφοριών ως κεντρικής λειτουργίας των επιχειρήσεων πληροφοριών, παρά το να παρέχουν αιτιολόγηση σε πολιτικές πρακτικές…Επίσης, ομοιότητα με ατομικό μανιτάρι».
Αμφίσημο, κρυπτικό, διφορούμενο, το Δέντρο -βιβλική αναφορά- μεσολαβεί ως το ειλικρινές και καθοδηγητικό φως που θα φωτίσει τι ακριβώς; Θα επιχειρήσει να ξεμπλέξει το κουβάρι της σύγχυσης προκειμένου να επιτευχθεί ο στόχος της τελικής νίκης επί του εχθρού, με τις λιγότερες δυνατές απώλειες ή παρεκβάσεις της πολιτικής εξουσίας που κινείται α��ό ίδιον όφελος και αδυνατεί να κατανοήσει το μέγεθος της σύγκρουσης και των δυνάμεων που εκπροσωπούνται; Ίσως, είναι η απάντηση. Το Δέντρο παραμένει στην ασαφή λογοτεχνική σφαίρα, μια ιδέα που δεν τελεσφορεί ποτέ, μια δυνατότητα ή απλά το αποκύημα της λοξής φαντασίωσης ενός στρατιωτικού, διχασμένου απέναντι στο τι εκπροσωπεί � όπως εξάλλου και η ίδια η χώρα, οριστικά διχασμένη μεταξύ της φαντασίωσης δικαιοσύνης και ανθρωπισμού από τη μία πλευρά και των πρακτικών συνεπειών της εφαρμογής ισχύος. Ο Συνταγματάρχης, και ο ίδιος ένα πλάσμα από «καπνό», θα είναι παρών τόσο μέσω των ενεργειών του όσο και του μύθου του, επισκιάζοντας την κεντρική εξουσία, δημιουργώντας ένα παράλληλο σύμπαν όπου η αταξία του πολέμου, το χάος που επικρατεί στη νοτιοανατολική Ασία υποτίθεται ότι βρίσκει την απάντηση σε αυτό το εξαιρετικά δομημένο σχέδιο με την κωδική ονομασία «Δέντρο από καπνό». Ο τρελός Προφήτης του θα προσπαθήσει να το εφαρμόσει, θα περάσει την πίστη του στον ανιψιό του τον «Σκιπ» Σαντς και θα αποχωρήσει από το προσκήνιο, χωρίς να γνωρίζει κανείς αν τελικά έχει πεθάνει και πώς. Προς το τέλος μόνο θα τον αναζη��ήσει στη ζούγκλα (παραπομπή στον «Ελαφοκυνηγό» του Τσιμίνο) ο λοχίας Στορμ οδηγούμενος στην «Καρδιά του σκότους», για να παραστεί σε μια τελετή εξιλέωσης.
Άλλη λέξη-κλειδί είναι η «αβεβαιότητα». Την αναφέρει εμμέσως, ίσως ο μοναδικός θετικός ήρωας του βιβλίου, η Καναδή Κάθυ, η οποία βρίσκεται σε εκείνη την περιοχή τη Ασίας και εκτελεί ανθρωπιστικό έργο. Εκεί συνδέεται με τον πρωταγωνιστή-πράκτορα της CIA «Σκιπ» Σαντς σε μια ατελέσφορη ερωτική σχέση. Δύο χαρακτήρες που εκπροσωπούν διαφορετικές κοσμοθεωρίες, που δείχνουν αδύνατο να συνυπάρξουν και όμως συνδέονται σε βαθύτερο επίπεδο, καθώς ο καλβινιστικός χριστιανισμός της μίας (προεξάρχοντος του Προκαθορισμού) βρίσκεται σε πλήρη συνάφεια με όσα λαμβάνουν χώρα στις ζούγκλες του Βιετνάμ. Η ηρωίδα αναρωτιέται: Εάν οι άνθρωποι γνώριζαν ότι βρίσκονται στην κόλαση, τότε το βάρος αυτό θα έφευγε από πάνω τους, αφού είναι η αβεβαιότητα που τους κάνει να υποφέρουν. Άραγε, είναι όλα αυτά προσωρινά ή αιώνια; Υπάρχει σωτηρία ή οι άνθρωποι είναι καταδικασμένοι να περιφέρονται έκπτωτοι για πάντα από το Βασίλειο;
Ο ρόλος του Σκιπ παραμένει καθοριστικός, καθώς είναι βασικό «δοχείο» μεταφοράς της πανταχού παρούσας σύγχυσης στον αναγνώστη. Εν αρχή εμφορούμενος με ιδεαλιστικές αρχές, πιστός στρατιώτης και θαυμαστής της μυθικής μορφής του Συνταγματάρχη θείου του, σταδιακά εμπλέκεται στα διλήμματα που επιφέρει η πολεμική σύγκρουση. Απομονώνεται στη ζούγκλα παρέα με βιβλία του Κοκτώ και του Σιοράν, δημιουργεί ερωτική σχέση με την Κάθυ, συνομιλεί με πράκτορες και δολοφόνους, με αποστάτες και δυνάμει προδότες, χωρίς παρ� όλα αυτά να λαμβάνει μέρος σε αποστολές. Σταδιακά, οι ισορροπίες ανατρέπονται, οι συμμαχίες ρευστές ούσες γίνονται ακόμα πιο ασταθείς και η εμπλοκή μεταφέρεται από το γεωπολιτικό στο προσωπικό επίπεδο. Μέχρι να γίνει αντιληπτό από τον αναγνώστη, την αρχική αισιοδοξία διαδέχεται η ηττοπάθεια και στη συνέχεια η ήττα και η αποχώρηση. Εν τω μέσω, ο Σκιπ βιώνει το πέρασμα του χρόνου και των καταστάσεων εν κρυπτώ, αποδεχόμενος την απώλεια του Συνταγματάρχη, φυλλοβολώντας πεποιθήσεις, στρατεύσεις, ιδέες και αφοσίωση. Εγκαλείται ως προδότης από τους δικούς του, κάτι που όπως και πολλά ακόμα παραμένουν ασαφή ως το τέλος. Μέσα στην αχλή του ψέματος, ο Σκιπ ψεύδεται στους ψεύτες και αποδρά όταν όλα δείχνουν να έχουν χαθεί. Το τέλος του πολέμου και οι επόμενες δεκαετίες τον βρίσκουν σε νέο ρόλο, κυνικό, αλλά πλήρως ανταποκρινόμενο στην τρέχουσα ηθική κατάπτωση. Ως έμπορος όπλων καταλήγει στις φυλακές της Μαλαισίας, έχοντας ως τελευταία του ανάμνηση τον έρωτα του για την Κάθυ.
Ο συγγραφέας μεταφέρει με θαυμάσιο τρόπο (κάτι που προφανώς οφείλουμε στην εξαιρετική απόδοση του Γ. Ι. Μπαμπασάκη) όλα αυτά που προανέφερα ως εξής: Καταρχάς, οι διάλογοι που συνήθως στη λογοτεχνία χρησιμοποιούνται για να ξεδιαλύνουν ζητήματα πλοκής αφενός και αφετέρου διασπούν τη μονοτονία των περιγραφών ή του εσωτερικού μονολόγου του συγγραφέα, εδώ έχουν αντίθετα αποτελέσματα. Αντί να επεξηγήσουν και να διευκολύνουν, συσκοτίζουν συνήθως, καθώς φαίνεται ότι ο καθένας ήρωας συνομιλεί πρώτα με τον εαυτό του και δευτερευόντως με τον άλλον. Οι διάλογοι εκθέτουν, αλλά δεν απαντούν, δημιουργώντας στον αναγνώστη περισσότερα ερωτήματα. Η σύγχυση αυτή μεταφέρεται σε όλα τα επίπεδα της αφηγηματικής δομής, καθιστάμενη το βασικό μοτίβο.
Κατά δεύτερον, στα μη διαλογικά μέρη, όποτε ο συγγραφέας υποτίθεται ότι αποκωδικοποιεί τον τρόπο με τον οποίο λειτουργούν οι μυστικές υπηρεσίες, μέσω του κεντρικού ή αποκεντρωμένου σχεδιασμού των ενεργειών τους σε σχέση με τις πολεμικές επιχειρήσεις. Ο αναγνώστης, συν τω χρόνω, κατανοεί ότι απώτερος σκοπός του συγγραφέα είναι ο ακριβώς αντίθετος. Η σύγχυση που προανέφερα, διαπερνά εξολοκλήρου τις σελίδες που επιχειρείται να παρουσιαστεί το «σχέδιο». Καμία διαφάνεια, καμία κατανόηση δεν επέρχεται, καθώς οι μετέχοντες διαπλέκονται, υπονομεύουν ο ένας τον άλλον, το κέντρο αγνοεί τι κάνει η περιφέρεια και το αντίστροφο. Ο Τζόνσον υπήρξε ικανότατος συγγραφέας θέτοντας συνέχεια ερωτήματα, τα οποία ποτέ δεν απαντά ευθέως, μολονότι σκηνοθετεί με τέτοιο τρόπο τη δράση, με συνέπεια το πνιγηρό ασιατικό περιβάλλον, η ελλοχεύουσα βία, το αναπόδραστο και το ακατανόμαστο να περιφέρουν την πνιγηρή τους ύπαρξη μέσα σε κάθε κεφάλαιο.
Ας μου επιτραπεί να γενικεύσω: κανείς πρωταγωνιστής δεν είναι ταυτίσιμος, κανείς δεν προσφέρεται ως το αντίπαλο δέος του κακού, καθότι ουδείς αθώος στην κόλαση, όπως προείπα. Το γκρίζο κυριαρχεί, με μια ελαφρά κλίση προς το μαύρο, δεδομένου ότι όλοι οι μετέχοντες αποτελούν μέρος του προβλήματος (στρατιωτικοί, πράκτορες, δολοφόνοι κλπ.). Αλλά και πάλι, ο Τζόνσον αρνείται να γεμίσει τις σελίδες του με μοχθηρούς και κακούς ανθρώπους. Δεν υπάρχει τίποτα χάρτινο μέσα στο βιβλίο, και οι χαρακτήρες σκέφτονται, πράττουν πολυδιάστατα, εμπνεόμενοι από αρχές και ηθικά κίνητρα που εκείνοι θεωρούν δίκαια. Αυτόματα αυτό κατά κάποιον τρόπο αναγκάζει τον αναγνώστη, αν όχι να ταυτιστεί, τουλάχιστον να «ακούσει» την ιστορία τους. Ο συγγραφέας δεν υποπίπτει στο αμάρτημα να γράψει ένα ακόμα «αντιπολεμικό» μυθιστόρημα, το οποίο θα εξαντλείτο σε ένα ηχηρό μήνυμα για τα δεινά του πολέμου και θα χανόταν μετά το hype στις σκοτεινές γωνιές των ραφιών. Τουναντίον, μεταφέρει τον πόλεμο παντού, εντός και εκτός των ανθρώπων, εντός και εκτός της εμπόλεμης ζώνης. Η εμπόλεμη ζώνη καθίσταται παγκόσμια, μια τεράστια έκταση στις ζούγκλες του Βιετνάμ και στις επαρχιακές πόλεις των ΗΠΑ (μέσω των δευτερευόντων χαρακτήρων, όπως τα αδέλφια Χιούστον που υπηρετούν στον στρατό), μέσα στις ψυχές των χαρακτήρων του. Ο πόλεμος μετατρέπεται από κάτι χωροχρονικά περιορισμένο, σε παγκόσμια ανθρώπινη συνθήκη, από πεπερασμένο θερμό επεισόδιο σε μακράς διάρκειας ψυχρή «ειρηνική» συνύπαρξη. Οι κολασμένοι μεταφέρουν στον χρόνο και τον χώρο το μίασμα της σύρραξης, από τη μία άκρη του πλανήτη στην άλλη, ως ανίατη αρρώστια που κατασπαράζει από μέσα προς τα έξω την έννοια της ανθρώπινης αλληλεγγύης και την υπόσχεση της επίγειας ευτυχίας.
Το τέλος του βιβλίου δεν αφήνει πολλά περιθώρια αισιοδοξίας, με την Κάθυ να συνεχίζει την εθελοντική προσφορά της. Έχοντας αφήσει πίσω της ένα κομμάτι του εαυτού της (τη σχέση με τον Σκιπ), την πίστη της, αλλά και τα σπασμένα της πόδια κατά την τελική αποχώρηση από το Βιετνάμ, αποτελεί το αντίβαρο στη ματαιότητα, στην απαισιοδοξία, στο βαθύ τραύμα μιας μεγάλης χώρας που ανακάλυψε με μεγάλη της έκπληξη, όπως και οι άλλες αυτοκρατορίες πριν από αυτήν, ότι δεν αποτελεί κάτι ξεχωριστό στην ανθρώπινη ιστορία, ότι το ηθικό της πλεονέκτημα χάθηκε οριστικά στη ματωμένη διαδρομή της. Και τι απομένει; Οι τελευταίες λέξεις του βιβλίου είναι χαρακτηριστικές (ειρωνεία, ικεσία;): «Όλοι θα σωθούν. Όλοι θα σωθούν.» Μπορεί και κανένας. Ο χρόνος θα δείξει�
Είναι κάποιες εποχές, κάποια ιστορικά γεγονότα που δείχνουν να έχουν ειδικό βάρος στο λεγόμενο συλλογικό ασυνείδητο. Αν και η ίδια τους η αξία καθ� εαυτήν μπορεί να μην είναι τόσο μεγάλη από υλικής πλευράς (αριθμητικά δεδομένα), ο αντίκτυπός τους παραμένει δυσανάλογος � όχι μόνο τη χρονική περίοδο που έλαβαν χώρα, αλλά και για μεγάλο διάστημα μετά το πέρας. Η «ιστορική επίγευση» διαδραματίζει εξίσου σημαντικό ρόλο στην υπερδομή (πολιτισμός, κουλτούρα), η οποία εκφράζει μια εναλλακτική πτυχή του φαντασιακού της κοινωνίας. Μπορεί η κοινωνία να είναι εκείνη που βιώνει και δημιουργεί ιστορία, όμως ο πνευματικός άνθρωπος ονειρεύεται τη ζωή της ενίοτε ως εφιάλτη, παράγοντας έργα τέχνης που εκφράζουν το άρρητο, ακόμα και το επώδυνο, εκείνο που η κοινωνία συχνά αρνείται να αντιμετωπίσει. Ο καλλιτέχνης τότε αίρει τις αμαρτίες της και στήνει τον καθρέφτη μπροστά της � ξανά και ξανά.
Ο πόλεμος του Βιετνάμ υπήρξε ένα τέτοιο γεγονός για τους Αμερικανούς. Αυτό το τραυματικό cul-de-sac προκάλεσε τεράστιες αναταράξεις στο εσωτερικό της υπερδύναμης. Ήταν δε τέτοια η εσωτερική αντίσταση στον πόλεμο και τις αθλιότητές του, που σταδιακά οδήγησε στην απομόνωση του στρατιωτικού-βιομηχανικού κατεστημένου, στην αναδίπλωση και τελική υποχώρηση της φιλοπόλεμης πολιτικής εξουσίας. Και ετούτο ήταν το μόνο θετικό της υπόθεσης: ότι ανέδειξε το τεράστιο δυναμικό της μεγάλης Δημοκρατίας, το απόθεμα αντίστασης στην αυθαιρεσία της εξουσίας, με μια ασύγκριτη μακροχρόνια αντίσταση, τέτοια που καμία χώρα της Δύσης δεν είχε να επιδείξει (αν ο Μάιος στο Παρίσι κράτησε χοντρικά λίγους μήνες, στις ΗΠΑ το υπέροχα πολυδιάστατο «Movement» μέτραγε ήδη 10 χρόνια!). Φυσικά, δεν θα μπορούσε να λείψει και η πρωτοπορία του πνεύματος, η οποία με έδρα της τις ΗΠΑ είχε πλέον γίνει παγκόσμια: μουσική, σινεμά, λογοτεχνία κ.ο.κ.
Έκτοτε, κατά καιρούς, οι πνευματικοί άνθρωποι επιστρέφουν σε εκείνον τον πόλεμο, θεωρώντας τον ως το «τέλος της αθωότητας». Όχι φυσικά γιατί καμία κρατική οντότητα είναι ποτέ αθώα (πολλώ δεν μάλλον μια υπερδύναμη), αλλά γιατί ο βρόμικος αυτός πόλεμος γκρέμισε για μεγάλη μερίδα πληθυσμού τις όποιες ψευδαισθήσεις. Αναρίθμητες ταινίες και βιβλία επαναφέρουν σε τακτά διαστήματα το θέμα αυτό, καθιστώντας το τοπικό παγκόσμιο, δεδομένης της πολιτιστικής επιρροής της χώρας, προσθέτοντας ανάλογα με το ταλέντο του εμπνευστή κάτι επιπλέον στο ήδη μεγάλο κτίσμα. Αυτή είναι η περίπτωση του Ντένις Τζόνσον και του βιβλίου με τίτλο «Δέντρο από καπνό». Ενός έργου που διαδραματίζεται κυρίως στο Βιετνάμ, αλλά και στις Φιλιππίνες, στην Ταϊλάνδη, τη Μαλαισία και τις ΗΠΑ, ξεκινώντας με την ημερομηνία δολοφονίας του Κένεντι το 1963 και φτάνοντας ως το 1983, οπότε ο πόλεμος είναι απλά ανάμνηση στις ζωές των ανθρώπων που συμμετείχαν. Ενός βιβλίου που έχει ομοιότητες με το «Οι Γυμνοί και Νεκροί» του Ν. Μέιλερ και αναφορές στο «Πόλεμος και Ειρήνη» του Τολστόι, αλλά και τον «Ήσυχο Αμερικανό» του Γκ. Γκρην, χωρίς βέβαια να είναι τίποτα από αυτά, αλλά κάτι sui generis, όπως θα δούμε στη συνέχεια.
Το λογοτεχνικό «λιθαράκι» του Τζόνσον
Το «λιθαράκι» που προσθέτει ο ταλαντούχος συγγραφέας (δυστυχώς έφυγε νωρίς), διαθέτει κοφτερές άκρες και εάν το παρατηρήσεις από κοντά, σου αποκαλύπτει μια μελετημένη δομή, πυκνά σχέδια και πρωταγωνιστές που κινούνται σε ένα αποκαλυπτικό τοπίο, αποκτώντας αντίστοιχα χαρακτηριστικά. Τι είδος πρωταγωνιστές είναι εκείνοι που περιφέρονται στην κόλαση, αν όχι οι ίδιοι οι κολασμένοι; Σε έναν κόσμο που ο Θεός αναφέρεται συχνά μεν, απουσιάζει παντελώς δε, η αθωότητα είναι μια ακόμα τυχαία λέξη στο λεξικό. Η απουσία νοήματος είναι ορατή σε όλα τα επίπεδα, όπως η σύγχυση ανθρώπων και εννοιών, η αδυναμία επικοινωνίας, με τον φόβο και την απομόνωση να κυριαρχούν. Ο δυτικός άνθρωπος δεν μπορεί να επικοινωνήσει ούτε με τον έτερο δυτικό, τουτέστιν με τον ίδιο του τον εαυτό, και εκεί ακριβώς ελλοχεύει το κακό. Η λέξη «σύγχυση» θεωρώ, για αρχή, ότι αποτελεί ένα από τα κλειδιά ερμηνείας του βιβλίου αυτού.
Στο μεταίχμιο της σύγχυσης εμφανίζονται οι πρωταγωνιστές, όπως ο Συνταγματάρχης. Μια άκρως λογοτεχνική, μη ρεαλιστική φιγούρα (θα μπορούσε να είναι ο Κουρτς των Κόνραντ και Κόπολα), προσωπικότητα bigger than life, ο οποίος στέκεται στο μέσο της δίνης. Προς στιγμήν ο αναγνώστης θεωρεί ότι ο χαρακτήρας αυτός είναι κάποιος με τον οποίο μπορεί να ταυτιστεί, προτού ο συγγραφέας που αρνείται τις ευκολίες της γραμμικής και απλοϊκής αφήγησης του καταστρέψει αυτή την παρηγοριά. Ο Συνταγματάρχης θέτει εαυτόν επάνω από τους νόμους της πατρίδας και της υπηρεσίας που υποτίθεται ότι εκπροσωπεί, πιστός (όπως κάθε αντι-ήρωας) στον προσωπικό του ηθικό και αξιακό κώδικα. Δική του ευθύνη και μέριμνα το περιβόητο «Δέντρο από καπνό», το οποίο ορίζεται ως εξής: «Δέντρο από καπνό, το καθοδηγητικό φως ενός ειλικρινούς σκοπού για τη λειτουργία των πληροφοριών � η αποκατάσταση της άγρας πληροφοριών ως κεντρικής λειτουργίας των επιχειρήσεων πληροφοριών, παρά το να παρέχουν αιτιολόγηση σε πολιτικές πρακτικές…Επίσης, ομοιότητα με ατομικό μανιτάρι».
Αμφίσημο, κρυπτικό, διφορούμενο, το Δέντρο -βιβλική αναφορά- μεσολαβεί ως το ειλικρινές και καθοδηγητικό φως που θα φωτίσει τι ακριβώς; Θα επιχειρήσει να ξεμπλέξει το κουβάρι της σύγχυσης προκειμένου να επιτευχθεί ο στόχος της τελικής νίκης επί του εχθρού, με τις λιγότερες δυνατές απώλειες ή παρεκβάσεις της πολιτικής εξουσίας που κινείται α��ό ίδιον όφελος και αδυνατεί να κατανοήσει το μέγεθος της σύγκρουσης και των δυνάμεων που εκπροσωπούνται; Ίσως, είναι η απάντηση. Το Δέντρο παραμένει στην ασαφή λογοτεχνική σφαίρα, μια ιδέα που δεν τελεσφορεί ποτέ, μια δυνατότητα ή απλά το αποκύημα της λοξής φαντασίωσης ενός στρατιωτικού, διχασμένου απέναντι στο τι εκπροσωπεί � όπως εξάλλου και η ίδια η χώρα, οριστικά διχασμένη μεταξύ της φαντασίωσης δικαιοσύνης και ανθρωπισμού από τη μία πλευρά και των πρακτικών συνεπειών της εφαρμογής ισχύος. Ο Συνταγματάρχης, και ο ίδιος ένα πλάσμα από «καπνό», θα είναι παρών τόσο μέσω των ενεργειών του όσο και του μύθου του, επισκιάζοντας την κεντρική εξουσία, δημιουργώντας ένα παράλληλο σύμπαν όπου η αταξία του πολέμου, το χάος που επικρατεί στη νοτιοανατολική Ασία υποτίθεται ότι βρίσκει την απάντηση σε αυτό το εξαιρετικά δομημένο σχέδιο με την κωδική ονομασία «Δέντρο από καπνό». Ο τρελός Προφήτης του θα προσπαθήσει να το εφαρμόσει, θα περάσει την πίστη του στον ανιψιό του τον «Σκιπ» Σαντς και θα αποχωρήσει από το προσκήνιο, χωρίς να γνωρίζει κανείς αν τελικά έχει πεθάνει και πώς. Προς το τέλος μόνο θα τον αναζη��ήσει στη ζούγκλα (παραπομπή στον «Ελαφοκυνηγό» του Τσιμίνο) ο λοχίας Στορμ οδηγούμενος στην «Καρδιά του σκότους», για να παραστεί σε μια τελετή εξιλέωσης.
Άλλη λέξη-κλειδί είναι η «αβεβαιότητα». Την αναφέρει εμμέσως, ίσως ο μοναδικός θετικός ήρωας του βιβλίου, η Καναδή Κάθυ, η οποία βρίσκεται σε εκείνη την περιοχή τη Ασίας και εκτελεί ανθρωπιστικό έργο. Εκεί συνδέεται με τον πρωταγωνιστή-πράκτορα της CIA «Σκιπ» Σαντς σε μια ατελέσφορη ερωτική σχέση. Δύο χαρακτήρες που εκπροσωπούν διαφορετικές κοσμοθεωρίες, που δείχνουν αδύνατο να συνυπάρξουν και όμως συνδέονται σε βαθύτερο επίπεδο, καθώς ο καλβινιστικός χριστιανισμός της μίας (προεξάρχοντος του Προκαθορισμού) βρίσκεται σε πλήρη συνάφεια με όσα λαμβάνουν χώρα στις ζούγκλες του Βιετνάμ. Η ηρωίδα αναρωτιέται: Εάν οι άνθρωποι γνώριζαν ότι βρίσκονται στην κόλαση, τότε το βάρος αυτό θα έφευγε από πάνω τους, αφού είναι η αβεβαιότητα που τους κάνει να υποφέρουν. Άραγε, είναι όλα αυτά προσωρινά ή αιώνια; Υπάρχει σωτηρία ή οι άνθρωποι είναι καταδικασμένοι να περιφέρονται έκπτωτοι για πάντα από το Βασίλειο;
Ο ρόλος του Σκιπ παραμένει καθοριστικός, καθώς είναι βασικό «δοχείο» μεταφοράς της πανταχού παρούσας σύγχυσης στον αναγνώστη. Εν αρχή εμφορούμενος με ιδεαλιστικές αρχές, πιστός στρατιώτης και θαυμαστής της μυθικής μορφής του Συνταγματάρχη θείου του, σταδιακά εμπλέκεται στα διλήμματα που επιφέρει η πολεμική σύγκρουση. Απομονώνεται στη ζούγκλα παρέα με βιβλία του Κοκτώ και του Σιοράν, δημιουργεί ερωτική σχέση με την Κάθυ, συνομιλεί με πράκτορες και δολοφόνους, με αποστάτες και δυνάμει προδότες, χωρίς παρ� όλα αυτά να λαμβάνει μέρος σε αποστολές. Σταδιακά, οι ισορροπίες ανατρέπονται, οι συμμαχίες ρευστές ούσες γίνονται ακόμα πιο ασταθείς και η εμπλοκή μεταφέρεται από το γεωπολιτικό στο προσωπικό επίπεδο. Μέχρι να γίνει αντιληπτό από τον αναγνώστη, την αρχική αισιοδοξία διαδέχεται η ηττοπάθεια και στη συνέχεια η ήττα και η αποχώρηση. Εν τω μέσω, ο Σκιπ βιώνει το πέρασμα του χρόνου και των καταστάσεων εν κρυπτώ, αποδεχόμενος την απώλεια του Συνταγματάρχη, φυλλοβολώντας πεποιθήσεις, στρατεύσεις, ιδέες και αφοσίωση. Εγκαλείται ως προδότης από τους δικούς του, κάτι που όπως και πολλά ακόμα παραμένουν ασαφή ως το τέλος. Μέσα στην αχλή του ψέματος, ο Σκιπ ψεύδεται στους ψεύτες και αποδρά όταν όλα δείχνουν να έχουν χαθεί. Το τέλος του πολέμου και οι επόμενες δεκαετίες τον βρίσκουν σε νέο ρόλο, κυνικό, αλλά πλήρως ανταποκρινόμενο στην τρέχουσα ηθική κατάπτωση. Ως έμπορος όπλων καταλήγει στις φυλακές της Μαλαισίας, έχοντας ως τελευταία του ανάμνηση τον έρωτα του για την Κάθυ.
Ο συγγραφέας μεταφέρει με θαυμάσιο τρόπο (κάτι που προφανώς οφείλουμε στην εξαιρετική απόδοση του Γ. Ι. Μπαμπασάκη) όλα αυτά που προανέφερα ως εξής: Καταρχάς, οι διάλογοι που συνήθως στη λογοτεχνία χρησιμοποιούνται για να ξεδιαλύνουν ζητήματα πλοκής αφενός και αφετέρου διασπούν τη μονοτονία των περιγραφών ή του εσωτερικού μονολόγου του συγγραφέα, εδώ έχουν αντίθετα αποτελέσματα. Αντί να επεξηγήσουν και να διευκολύνουν, συσκοτίζουν συνήθως, καθώς φαίνεται ότι ο καθένας ήρωας συνομιλεί πρώτα με τον εαυτό του και δευτερευόντως με τον άλλον. Οι διάλογοι εκθέτουν, αλλά δεν απαντούν, δημιουργώντας στον αναγνώστη περισσότερα ερωτήματα. Η σύγχυση αυτή μεταφέρεται σε όλα τα επίπεδα της αφηγηματικής δομής, καθιστάμενη το βασικό μοτίβο.
Κατά δεύτερον, στα μη διαλογικά μέρη, όποτε ο συγγραφέας υποτίθεται ότι αποκωδικοποιεί τον τρόπο με τον οποίο λειτουργούν οι μυστικές υπηρεσίες, μέσω του κεντρικού ή αποκεντρωμένου σχεδιασμού των ενεργειών τους σε σχέση με τις πολεμικές επιχειρήσεις. Ο αναγνώστης, συν τω χρόνω, κατανοεί ότι απώτερος σκοπός του συγγραφέα είναι ο ακριβώς αντίθετος. Η σύγχυση που προανέφερα, διαπερνά εξολοκλήρου τις σελίδες που επιχειρείται να παρουσιαστεί το «σχέδιο». Καμία διαφάνεια, καμία κατανόηση δεν επέρχεται, καθώς οι μετέχοντες διαπλέκονται, υπονομεύουν ο ένας τον άλλον, το κέντρο αγνοεί τι κάνει η περιφέρεια και το αντίστροφο. Ο Τζόνσον υπήρξε ικανότατος συγγραφέας θέτοντας συνέχεια ερωτήματα, τα οποία ποτέ δεν απαντά ευθέως, μολονότι σκηνοθετεί με τέτοιο τρόπο τη δράση, με συνέπεια το πνιγηρό ασιατικό περιβάλλον, η ελλοχεύουσα βία, το αναπόδραστο και το ακατανόμαστο να περιφέρουν την πνιγηρή τους ύπαρξη μέσα σε κάθε κεφάλαιο.
Ας μου επιτραπεί να γενικεύσω: κανείς πρωταγωνιστής δεν είναι ταυτίσιμος, κανείς δεν προσφέρεται ως το αντίπαλο δέος του κακού, καθότι ουδείς αθώος στην κόλαση, όπως προείπα. Το γκρίζο κυριαρχεί, με μια ελαφρά κλίση προς το μαύρο, δεδομένου ότι όλοι οι μετέχοντες αποτελούν μέρος του προβλήματος (στρατιωτικοί, πράκτορες, δολοφόνοι κλπ.). Αλλά και πάλι, ο Τζόνσον αρνείται να γεμίσει τις σελίδες του με μοχθηρούς και κακούς ανθρώπους. Δεν υπάρχει τίποτα χάρτινο μέσα στο βιβλίο, και οι χαρακτήρες σκέφτονται, πράττουν πολυδιάστατα, εμπνεόμενοι από αρχές και ηθικά κίνητρα που εκείνοι θεωρούν δίκαια. Αυτόματα αυτό κατά κάποιον τρόπο αναγκάζει τον αναγνώστη, αν όχι να ταυτιστεί, τουλάχιστον να «ακούσει» την ιστορία τους. Ο συγγραφέας δεν υποπίπτει στο αμάρτημα να γράψει ένα ακόμα «αντιπολεμικό» μυθιστόρημα, το οποίο θα εξαντλείτο σε ένα ηχηρό μήνυμα για τα δεινά του πολέμου και θα χανόταν μετά το hype στις σκοτεινές γωνιές των ραφιών. Τουναντίον, μεταφέρει τον πόλεμο παντού, εντός και εκτός των ανθρώπων, εντός και εκτός της εμπόλεμης ζώνης. Η εμπόλεμη ζώνη καθίσταται παγκόσμια, μια τεράστια έκταση στις ζούγκλες του Βιετνάμ και στις επαρχιακές πόλεις των ΗΠΑ (μέσω των δευτερευόντων χαρακτήρων, όπως τα αδέλφια Χιούστον που υπηρετούν στον στρατό), μέσα στις ψυχές των χαρακτήρων του. Ο πόλεμος μετατρέπεται από κάτι χωροχρονικά περιορισμένο, σε παγκόσμια ανθρώπινη συνθήκη, από πεπερασμένο θερμό επεισόδιο σε μακράς διάρκειας ψυχρή «ειρηνική» συνύπαρξη. Οι κολασμένοι μεταφέρουν στον χρόνο και τον χώρο το μίασμα της σύρραξης, από τη μία άκρη του πλανήτη στην άλλη, ως ανίατη αρρώστια που κατασπαράζει από μέσα προς τα έξω την έννοια της ανθρώπινης αλληλεγγύης και την υπόσχεση της επίγειας ευτυχίας.
Το τέλος του βιβλίου δεν αφήνει πολλά περιθώρια αισιοδοξίας, με την Κάθυ να συνεχίζει την εθελοντική προσφορά της. Έχοντας αφήσει πίσω της ένα κομμάτι του εαυτού της (τη σχέση με τον Σκιπ), την πίστη της, αλλά και τα σπασμένα της πόδια κατά την τελική αποχώρηση από το Βιετνάμ, αποτελεί το αντίβαρο στη ματαιότητα, στην απαισιοδοξία, στο βαθύ τραύμα μιας μεγάλης χώρας που ανακάλυψε με μεγάλη της έκπληξη, όπως και οι άλλες αυτοκρατορίες πριν από αυτήν, ότι δεν αποτελεί κάτι ξεχωριστό στην ανθρώπινη ιστορία, ότι το ηθικό της πλεονέκτημα χάθηκε οριστικά στη ματωμένη διαδρομή της. Και τι απομένει; Οι τελευταίες λέξεις του βιβλίου είναι χαρακτηριστικές (ειρωνεία, ικεσία;): «Όλοι θα σωθούν. Όλοι θα σωθούν.» Μπορεί και κανένας. Ο χρόνος θα δείξει�
February 10, 2023
I don't usually read others' reviews before writing one of my own, but I had to in this case, because I figured I must have been reading a different book than everyone else. I picked this up in the first place because so many people liked it (National Book Award, numerous Top 10 lists for 2007, including NYT, Time, and EW). I rarely give up on a book, but I came close with this one a number of times; for instance, at page 300, 400, 500...even 600. I forged on, buoyed by all the acclaim and my own inability to just give up and move on. So give me my damned cookie, I finished the thing.
The novel in a nutshell is largely about Skip Sands, a CIA trainee working for the military in Vietnam during the war, and assigned to his uncle, the legendary Colonel (serious echoes of the deranged Col. Kurtz here). But it's also about Trung, an NVA spy, and his uncle, Hao. And raw US newbie soldiers Bill & James Houston. And Kathy, the missionary/nurse from Canada. And solider Jimmy Storm. The priest, Father Callahan...Callaghan?...makes a brief but memorable appearance (screw it, I'm not going to open the book again to look the actual name up). As does CIA operative Voss. And a CIA assassin. And the Professor. And Gilligan. Yes, there were a lot of characters and storylines; some intersected, and some didn't, and it was very chaotic, just like war itself. War is hell, I get it.
But does reading about it have to be hell, too? I can handle ‘long,� that wasn’t the issue. Situations and circumstances struck me as wholly unoriginal. I caught bits of “Apocalypse Now,� as I mentioned. But also “Platoon,� “A Bright Shining Lie,� even “The Last Picture Show.� Characters that are built up as if to be a major part of the story have little to do or say, and disappear for pages and pages on end. Often, their stories are brought to a close “off camera� and in a matter-of-fact fashion, which I thought blunted their impact. Denis Johnson reportedly spent a long time writing this, so I have to assume that these stylistic choices were his. As a novel, “Tree of Smoke� just didn’t hang together for me. I thought it was meandering, unfocused, and in need of some serious editing.
Having said all of that, there were large chunks of this narrative that I really liked. Some of the prose is truly beautiful. The parallels that Johnson is making to the Iraq war are unmistakable and unnerving. Bill Houston’s encounter in the jungle when he first arrives in the Phillipines is heart-rending. If a few of the subjects/arcs were short stories as part of a thematic collection, I would have liked the whole thing a lot more.
The novel in a nutshell is largely about Skip Sands, a CIA trainee working for the military in Vietnam during the war, and assigned to his uncle, the legendary Colonel (serious echoes of the deranged Col. Kurtz here). But it's also about Trung, an NVA spy, and his uncle, Hao. And raw US newbie soldiers Bill & James Houston. And Kathy, the missionary/nurse from Canada. And solider Jimmy Storm. The priest, Father Callahan...Callaghan?...makes a brief but memorable appearance (screw it, I'm not going to open the book again to look the actual name up). As does CIA operative Voss. And a CIA assassin. And the Professor. And Gilligan. Yes, there were a lot of characters and storylines; some intersected, and some didn't, and it was very chaotic, just like war itself. War is hell, I get it.
But does reading about it have to be hell, too? I can handle ‘long,� that wasn’t the issue. Situations and circumstances struck me as wholly unoriginal. I caught bits of “Apocalypse Now,� as I mentioned. But also “Platoon,� “A Bright Shining Lie,� even “The Last Picture Show.� Characters that are built up as if to be a major part of the story have little to do or say, and disappear for pages and pages on end. Often, their stories are brought to a close “off camera� and in a matter-of-fact fashion, which I thought blunted their impact. Denis Johnson reportedly spent a long time writing this, so I have to assume that these stylistic choices were his. As a novel, “Tree of Smoke� just didn’t hang together for me. I thought it was meandering, unfocused, and in need of some serious editing.
Having said all of that, there were large chunks of this narrative that I really liked. Some of the prose is truly beautiful. The parallels that Johnson is making to the Iraq war are unmistakable and unnerving. Bill Houston’s encounter in the jungle when he first arrives in the Phillipines is heart-rending. If a few of the subjects/arcs were short stories as part of a thematic collection, I would have liked the whole thing a lot more.
June 18, 2008
Like many of you, I can't figure out why this book won the NBA. Not that DJ isn't a great writer, and parts of TOS are wonderfully constructed. But as a reader of hundreds of books on Vietnam and a three year all expenses paid visit there during the war, I didn't find insight into a darn thing, nothing new or meaningful. And I can turn and look at dozens of books on my shelf which are all of the above. And they didn't win squat. Obviously, some of you did.
Some of the comments (few actual 'reviews') are fascinating. Those liking it seem to be more vocal about ending all wars (I'm trying to stay away from current politics)than those who disliked it. A couple of the 'reveiwers' showed real ignorance about the VN war and the returning vet. And a number were 'miffed' that Johnson had changed genre without telling them. More than most books ("most" being very loosely used without benefit of any research or even a quick count) TOS reviews/comments seem to be about the reader, not the book. That's why I enjoy reading them.
So all in all, maybe that's why the selection committees liked it.
Of course it is often a kiss of death to compare a novel to great fiction (I'm thinking The Quiet American comparisons). Grahame Greene is a tough act to follow and if that were my only comparison, I would think TOS a poor nephew. Authors usually cannot control what a publisher or critic will compare his work to, and have to suffer the slings and arrows nevertheless (it happened to me on my first novel and some of the 'reviews' made me consider the witness protection program) yet that novel was quite successful.
So put me down in the 'didn't really like it' column, but I can't bring myself to give it only one star. That's for Harry Potter or Patterson books.
Some of the comments (few actual 'reviews') are fascinating. Those liking it seem to be more vocal about ending all wars (I'm trying to stay away from current politics)than those who disliked it. A couple of the 'reveiwers' showed real ignorance about the VN war and the returning vet. And a number were 'miffed' that Johnson had changed genre without telling them. More than most books ("most" being very loosely used without benefit of any research or even a quick count) TOS reviews/comments seem to be about the reader, not the book. That's why I enjoy reading them.
So all in all, maybe that's why the selection committees liked it.
Of course it is often a kiss of death to compare a novel to great fiction (I'm thinking The Quiet American comparisons). Grahame Greene is a tough act to follow and if that were my only comparison, I would think TOS a poor nephew. Authors usually cannot control what a publisher or critic will compare his work to, and have to suffer the slings and arrows nevertheless (it happened to me on my first novel and some of the 'reviews' made me consider the witness protection program) yet that novel was quite successful.
So put me down in the 'didn't really like it' column, but I can't bring myself to give it only one star. That's for Harry Potter or Patterson books.
December 13, 2019
A storm came over, fell like a cataract for five minutes, and subsided. Then it was foggy, hard to breathe. James slid himself along the bench to the end of the carrier and ventured to look out at the Vietnam War—rain dripping from gigantic leaves, deformed vehicles, small people—the truck gearing down, engine bawling, mud boiling under the big tires—barefoot pedestrians stepping away from the road, brown faces passing, rut after rut after rut, the beer lurching in his stomach.
Tree of Smoke by Dennis Johnson won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2007.
This Vietnam novel starts out slow as we are introduced one-by-one to the four central characters to the novel. They are a colonel and his nephew Skip, who is in the CIA, and Bill and James, suckers who each find themselves in Nam at different times. They are part of the infantry
This is not a terribly gritty book nor is it typical Nam fare. After all Dennis Johnson came to fame thirty years earlier writing poetry and he knows how to turn a phrase. It is however a dark book. The main protagonists are exceptionally drawn. The supporting cast of Vietnamese characters are also drawn well and certainly portrayed with dignity and a with a purpose as opposed to the disillusioned Americans who feel the cogs of war and deceit grinding them down to nothing. None of the characters are lovable but everyone is relatable and you want to know what happens to them. What would you do when faced with their moral dilemmas? There is some serious contemplation in this book and realistic portrayals of PTSD as some individuals make the transition away from the war back to society
As the novel progresses Skip the CIA guy becomes the focal point. It is clear that he has lost his bearings. As the years tick by, it also becomes clear that in Psy Ops nearly everyone is out for themselves and if someone gets wiped out so be it. The plot becomes hazier as few of the characters can rely on each other anymore.
So this is an original take on the Vietnam War. I read that Johnson spent ten years on writing this novel and it shows � this is not a Hamburger Hill type of tale. There aren’t any battle scenes beyond a few pages of recon missions but you get the sense that brutal killings were just a patch of jungle away.
4.5 There are some downsides to the book that maybe should not be dismissed out of hand. It starts out slow. At 600 pages it is too long. And lastly by 2007, when this book was published, the Vietnam War as a subject of fiction had already been explored to death. But a belated kudos nonetheless.
Tree of Smoke by Dennis Johnson won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2007.
This Vietnam novel starts out slow as we are introduced one-by-one to the four central characters to the novel. They are a colonel and his nephew Skip, who is in the CIA, and Bill and James, suckers who each find themselves in Nam at different times. They are part of the infantry
This is not a terribly gritty book nor is it typical Nam fare. After all Dennis Johnson came to fame thirty years earlier writing poetry and he knows how to turn a phrase. It is however a dark book. The main protagonists are exceptionally drawn. The supporting cast of Vietnamese characters are also drawn well and certainly portrayed with dignity and a with a purpose as opposed to the disillusioned Americans who feel the cogs of war and deceit grinding them down to nothing. None of the characters are lovable but everyone is relatable and you want to know what happens to them. What would you do when faced with their moral dilemmas? There is some serious contemplation in this book and realistic portrayals of PTSD as some individuals make the transition away from the war back to society
As the novel progresses Skip the CIA guy becomes the focal point. It is clear that he has lost his bearings. As the years tick by, it also becomes clear that in Psy Ops nearly everyone is out for themselves and if someone gets wiped out so be it. The plot becomes hazier as few of the characters can rely on each other anymore.
So this is an original take on the Vietnam War. I read that Johnson spent ten years on writing this novel and it shows � this is not a Hamburger Hill type of tale. There aren’t any battle scenes beyond a few pages of recon missions but you get the sense that brutal killings were just a patch of jungle away.
4.5 There are some downsides to the book that maybe should not be dismissed out of hand. It starts out slow. At 600 pages it is too long. And lastly by 2007, when this book was published, the Vietnam War as a subject of fiction had already been explored to death. But a belated kudos nonetheless.
December 26, 2017
Not a book I thought I would like, let alone grant five stars! A monumental read, slung somewhere between an action packed war story and a intriguing espionage laced lightly with comedy and heavily with tragedy. Despite it's complexity of both interweaving and disparate narratives and overarching bleakness of the horrors of the Vietnam war, I struggled to put it down and found myself galloping 'through the jungle' to the final pages. Meticulous, in depth research and authentic language has resulted in an engrossing account of America's involvement in the Vietnam war from multiple perspectives.
February 22, 2015
عندما تقرأ رواية عن حرب فيتنام فإنك بلاشك ستبحث عن شيء آخر غير ما شاهدته من أفلام أي إنك ستود كثيرا أن تخرج الرواية عن الإطارات التي وضعهتها النسخة الأمريكية من هذه الحرب .. وحقيقة لا زلت أتسائل إن كانت هذه الرواية قدمت أكثر مما قدمته أفلام حرب فيتنام !
تدور أحداث الرواية بعد وفاة الرئيس كنيدي وتستمر لمدة سبع سنوات بعد الإنسحاب المهين لقوات الولايات المتحدة وكانت الأحداث تسير سيرا بطيئا وكأن العمل كله خلال تلك الصفحات الثمانمئة كان يجرّك إلى تلك النتيجة ولا يخفي القارىء كم طعمت هذه الرواية من حوارات مملة إنها تلك الحوارات التي لا تضيف للرواية بل تزيد عدد الصفحات إنها ثرثرة الجند في مواقعهم وهي ثرثرة الكاتب بلا شك وربما لأن الكاتب مسرحي وهذا سبب استنتجه دائما حين أعرف أن له تجارب مسرحية فغالبا ما تعتمد المشاهد المسرحية على الحوار ولذلك أرى تأثير المسرح في شجرة الدخان كان غالبا المؤسف أن السرد أقل بكثير من الحوارات لذلك لم أشعر باستمتاع في القراءة شخصيا أحب التفاصيل لأنني أحب أن أفهم الشخصية ولكي أعرف البيئة المحيطة بالشخصية السرد يعطيني هذه الهبة فاستمتع بملامح المكان والزمان والشخصيات واستطيع أن ألم بتفاصيل الشخصية علاقاتها وأسلوبها في الحياة ما أعنيه أن هناك زوائد كثيرة في النص سببتها تلك الحوارات ..
هناك شخصيات كثيرة في النص وقصص مختلفة كل قصة قد تكون لها حكايتها الخاصة لكن أغلب الشخصيات تتقاطع مع غيرها وتعبر بها لأي سبب على أن هناك شخصيات رئيسية في الرواية كالكولونيل وكاثي وساندرز الذي شارك في عملية سرية أطلق عليها اسم شجرة الدخان وكان هدفه إقناع السلطات فيتنام الشمالية أن الولايات المتحدة تخطط لهجوم نووي أماالشخصيات الأخرى تمتد علاقاتها مع الشخصيات الرئيسية بشكل أو آخر تلتقي وتفترق ..
الملفت في النظر أن الرواية بدأت جيدا وانتهت جيدا أيضا خاصة الخمسين صفحة الأخيرة حيث بدأت الأحداث تتسارع أخيرا
وكانت رسالة ساندرز الأخيرة لكاثي أجمل ما في النص لعلها الرسائل الوداعية التي تحمل كما هائلا من العواطف والمشاعر العميقة التي دفنتها الحرب تحت أكوام من الجثث .. كما إن الرسائل التي يكتبها المساقين للأعدام تبدو موضوعا شيقا للقراءة لأنها تلك القفزة ما قبل النهاية !
توجد في النص الكثير من الصراعات الأخلاقية وصراعات مع الموت وضياع المستقبل الخيانة التي تستدعيها الحروب والضياع بعد العودة والحيوات التي أفقدتها الحرب صوابها والحقيقة تشعر وأنت تقرأ النص أن كل الشخصيات سابحة في الهواء هواء ملىء برائحة الحرب والغدر والمستقبل الضائع ولعل عنوان العملية السرية يشير إلى حالة من الوهم والتضليل الذي تصنعه الحروب ..
هذه الرواية تجعلك ترى بعينيك عبثية الحروب وحماقة الإنسان في أضخم صورها
تدور أحداث الرواية بعد وفاة الرئيس كنيدي وتستمر لمدة سبع سنوات بعد الإنسحاب المهين لقوات الولايات المتحدة وكانت الأحداث تسير سيرا بطيئا وكأن العمل كله خلال تلك الصفحات الثمانمئة كان يجرّك إلى تلك النتيجة ولا يخفي القارىء كم طعمت هذه الرواية من حوارات مملة إنها تلك الحوارات التي لا تضيف للرواية بل تزيد عدد الصفحات إنها ثرثرة الجند في مواقعهم وهي ثرثرة الكاتب بلا شك وربما لأن الكاتب مسرحي وهذا سبب استنتجه دائما حين أعرف أن له تجارب مسرحية فغالبا ما تعتمد المشاهد المسرحية على الحوار ولذلك أرى تأثير المسرح في شجرة الدخان كان غالبا المؤسف أن السرد أقل بكثير من الحوارات لذلك لم أشعر باستمتاع في القراءة شخصيا أحب التفاصيل لأنني أحب أن أفهم الشخصية ولكي أعرف البيئة المحيطة بالشخصية السرد يعطيني هذه الهبة فاستمتع بملامح المكان والزمان والشخصيات واستطيع أن ألم بتفاصيل الشخصية علاقاتها وأسلوبها في الحياة ما أعنيه أن هناك زوائد كثيرة في النص سببتها تلك الحوارات ..
هناك شخصيات كثيرة في النص وقصص مختلفة كل قصة قد تكون لها حكايتها الخاصة لكن أغلب الشخصيات تتقاطع مع غيرها وتعبر بها لأي سبب على أن هناك شخصيات رئيسية في الرواية كالكولونيل وكاثي وساندرز الذي شارك في عملية سرية أطلق عليها اسم شجرة الدخان وكان هدفه إقناع السلطات فيتنام الشمالية أن الولايات المتحدة تخطط لهجوم نووي أماالشخصيات الأخرى تمتد علاقاتها مع الشخصيات الرئيسية بشكل أو آخر تلتقي وتفترق ..
الملفت في النظر أن الرواية بدأت جيدا وانتهت جيدا أيضا خاصة الخمسين صفحة الأخيرة حيث بدأت الأحداث تتسارع أخيرا
وكانت رسالة ساندرز الأخيرة لكاثي أجمل ما في النص لعلها الرسائل الوداعية التي تحمل كما هائلا من العواطف والمشاعر العميقة التي دفنتها الحرب تحت أكوام من الجثث .. كما إن الرسائل التي يكتبها المساقين للأعدام تبدو موضوعا شيقا للقراءة لأنها تلك القفزة ما قبل النهاية !
توجد في النص الكثير من الصراعات الأخلاقية وصراعات مع الموت وضياع المستقبل الخيانة التي تستدعيها الحروب والضياع بعد العودة والحيوات التي أفقدتها الحرب صوابها والحقيقة تشعر وأنت تقرأ النص أن كل الشخصيات سابحة في الهواء هواء ملىء برائحة الحرب والغدر والمستقبل الضائع ولعل عنوان العملية السرية يشير إلى حالة من الوهم والتضليل الذي تصنعه الحروب ..
هذه الرواية تجعلك ترى بعينيك عبثية الحروب وحماقة الإنسان في أضخم صورها
February 29, 2016
Again, Denis Johnson, this time with a large, 600-page tome, has devastated this reader. Having been speechless after reading "Tree of Smoke" and only having finished it a day ago, this review will be slight when what this book needs is a proper, well-though out critical essay and that is not what is going to happen.
In short: line for line, character by character, this book is all too real. This is a mammoth undertaking and it is an even bigger success. For those who have read "Angels" you will be elated to find the Houston family on duty in the 60's and for everyone else you are loaded on, thick, with an almost thriller-like narrative mixed with the more traditional, heady, war novel. However, what makes this novel special is its treatment of the psy-ops program and the spiritual and philosophical themes. It is clear Johnson has thought a lot about this and even throws in some Artaud and Cioran for good measure. Too much to write about, too little time, too many more Johnson books to read, so, go read this, it won the National Book Award for good reason.
In short: line for line, character by character, this book is all too real. This is a mammoth undertaking and it is an even bigger success. For those who have read "Angels" you will be elated to find the Houston family on duty in the 60's and for everyone else you are loaded on, thick, with an almost thriller-like narrative mixed with the more traditional, heady, war novel. However, what makes this novel special is its treatment of the psy-ops program and the spiritual and philosophical themes. It is clear Johnson has thought a lot about this and even throws in some Artaud and Cioran for good measure. Too much to write about, too little time, too many more Johnson books to read, so, go read this, it won the National Book Award for good reason.
August 17, 2021
First of all, TREE OF SMOKE is as similar to JESUS' SON as DUBLINERS is to ULYSSES. Compare a writer messing around with his experience and craft and an author who has come under the full blown power of his pen. One can also say TREE OF SMOKE is about Vietnam in the same way MOBY DICK is about whaling. I will wait until a second reading, but we may have our first great American novel since Faulkner and, in a certain sense, Dreiser.
“Tree of Smoke� is a more literal translation of the Hebrew be’ayammu, more frequently translated as “column� or “pillar�: e.g., “a pillar of smoke by day, and a pillar of fire by night,� or a column of cloud by day and a column of fire by night (Exodus 13:21). It appears after Moses leads his ‘ibri (Hebrews, the marginal) through the sea and out of the slavery of Egypt. It leads them through their forty years of wandering the desert. Some scripture scholars speculate that the pillar of fire was a volcano in the southern part of the Sinai, near Mt Hebron.
Johnson takes this image, and translates it as “tree of fire� (the famous burning bush?) and suggests an association with the mushroom cloud, and we modernists are likewise wandering for our forty years (actually, twenty: 1963-1983) in an amoral desert ever since we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, but that’s more me than Johnson. There are lots of levels that can be mined in this book. Read it, it’s extraordinary. Pay no attention to critics who are trying the crack the book over their self-possessed hubris. It will be awhile before anybody masters it. Catch it while it’s fresh.
“Tree of Smoke� is a more literal translation of the Hebrew be’ayammu, more frequently translated as “column� or “pillar�: e.g., “a pillar of smoke by day, and a pillar of fire by night,� or a column of cloud by day and a column of fire by night (Exodus 13:21). It appears after Moses leads his ‘ibri (Hebrews, the marginal) through the sea and out of the slavery of Egypt. It leads them through their forty years of wandering the desert. Some scripture scholars speculate that the pillar of fire was a volcano in the southern part of the Sinai, near Mt Hebron.
Johnson takes this image, and translates it as “tree of fire� (the famous burning bush?) and suggests an association with the mushroom cloud, and we modernists are likewise wandering for our forty years (actually, twenty: 1963-1983) in an amoral desert ever since we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, but that’s more me than Johnson. There are lots of levels that can be mined in this book. Read it, it’s extraordinary. Pay no attention to critics who are trying the crack the book over their self-possessed hubris. It will be awhile before anybody masters it. Catch it while it’s fresh.
November 10, 2015
This is essentially a spy/war thriller with a philosophical and poetic edge. A standard cast of characters: a somewhat conflicted, young CIA agent; his older, worldly boss; some shadowy bureaucrats back at Langley; a love-interest; an assassin;a double agent; and the assortment of enlisted men: the psychos, the slobs, the walking wounded, the straights. The book focuses on thriller-type scenes, usually violent, with alternating domestic scenes to give some local color or background.
The novel is captivating and well-written, often beautifully written, but Johnson, who is far above the average thriller/best-seller grade, can't or won't expand his topic, even with a few lines, into American political or economic motives. I make this complaint fairly regularly because so many writers stop short when writing about subjects like war, where politics are the dominant theme, so the subject feels incomplete and undeveloped. A few sentences here and there to add perspective doesn't turn the work into a 'political' novel � a meaningless term anyway unless it's a work of pure propaganda. The term is often used as a bizarre put-down, suggesting there's an axe to grind or that the subject is not fit for lyrical fiction.
Johnson finds the space to deliver a few hateful lines about hippies(appropriately from a soldier's mouth) and a lot of tough guy talk about our way versus their way and how abstract(in his view) war is, but not a peep about what a 'difficult' decision it must have been in the White House, Pentagon and corporate boardrooms to saturate an entire nation with poisonous defoliants...a bit of perspective, just to give one possible example. Another could have been a few lines about Kissinger's treasonous spying for Nixon at the 1968 Paris peace talks to derail them so that Nixon could get elected, on a campaign to end the war! Which he promptly escalated after his election, causing massive death and destruction. PERSPECTIVE.
[Scroll down to- Dress Rehearsal: The Secret of '68]
There are a lot of scenes in this novel that I feel I've seen or read several times before, almost like standard issue American literary bleakness: violent, sadistic scenes with crazed US soldiers and the flip side emptiness of life back in America; a life of endless bar fights, jail and low-paying jobs. The American scenes come off as patronizing and the war scenes as lurid clichés. There's a very potent religious anguish in many of the better passages, that views life as a violent sacrifice to some impossible ideal.
I expect more, if he wants his novel to be considered thorough, nuanced and profound. If you're going to write about war, you can't let the Big Creeps off the hook; then you're just stopping short, pulling your punches, watering down the medicine, and you're left with a spy/war thriller, with some conflicted characters, a few artsy references, abstract meditations on how much everything is shit, and a few poetic passages thrown in to keep the geeks happy.
The novel is captivating and well-written, often beautifully written, but Johnson, who is far above the average thriller/best-seller grade, can't or won't expand his topic, even with a few lines, into American political or economic motives. I make this complaint fairly regularly because so many writers stop short when writing about subjects like war, where politics are the dominant theme, so the subject feels incomplete and undeveloped. A few sentences here and there to add perspective doesn't turn the work into a 'political' novel � a meaningless term anyway unless it's a work of pure propaganda. The term is often used as a bizarre put-down, suggesting there's an axe to grind or that the subject is not fit for lyrical fiction.
Johnson finds the space to deliver a few hateful lines about hippies(appropriately from a soldier's mouth) and a lot of tough guy talk about our way versus their way and how abstract(in his view) war is, but not a peep about what a 'difficult' decision it must have been in the White House, Pentagon and corporate boardrooms to saturate an entire nation with poisonous defoliants...a bit of perspective, just to give one possible example. Another could have been a few lines about Kissinger's treasonous spying for Nixon at the 1968 Paris peace talks to derail them so that Nixon could get elected, on a campaign to end the war! Which he promptly escalated after his election, causing massive death and destruction. PERSPECTIVE.
[Scroll down to- Dress Rehearsal: The Secret of '68]
There are a lot of scenes in this novel that I feel I've seen or read several times before, almost like standard issue American literary bleakness: violent, sadistic scenes with crazed US soldiers and the flip side emptiness of life back in America; a life of endless bar fights, jail and low-paying jobs. The American scenes come off as patronizing and the war scenes as lurid clichés. There's a very potent religious anguish in many of the better passages, that views life as a violent sacrifice to some impossible ideal.
I expect more, if he wants his novel to be considered thorough, nuanced and profound. If you're going to write about war, you can't let the Big Creeps off the hook; then you're just stopping short, pulling your punches, watering down the medicine, and you're left with a spy/war thriller, with some conflicted characters, a few artsy references, abstract meditations on how much everything is shit, and a few poetic passages thrown in to keep the geeks happy.
June 17, 2016
I admit I was biased toward this novel even before I opened it, due partly to prior admiration toward Denis Johnson and partly to the fact that this is the most beautifully designed book I own. I just want to hold it and look at it and rub it against my face.
That said.
Everything is accomplished in this book. The Vietnam War is approached from a variety of angles--infantry, tunnel rat, South Vietnamese fighter pilot, North Vietnamese agent, CIA operative, outsourced assassin--to attempt to give a complete picture of a convoluted epoch in world history. Going further, Johnson successfully ties these threads into a highly arresting narrative. And even further, the narrative is bursting with philosophy about what the War meant. The phrase "Tree of Smoke" is more than just a catchy title, etc.
'Tree of Smoke' contains a jarringly realistic vision of what it means when the front line catches up to you.
The prose is lean but potent. I didn't find the plot to be lacking a motor, in fact I read this book quite quickly. Denis Johnson's prior longish novel, 'Already Dead,' sort of descended into a quagmire toward the end. Not so with 'Tree of Smoke.' It's obvious that this subject meant a lot to him, and leads one to suspect he had long wanted to write about the Vietnam War.
I can only assume that as years pass this novel will be looked back upon as the quintessential novel of the Vietnam War. You should read it.
That said.
Everything is accomplished in this book. The Vietnam War is approached from a variety of angles--infantry, tunnel rat, South Vietnamese fighter pilot, North Vietnamese agent, CIA operative, outsourced assassin--to attempt to give a complete picture of a convoluted epoch in world history. Going further, Johnson successfully ties these threads into a highly arresting narrative. And even further, the narrative is bursting with philosophy about what the War meant. The phrase "Tree of Smoke" is more than just a catchy title, etc.
'Tree of Smoke' contains a jarringly realistic vision of what it means when the front line catches up to you.
The prose is lean but potent. I didn't find the plot to be lacking a motor, in fact I read this book quite quickly. Denis Johnson's prior longish novel, 'Already Dead,' sort of descended into a quagmire toward the end. Not so with 'Tree of Smoke.' It's obvious that this subject meant a lot to him, and leads one to suspect he had long wanted to write about the Vietnam War.
I can only assume that as years pass this novel will be looked back upon as the quintessential novel of the Vietnam War. You should read it.
October 15, 2017
This book receives very mixed reviews and I can certainly understand why. I really enjoyed the Denis Johnson's writing but can see that it will not GE everyone's "cup of tea". I couldn't give this 5 stars for a couple of reSons. One, I never quite reconciled how the Houston brothers "fit" into the story of Skip Sands and his uncle. It wasn't that they weren't interesting and didn't fit into the backdrop of the Vietnam War but it didn't coalesce for me. Second, while I love Johnson's prose, I found parts of this to be just a little too much, it what a times, seemed to be a bit of rambling nonsense. I guess I deemed both of those to be minor in rating this 4 stars. I just enjoyed reading it too much!
January 15, 2012
this will be the 2nd johnson-denis for me...the other, nobody move and that recent, within the last six months or so. give or take.
last night at 3:00 a.m. president kennedy had been killed. seaman houston and the other two recruits slept while the first reports traveled around the world. there was one small nightspot on the island, a dilapidated club with big revolving fans in the ceiling and one bar and one pinball game; the two marines who ran the club had come by to wake them up and tell them what had happened to the president.
story opener. in the philippines.
characters (this list is not complete)
bill houston
james houston
captain nguyen minh, viet nam air force pilot
nguyen hao
trung than, called the monk
colonel francis xavier sands
mrs. van, an employee of the u.s. information service
mosa
major aguinaldo, filipino army major, eddie aguinaldo
sebastian, houseboy
william/will “skip� sands, nephew of the colonel
anders pitchfork, english entomologist
the german visitor
parvese, italian, owner of monte mayon restaurant
eddie lansdale
carignan, a priest, father thomas carignan, mindanao
pilar, employee/servant to carignan
mayor emeterio d. (deus) luis of damulog
saliling, kind of tribesman?
robertson, nephew of saliling, hands carignan the box containing the bones of timothy
freddy castro, owner of a hotel, damulog
kathy, wife of timothy, timmy as they called him for the 1st time
romy, w/a survey team, from manila
boy sedosa, constabulary patrolman
corazon, servant to timothy & kathy
mrs. edith villanueva, upliftment development foundation
joel, second chapter, translated “pillars of smoke� but the original hebrew said “palm trees of smoke.�
fairly involved story that has the phillipine islands, vietnam, usa as setting (so far, at the 14% point). the major players seem to be the colonel, his nephew "skip"...
note: there has already been the use of dreams for two characters, these situations fascinating, one experienced by kathy, who husband timothy, a missionary, has been found dead in the phillipines....a voice whispering in a dream.
carignan has the other, the first in sequence...a figure, a monk w/a pale region where his face should be...religious connotations big big...carignan, we learn, is some sort of gun-runner?...this from the colonel, who is cia, larger than life, a record...as is skip, cia, no record as yet.
one character reads calvin...predestination and all that...but he won't no more, as timothy is bones...his wife kathy looks at one of his books.
the colonel has advanced a notion: one god, but different administrations.
hao tells his master, i've made my doubt my calling...the master tells him no, the phrasing is you must allow your doubt to become your calling, you must permit it.
a quote: we vietnamese have two philosophies to sustain us. the confucian tells us how to behave when fate grants us peace and order. the buddhist trains us to accept our fate even when it brings us blood and chaos.
the narrative has seen the p.i......vietnam, where an attempt on the colonel's life has been made. no one narrative line is continuous point a to point b...so one must pay attention....take notes...
update: sunday morning, 921 a.m. est...
overwork overwork, at time, booga-booga zulu, set yours transmitters and receivers...
the monkey is symbolic.
monkeys.
in diapers.
the last 157....the same number of n-words in huck finn. verily.
and...eggs.
symbolic.
so..614 pages i guess? no idea me as i read this on the kindle. lengthy. you get that sense as you wait for the percentages (that is how time is tracked on kindle) to change and you advance lots before the gain.
anyway, this story moves about, the p.i.....to vietnam...the usa...malaysia...almost thialand...burma...phoenix,usa....minneapolis/st paul, usa...
the story moves around...614 pages...and, time...from 1963 to 1983...there is a big jump toward the end...say the last? 25% or less? from 1970 to 1983.
about the war? well yeah, but it's more than that. monkeys in diapers, for one...orphans...family.
it is an impressive story...i can't help but admire the work that went into this one...to take so many characters through so many changes of time and place.
and sure...okay...freaking nam...we all did our time in the nam....
but in this story, there's monkeys in diapers. science. the colonel uses science...everything is all cataloged and indexed....science....
there's much to this story...all this business about the earth...the gooks in their tunnels....the americans on their mountains...the faces in the stones and trees the mahogany logs.
appearances....like the monkey perceived to be a man....
one could read this a number of times and come away w/any number of conclusions about life and death.
last night at 3:00 a.m. president kennedy had been killed. seaman houston and the other two recruits slept while the first reports traveled around the world. there was one small nightspot on the island, a dilapidated club with big revolving fans in the ceiling and one bar and one pinball game; the two marines who ran the club had come by to wake them up and tell them what had happened to the president.
story opener. in the philippines.
characters (this list is not complete)
bill houston
james houston
captain nguyen minh, viet nam air force pilot
nguyen hao
trung than, called the monk
colonel francis xavier sands
mrs. van, an employee of the u.s. information service
mosa
major aguinaldo, filipino army major, eddie aguinaldo
sebastian, houseboy
william/will “skip� sands, nephew of the colonel
anders pitchfork, english entomologist
the german visitor
parvese, italian, owner of monte mayon restaurant
eddie lansdale
carignan, a priest, father thomas carignan, mindanao
pilar, employee/servant to carignan
mayor emeterio d. (deus) luis of damulog
saliling, kind of tribesman?
robertson, nephew of saliling, hands carignan the box containing the bones of timothy
freddy castro, owner of a hotel, damulog
kathy, wife of timothy, timmy as they called him for the 1st time
romy, w/a survey team, from manila
boy sedosa, constabulary patrolman
corazon, servant to timothy & kathy
mrs. edith villanueva, upliftment development foundation
joel, second chapter, translated “pillars of smoke� but the original hebrew said “palm trees of smoke.�
fairly involved story that has the phillipine islands, vietnam, usa as setting (so far, at the 14% point). the major players seem to be the colonel, his nephew "skip"...
note: there has already been the use of dreams for two characters, these situations fascinating, one experienced by kathy, who husband timothy, a missionary, has been found dead in the phillipines....a voice whispering in a dream.
carignan has the other, the first in sequence...a figure, a monk w/a pale region where his face should be...religious connotations big big...carignan, we learn, is some sort of gun-runner?...this from the colonel, who is cia, larger than life, a record...as is skip, cia, no record as yet.
one character reads calvin...predestination and all that...but he won't no more, as timothy is bones...his wife kathy looks at one of his books.
the colonel has advanced a notion: one god, but different administrations.
hao tells his master, i've made my doubt my calling...the master tells him no, the phrasing is you must allow your doubt to become your calling, you must permit it.
a quote: we vietnamese have two philosophies to sustain us. the confucian tells us how to behave when fate grants us peace and order. the buddhist trains us to accept our fate even when it brings us blood and chaos.
the narrative has seen the p.i......vietnam, where an attempt on the colonel's life has been made. no one narrative line is continuous point a to point b...so one must pay attention....take notes...
update: sunday morning, 921 a.m. est...
overwork overwork, at time, booga-booga zulu, set yours transmitters and receivers...
the monkey is symbolic.
monkeys.
in diapers.
the last 157....the same number of n-words in huck finn. verily.
and...eggs.
symbolic.
so..614 pages i guess? no idea me as i read this on the kindle. lengthy. you get that sense as you wait for the percentages (that is how time is tracked on kindle) to change and you advance lots before the gain.
anyway, this story moves about, the p.i.....to vietnam...the usa...malaysia...almost thialand...burma...phoenix,usa....minneapolis/st paul, usa...
the story moves around...614 pages...and, time...from 1963 to 1983...there is a big jump toward the end...say the last? 25% or less? from 1970 to 1983.
about the war? well yeah, but it's more than that. monkeys in diapers, for one...orphans...family.
it is an impressive story...i can't help but admire the work that went into this one...to take so many characters through so many changes of time and place.
and sure...okay...freaking nam...we all did our time in the nam....
but in this story, there's monkeys in diapers. science. the colonel uses science...everything is all cataloged and indexed....science....
there's much to this story...all this business about the earth...the gooks in their tunnels....the americans on their mountains...the faces in the stones and trees the mahogany logs.
appearances....like the monkey perceived to be a man....
one could read this a number of times and come away w/any number of conclusions about life and death.
February 5, 2009
I'm still not sure what I feel about this book. Frankly, after reading a number reviews here on goodreads I can sympathize with them all. So maybe that makes it a fascinating book. If you are wondering whether to put this on your list read 10 or so of the first reviews and you'll save yourself some time.
Yes this book IS about "Vietnam". You know the war. Another book 'Nam. And I think to compare it to other earlier novels on the topic is fair. But it's approaching 40 years later and he actually finished it now (even though he had notes on it back in '83). I looked a bit for interviews with Johnson on 'Tree of Smoke' because I wanted to know what he's said about it. Don't get me wrong I love all the erudite reviews and the reviews of reviews but just like in lit class I keep wondering what the author wanted to say. Until he speaks out I guess I'll have to tell you what I feel.
First it wasn't about the 60's-70's. It was about now. Iraq. Afghanistan. Yes. But for me it was about the characters struggling with the ever shifting vagueness of the moral world today. So you want to love your country and defend it against the nihilistic forces of the religious mafia nationalists. But once you take the stance, once you put up your dukes the world shifts. Smarts, bravado, faith, loyalty they all aren't enough to keep you from getting really dirty and confused. The main characters in the book all think they have a way to figure war out. How to deal with. Just look at where they end up. Is it a moral lesson? I don't think either. Most of the characters come to some sort of peace with their flawed viewpoints and ways of copping.
As has been pointed out the book is a bit obtuse to start and takes awhile to pick up the pace. For those that need a more straight line narrative this book will be a trial. I found that I had to make enough time to finish a full sub story so that I wasn't lost when I came back after a longer absence. And if you're looking for a plot you can predict, well move on.
I often judge the strength of a book by the effect it has on me. This book disturbed me. The characters disturbed me. The story is messy and so are the characters. I didn't find myself rooting for them but I sure wanted to know what would happen. I was sometimes confused by it's complexity. And I could help feeling that Johnson was trying to tell me something.
Again just look at the reviews and you'll see that the book must be multi-dimensional if readers (critics too) see it in so many different ways. I recommend it in part based on that.
Yes this book IS about "Vietnam". You know the war. Another book 'Nam. And I think to compare it to other earlier novels on the topic is fair. But it's approaching 40 years later and he actually finished it now (even though he had notes on it back in '83). I looked a bit for interviews with Johnson on 'Tree of Smoke' because I wanted to know what he's said about it. Don't get me wrong I love all the erudite reviews and the reviews of reviews but just like in lit class I keep wondering what the author wanted to say. Until he speaks out I guess I'll have to tell you what I feel.
First it wasn't about the 60's-70's. It was about now. Iraq. Afghanistan. Yes. But for me it was about the characters struggling with the ever shifting vagueness of the moral world today. So you want to love your country and defend it against the nihilistic forces of the religious mafia nationalists. But once you take the stance, once you put up your dukes the world shifts. Smarts, bravado, faith, loyalty they all aren't enough to keep you from getting really dirty and confused. The main characters in the book all think they have a way to figure war out. How to deal with. Just look at where they end up. Is it a moral lesson? I don't think either. Most of the characters come to some sort of peace with their flawed viewpoints and ways of copping.
As has been pointed out the book is a bit obtuse to start and takes awhile to pick up the pace. For those that need a more straight line narrative this book will be a trial. I found that I had to make enough time to finish a full sub story so that I wasn't lost when I came back after a longer absence. And if you're looking for a plot you can predict, well move on.
I often judge the strength of a book by the effect it has on me. This book disturbed me. The characters disturbed me. The story is messy and so are the characters. I didn't find myself rooting for them but I sure wanted to know what would happen. I was sometimes confused by it's complexity. And I could help feeling that Johnson was trying to tell me something.
Again just look at the reviews and you'll see that the book must be multi-dimensional if readers (critics too) see it in so many different ways. I recommend it in part based on that.
October 15, 2017
This is one hell of a novel. In my opinion it was worth the time, and deserving of the accolades it received. By page 400 I could not put it down. Prior to that it was hit and miss but mostly very readable.
In a way, ToS reminds me of Moby Dick or Blood Meridian: a great journey, a larger than life figure tormented by something inchoate yet total, severity of language and philosophical outlook, total destruction, a feeling like being slowly pulled apart the deeper you descend...
One of the characters is driven slightly crazy before we ever meet her, but as she goes further from reality, she begins to quote the theologian Calvin to Skip Sands. She describes part of the ideology (and I'm paraphrasing here) as such: Those in hell don't know it. In fact, can't know it, for if they knew they were in hell they would derive some comfort from the knowledge that the suffering would be eternal.
This line comes relatively early in the novel (sometime in the first 150 pages) and I believe it highlights a theme--the destructive power of misplaced hope. Each of the characters succumbs to this...each falls in his own way.
The novel raises questions about redemption as well. Is it even possible? Do we deserve it? Who grants it?
In the end, I found myself wondering what the Tree of Smoke really is. Within the framework of the story, it is a symbol for the operations in the war, and a metaphor for intelligence operations in general, but it is also something more. It is destruction written as koan. It signifies only what is already gone.
In a way, ToS reminds me of Moby Dick or Blood Meridian: a great journey, a larger than life figure tormented by something inchoate yet total, severity of language and philosophical outlook, total destruction, a feeling like being slowly pulled apart the deeper you descend...
One of the characters is driven slightly crazy before we ever meet her, but as she goes further from reality, she begins to quote the theologian Calvin to Skip Sands. She describes part of the ideology (and I'm paraphrasing here) as such: Those in hell don't know it. In fact, can't know it, for if they knew they were in hell they would derive some comfort from the knowledge that the suffering would be eternal.
This line comes relatively early in the novel (sometime in the first 150 pages) and I believe it highlights a theme--the destructive power of misplaced hope. Each of the characters succumbs to this...each falls in his own way.
The novel raises questions about redemption as well. Is it even possible? Do we deserve it? Who grants it?
In the end, I found myself wondering what the Tree of Smoke really is. Within the framework of the story, it is a symbol for the operations in the war, and a metaphor for intelligence operations in general, but it is also something more. It is destruction written as koan. It signifies only what is already gone.
July 18, 2021
I’ve owned a copy of this for more than 10 years, and the size of the thing was the main reason it sat there untouched for so long. Well, I’m now done reading it and I can see why I was not in a hurry to do so. Simply put- it was an endurance test. A gargantuan book with no plot that lost me several times along the way. I have to admit, though, that as long and tedious as it was to read, it rarely felt like I was wasting my time.
Denis Johnson is clearly a gifted writer, but most of what happens here was pretty uninteresting to me. The dialogue doesn’t push the story forward and there are far too many characters for me to have identified with any or even remember. I couldn’t even describe to you what I just read if I tried.
While admitting that it’s not a terrible novel, I can’t think of one person I’d actually recommend it to. It won the National Book Award for fiction, so if you feel compelled to read it for that reason- go for it, but don't say you weren't warned. After almost two months, though, I’m finally done, so small victory for me. Maybe one day I’ll read it again to see if I get a better understanding.
Denis Johnson is clearly a gifted writer, but most of what happens here was pretty uninteresting to me. The dialogue doesn’t push the story forward and there are far too many characters for me to have identified with any or even remember. I couldn’t even describe to you what I just read if I tried.
While admitting that it’s not a terrible novel, I can’t think of one person I’d actually recommend it to. It won the National Book Award for fiction, so if you feel compelled to read it for that reason- go for it, but don't say you weren't warned. After almost two months, though, I’m finally done, so small victory for me. Maybe one day I’ll read it again to see if I get a better understanding.
February 14, 2009
Reviewers of this book fall into two disparate camps: those who think it is a work of genius and those who feel it is crap. Well, I thought it was brilliant. I'm not sure it is THE quintessential 'Vietnam' book, but it will certainly do until THAT book comes along. Dialogue-driven, Tree of Smoke moves at a brisk pace notwithstanding its girth. The chapters are named by year, 1963 to 1970 and then a lengthy 'epilogue' '1983'. The story shifts constantly between characters, which helps instead of hurts the narrative and thereby adds context, perspective, complexity and nuance. One meandering journey in 1983 by Jimmy Storm, surely meant to give allegorical gravitas, was goofy enough to drop this from 5 to 4 stars (but I may reconsider that). Tree of Smoke richly deserved the National Book Award.
August 16, 2017
Ναι δεν ειναι λάθος, μου πήρε κοντά ένα χρόνο να το (ξανα) διαβάσω αλλά δεν...
Δε κατάφερα να το τελειώσω. Δεν βρήκα ποτέ τον χρόνο να το απολαύσω λόγω του τρελού ρυθμού όλης αυτής της χρονια. Όπως είχε πει κάποτε και ένας καλός κύριος και πελάτης στο βιβλιοπωλείο που δούλευα: αν δε πεθάνω, κάποια στιγμή θα το διαβάσω σίγουρα...
(Τα τρία αστέρια για ο,τι θυμάμαι απο την πρώτη φορά, προ τετραετίας και βάλε)
Δε κατάφερα να το τελειώσω. Δεν βρήκα ποτέ τον χρόνο να το απολαύσω λόγω του τρελού ρυθμού όλης αυτής της χρονια. Όπως είχε πει κάποτε και ένας καλός κύριος και πελάτης στο βιβλιοπωλείο που δούλευα: αν δε πεθάνω, κάποια στιγμή θα το διαβάσω σίγουρα...
(Τα τρία αστέρια για ο,τι θυμάμαι απο την πρώτη φορά, προ τετραετίας και βάλε)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,592 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.