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Tree of Smoke A Novel Denis Johnson Books

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Tree of Smoke A Novel Denis Johnson Books

I tried to read this book and gave up, then read Johnson's, "Train Dreams," and was made a believer, so I tried to read, "Tree of Smoke" again. And again. And again.... this was my 4th (?) and last attempt at it. It is a story about boring people doing very little in exotic settings. Johnson needs to quit showing off his skills and settle down and tell a good story. It is vague, and has characters do nothing--but you need to remember them when he switches across an ocean or several continents and leaves these characters for more boredom, for he will come back to them and they are almost like strangers that you are expected to know and understand. I found myself searching back through the book to countless characters doing nothing to try to make connections to the mundane. Great skills, boring story.


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Tree of Smoke A Novel Denis Johnson Books Reviews

I bought this book for my father (who has no computer) and I'm reviewing on his behalf.

He is a man that likes Proust and LOVES Pynchon (particularly Gravity's Rainbow) and he really enjoyed this book. I mention that because he tends to enjoy really complex, "high brow" literature. Caveat Emptor if you're someone that starts to sweat when they get beyond James Patterson...

His comment on the book was that some people have one story inside them they really yearn to tell and this seems like that sort of book.

Lastly, my dad is a Vietnam Vet, so (presumably) this book gets it right in that regard.
I got the sense that this could have been edited down to a much smaller, better novel, or perhaps a novelette along with a series of related short stories. Johnson is at his best describing the lives of poor and struggling people. The idea is, I think, to show the madness, confusion and futility of the Vietnam war both there and back in the U.S. He succeeds somewhat, but the result is kind of shapeless. Perhaps he intended this to be a metaphor for what he was trying to evoke. Like some other reviewers, I thought the result was uneven. Some of it was brilliant, but he needed a better editor.
This book is phenomenal. I realize that there is probably no space for additional laurels on this books lapel, but I'm on a roll. Move over National Book award, here comes another five star review.

This is one of only three books I've ever read which I finished and then turned back to page one and started over again. True fact.

The content of the narrative is stunning even in summary, and in Denis Johnson's sparkling prose it becomes epic and artful. The naive and tragic figure of Sands. The insane dangerous blowhard colonel. Kathy Jones. The mayor. Trung. The characters are very real. The scenes of life, war, struggle, love, are all remarkable.

This book is amazing.
I don't feel this is a book about the Vietnam war as much as it is a book about disillusionment. There's very little redemption to be found for any of these characters but that does not keep most of them from flailing forward. As a tale of that generation, the 1960s, I found it, engaging and deeply saddening, where the traitors prosper and the true believers are destroyed on the bedrock of their beliefs.ultimately I think it's like about survival at any cost. And also about those who choose not to survive in a world that I can't believe it.
After reading so many positive reviews singing the praises of this novel, I was disappointed when I read it myself. It is at once a deliberate anti-war tract and an anti-military rant based on a revisionist view of the war and the politics of that time, 1963-1975, during which the Vietnam experience was inflicted on the American psyche.

Generally speaking, the author succeeds in writing a 700 page rambler set primarily in Southeast Asia. One could argue the dialogue often reveals little of the story and often seems to degrade the characters involved. A plotline emerges slowly from all the narrative but only late in the novel.

The author does make a few salient points about war in general. Perhaps the most meaningful is that most of the people of South Vietnam did not choose this war but were trapped in its reality. Many of the foreign military chose warfare as their line of work, even though many Americans in the war also had no choice but to endure the experience.

The first scene sets the tone of the novel and, through its misunderstanding of events, creates an invalid situation that defines the author’s point of view and his social goal. The scene introduces Seaman William Houston and other members of the military, especially the Americans, as unthinking, uncaring people who are too ignorant to select a more politically acceptable career path than military service. It includes an artificial incident set in the Philippines in which the unthinking, ignorant seaman hunts for wild boar with a .22 caliber rifle. He shoots a wild monkey in the back while thinking of absolutely nothing. He then picks up the dying animal and watches it die.

This unlikely scene, with its bias and invalid assumptions, undermines the credibility of the story and sets the tone for the book. It shows the author’s lack of research in several areas. First of all, no one would hunt for wild boar using a .22 rifle; it has no stopping power. Second, most wild animals lay up during the heat of the day in the tropics. A trained sailor would not have his finger on the trigger until he was deliberately ready to shoot and kill. He would not have a blank mind while watching the monkey that he is about to shoot. A wild animal, once shot, would go on the defensive immediately and hide, not sit out in the open where it is vulnerable. Finally, a wounded monkey would spend its last breathe biting a human who tried to pick it up.

The net result is that the scene and character do not ring true. The author is clearly writing about something with which he has no experience. Only someone who has never hunted, fired a weapon, or who has never talked to someone who does hunt, would create or believe this event could possibly be true. Its fallacious assumptions and incorrect behaviors cause it to fail, as do many other events and scenes described throughout the book.
I tried to read this book and gave up, then read Johnson's, "Train Dreams," and was made a believer, so I tried to read, "Tree of Smoke" again. And again. And again.... this was my 4th (?) and last attempt at it. It is a story about boring people doing very little in exotic settings. Johnson needs to quit showing off his skills and settle down and tell a good story. It is vague, and has characters do nothing--but you need to remember them when he switches across an ocean or several continents and leaves these characters for more boredom, for he will come back to them and they are almost like strangers that you are expected to know and understand. I found myself searching back through the book to countless characters doing nothing to try to make connections to the mundane. Great skills, boring story.