November 22, 2008
'Tree of Smoke' Reflects a Generation
There are few great works about Vietnam and fewer still that capture the place and time as a setting that evokes a larger, even more complex story.
Our book reviewer describes Denis Johnson's new book as more than just a spy novel or a war story. It is "an examination of conscience."Denis Johnson' "Tree of Smoke" is an extraordinary, sprawling novel that takes place mostly in Vietnam during our ill-fated presence. While it plumbs our hearts and minds of that era, it is less about that war and more about grander themes of failure and conscience.
A rich cast populates the narrative that is unpredictable yet imbued with a certain inevitability -- after all, we know how the larger story ends. But this is a tale of wants and ambitions, of escapes and discoveries, of irrepressible hopes and shattering realities. High-octane disintegrations mark the themes of the best American literature -- Ahab, Bigger Thomas, Gatsby -- and with "Tree of Smoke," Johnson wraps his characters fiascos in the multilayered mantle of the 1960s.
We are mainly intrigued by Skip Sands, somewhat privileged and wonderfully idealistic, whose destiny propels him to work with his uncle in the CIA. Fate shoves him about and he will meet and learn from a Canadian nurse, Kathy Jones, Sgt. Jimmy Storm, who is afflicted with a brilliant insanity, and Skip's outsize uncle who is simultaneously legendary and marginalized. But this is more sweeping than a mere spy novel and more than just a war story.
The drama also involves salt-of-the-earth brothers from Phoenix, one of whom is at his best when left to savor battle, the other most content when in prison. And there is Trung, a double -- or is it triple? -- agent who propels events that soon enough turn unruly. It would be fair to say that all the characters who presume to have some control over their destinies are put in their place in some fashion by larger, brutish events.
The book becomes gripping but starts out almost desultory, lingering perhaps too long before moving on. Yet there is something that uncomfortably parallels the Vietnam experience. We barely notice -- nor can we later quite remember -- the beginning and we don't quite know what to make of unfolding events. Familiarity insinuates itself after a bit
and soon enough we believe we've got the people and situations in their proper places. Further along, we realize we are not piloting the ride, rather it is controlling us, and we can't seem to stop or jump off. For the characters, either bitter wisdom or death (or both) is their reward. For us, it is an examination of conscience.
Johnson's style foregoes pyrotechnics for something straightforward, but the connections and the shadings are unusual and vivid. Conversations don't quite go where one might expect, much as real ones often do and always with the effect of peeling the layers off of people and motivations.
It would be fair to say that a work of this scope -- it took Johnson seven years to complete -- would have been mush in the hands of a lesser writer. There are few enough great works about Vietnam and fewer still that capture the place and time as a setting that evokes a larger, even more complex story.
"Tree of Smoke" is heartbreaking and smart, far from being polemic and not a simple war tale, but a fully engaging work that runs us through the wringer of remembrance and reminds us how the certainties of our youth became casualties in the wars of ideals.
A rich cast populates the narrative that is unpredictable yet imbued with a certain inevitability -- after all, we know how the larger story ends. But this is a tale of wants and ambitions, of escapes and discoveries, of irrepressible hopes and shattering realities. High-octane disintegrations mark the themes of the best American literature -- Ahab, Bigger Thomas, Gatsby -- and with "Tree of Smoke," Johnson wraps his characters fiascos in the multilayered mantle of the 1960s.
We are mainly intrigued by Skip Sands, somewhat privileged and wonderfully idealistic, whose destiny propels him to work with his uncle in the CIA. Fate shoves him about and he will meet and learn from a Canadian nurse, Kathy Jones, Sgt. Jimmy Storm, who is afflicted with a brilliant insanity, and Skip's outsize uncle who is simultaneously legendary and marginalized. But this is more sweeping than a mere spy novel and more than just a war story.
The drama also involves salt-of-the-earth brothers from Phoenix, one of whom is at his best when left to savor battle, the other most content when in prison. And there is Trung, a double -- or is it triple? -- agent who propels events that soon enough turn unruly. It would be fair to say that all the characters who presume to have some control over their destinies are put in their place in some fashion by larger, brutish events.
The book becomes gripping but starts out almost desultory, lingering perhaps too long before moving on. Yet there is something that uncomfortably parallels the Vietnam experience. We barely notice -- nor can we later quite remember -- the beginning and we don't quite know what to make of unfolding events. Familiarity insinuates itself after a bit
and soon enough we believe we've got the people and situations in their proper places. Further along, we realize we are not piloting the ride, rather it is controlling us, and we can't seem to stop or jump off. For the characters, either bitter wisdom or death (or both) is their reward. For us, it is an examination of conscience.
Johnson's style foregoes pyrotechnics for something straightforward, but the connections and the shadings are unusual and vivid. Conversations don't quite go where one might expect, much as real ones often do and always with the effect of peeling the layers off of people and motivations.
It would be fair to say that a work of this scope -- it took Johnson seven years to complete -- would have been mush in the hands of a lesser writer. There are few enough great works about Vietnam and fewer still that capture the place and time as a setting that evokes a larger, even more complex story.
"Tree of Smoke" is heartbreaking and smart, far from being polemic and not a simple war tale, but a fully engaging work that runs us through the wringer of remembrance and reminds us how the certainties of our youth became casualties in the wars of ideals.
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