Tree of Smoke: A Novel | Denis Johnson | On The Cutting Edge of Reality

Tree of Smoke: A Novel | Denis Johnson | The American Anabasis

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Tree of Smoke: A N...

	Tree of Smoke: A Novel Denis Johnson Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007 - 624 pages average customer review:based on 97 reviews view larger image
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On The Cutting Edge of Reality

"Tree of Smoke" is long, yes, and mostly talk. Especially for a war book, keep in mind that it's mostly talk. It's also compelling and riveting in its own unique way. I don't know what I would compare it too, but it's dense like Ken Kesey or Charles Dickens and epic like, say, "Catch 22." It works on the fringes of the war, as one character calls it, "on the cutting edge of reality, where it turns into a dream."

So, a caution right up front: if you are looking for Vietnam war action like the movie "Platoon," look elsewhere. This book takes place, for the most part, above and around the war. There are a few exceptions, but the book seems to be as much about what it takes to fight and to win a war. It's about the psychological warfare, deception and spies. But at every level, "Tree of Smoke" examines what it takes to go to war, to conduct a war, to believe in war. "We've lost the war, we've lost the heart," says one character and we all know where Vietnam ends up, so the arc is predictable but Johnson's ability to imagine these conversations and these characters is what keeps you going.

I think what Johnson is saying more than anything is that it takes faith and firm belief to wage war and to win one.

Recommended for readers who enjoy a long, thoughtful and hearty meal. This is the opposite of a quick-paced thriller; it's slow and contemplative.

One note: I listened to this book on audio CD. I've seen some other comments about Will Patton's performance being less than stellar. Hardly. Patton's delivery is brilliant. Terrific and subtle nuances in his delivery made each character distinct - a Brit, a Filipino, the Americans, the Vietnamese - and his inflection was nearly as brilliant as the dialogue. What a great book to listen to, particularly with Patton as your guide.

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The American Anabasis

Dennis Johnson's Tree of Smoke is mythopoetic in its reach and ambition, excavating through the different levels the postwar American involvement in Asia. Johnson's narrative shifts through time, place and people as he attempts to tell an allegorical tale that mirrors the American anabasis through Asia in the 20th century. Through the haunting passion of Skip Sands and his legendary uncle the story is one of the CIA itself- the hope, dreams, pain and innocence that went into that noble war. But it is so much more than that. By taking in the grand scope Johnson's book shows us the consequences both moral and physical of the American engagement in Southeast Asia- but not in the way most would assume. In many ways Johnson succeeds maybe where he never intends: He makes noble the dreams and idea that drove America into Asia- As Michael Herr wrote in another time and place "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there, American and essentially adolescent, if the energy could have been channelled into anything more than noise, waste and pain it wold have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."

Johnson's Tree of Smoke is like the Tree of Life we glimpsed in that corridor between California and Vietnam- that road that was our anabasis our "march up country" towards nobility and hope. The Tree of Smoke is a poetic tribute to the spook war, the grunts and the Vietnamese. Its about the fantasies and freedom that most men never know. Its a haunting reminder of those lost to headquarters but who loved the Vietnamese with their brains- and their hearts. Its about the ops they ran or dreamed of running only to find the ideal had become reality and was being run back on them-obscured and disfigured. But as Johnson shows history changes baby, and war took on a life of its own and the dreamers became as Herr noted so hauntingly and which Johnson makes flesh: "the saddest casualities of the sixties, all the promise of good service on the New Frontier either gone or surviving like the vaguest salvages of a dream, still in love with their dear leader, blown away in his prime and theirs-" The Tree of Smoke.

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What's Your Poison?

Denis Johnson's novel is a rich, mysterious and lyrical success, but it also happens to be about war, and this creates a few problems.

How one feels about war being used as a philosophical or literary metaphor will most likely inform his or her overall feeling about Tree of Smoke. Rather than a raw look at warfare on the ground, this novel's eye intentionally hovers slightly above the fray.

The central protaganist, a young CIA agent named Skip, works in the world of Psychological Operations, and after witnessing some dirty dealings in the Phillipines, he wins his longed for assignment to Vietnam.

While there he works with his Uncle, a Colonel who is being surveilled by his own Agency for having written a wierd manifesto/memo about his ideas covert warfare. The Colonel is into deep psychological and intelligence tactics and strategies He is a brilliant man, but at the same time it would appear that he is growing frighteningly metaphysical and mystical.

The Colonel casts a large shadow over his nephew, and also the novel itself. Cut from the same cloth as Conrad's Kurtz and Melville's Ahab, he is a cipher with a very determined will to win what is an unwinnable situation.

While Skip wonders about his Uncle's sanity, double agents, biblical and mythological references, and internal affairs-type investigations are layered on until Johnson succeeds, (at least in my opinion,) in creating a very mysterious atmosphere. However, the book DOES sometimes cross that line between mysterious and confusing, and I found myself going back to reread some passages to make sure I was tracking.

There are other major characters; two brothers who are fighting the war as enlisted men in different branches of the service. At first their presence is a nice juxtaposition to the CIA entities. But as the book progresses, their fractured incidents, (both stateside and in country,) began to feel superfluous. It was as if they should be in a collection of short stories, separate from this work.

About a third of the way into the novel there is a very tense narrative of a firefight during the Tet Offensive. It is a surprise attack and it is the first combat some of the characters are ever seeing. The suspense, anxiety and confusion of the attack are relayed in a gripping manner, and this brings home a visceral connection with the overall themes. At this point I thought the novel was going to strike a nice balance between the loft of its mythological/literary metaphors and the realism of the violent war that consumed so much of our nation's blood and treasure.

That structure never quite coheres or sustains itself, but despite that, I feel the book still remains an achievement. Large, rambling and labrynthine it is a challenging read with many enduring moments.

And I should note that it seems as if the Iraq War informs this novel as much, if not more so, than the Vietnam War. And so I can imagine Tree of Smoke will be able to speak to some in future generations who will find their nation engaged in protracted conflicts.

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might not cook your goose

I listened to a narration of this book on 18 CDs. Sometimes I was cooking, eating, or sleeping. Much of what I could say about plot details that I do remember would be out of place for those who don't want to know why their goose is already cookied before they even start reading this book. My timing on the CDs was designed to allow a return to the library in Saint Paul before it fills with peoploe who think of coming to Saint Paul like going to church.

My most recent book purchase, Selected Writings of Sarah Kofman, with its emphasis on conjuring death, has a topic heading at the top of page 132 about Saint Paul, The Law as Hateful. Based on ideas that Nietzsche published in his book Daybreak, it makes Christianity seem like a religion that was created primarily for people who did not want to think that their goose was cooked. One of the characters in "Tree of Smoke" comes to Saint Paul, Minnesota, near the end of the book. On a scale from stillborn to born with a brain, her trip to Saint Paul is like having her brain fall into a fish net. She might be considered a sex object at the beginning of the book, but at some point, she becomes the personification of a "Don't look now" mentality.

It is quite common for us to consider religion less frightening than a myth in the P. I. in which the world of suck joins the world of blood in the form of a vampire. "Tree of Smoke" tries to explain how such myths became a basis of Psy Ops. A big irony is that the same American agency that needs double agents to do big Psy Ops activities was also attempting to get rid of double agents, or anyone who seemed capable of being on both sides. Talking about a thing as a hypothetical becomes hyperbolic when a polygraph test attempts to cover the same material. I have become so fond of sacrilege this summer, mixing the standard religious mythology with historical hypotheticals that are more plausible than certain assertions in the Bible, I feel like jumping from the basic palm tree, which is not the world the Hebrew Bible used for a pillar of cloud, to a real empire that was based in Rome for centuries:

Rose (a name shortened from something that looked Jewish to me) wrote a book, Revolutionary Antisemitism from Kant to Wagner (Princeton University Press, 1990), which mentioned Germans around 1800 who considered Jesus the son of a Roman soldier. The historicism connected with the idea mentioned Greek and Latin as languages that the Talmud had been translated into, resulting in some confusion about Jews referring to the "son of the virgin." Considering the Roman empire as a real empire, as Japanese expansion in a prosperity sphere in Asia before America joined World War II involved comfort women, it seems plausible that Mary could have been a sex object for a string of Roman soldiers.

Like alcohol, tobacco, and firearms in Tree of Smoke, sex can be part of a metaforeplay that has after-effects greater than a bunch of Branch Davidians becoming smoke and toast fifteen years ago near Waco, Texas. Iraq was not like Nam because we really wanted to declare victory and fire their army before 4000 American troops could be killed in Iraq. Tree of Smoke attempts to turn alcohol, tobacco, and firearms into the ultimate pleasures of this life, but ultimately it runs into the question: do you enjoy telling lies?

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