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Tree of Smoke Paperback – September 2, 2008

3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 902 ratings

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NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER

One of the
New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year

"The God I want to believe in has a voice and a sense of humor like Denis Johnson's.” ―
Jonathan Franzen

Named A Best Book of the Year by
Time, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Slate, The National Book Critics Circle, The Christian Science Monitor. . .

Tree of Smoke is the story of William "Skip" Sands, CIA--engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong--and the disasters that befall him. It is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert and into a war where the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In the words of Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times, Tree of Smoke is "bound to become one of the classic works of literature produced by that tragic and uncannily familiar war."

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Denis Johnson is a true American artist, and Tree of Smoke is a tremendous book.” ―The New York Times Book Review

“I can't be sure that there's been a better American novel published in the past ten years. It is a masterpiece.” ―
The Miami Herald

“It will . . . get inside your head like the war it is describing--mystifying, horrifying, mesmerizing. [Johnson] has written a book that by the end wraps around you as tightly as a snake.” ―
The Washington Post Book World

Tree of Smoke is a masterpiece of language and depth.” ―San Francisco Chronicle

“Johnson has captured the zeitgeist of American experience as surely as Twain, Hemingway, or Ellison.” ―
New York Post

“Opens a window onto a world of mystery, war, and intrigue whose importance in the (usually) unwritten history of our republic can't be denied.” ―
Chicago Tribune

“Johnson has written his
War and Peace.” ―Harper's Magazine

About the Author

Denis Johnson (1949–2017) is the author of eight novels, one novella, one book of short stories, three collections of poetry, two collections of plays, and one book of reportage. His novel Tree of Smoke won the 2007 National Book Award.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0312427743
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; First Edition (September 2, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 720 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780312427740
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312427740
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.45 x 1.8 x 8.2 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 902 ratings

About the author

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Denis Johnson
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Denis Hale Johnson (born July 1, 1949) is an American writer best known for his short story collection Jesus' Son (1992) and his novel Tree of Smoke (2007), which won the National Book Award for Fiction. He also writes plays, poetry and non-fiction.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
902 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book captures the Vietnam War era brilliantly and provides a powerful portrait of the people involved. However, some readers find the book unreadable and unredeeming. There are mixed opinions on the story complexity, with some finding it stunning and exciting, while others mention disorganization and confusion. Readers also have differing views on the writing quality, character development, and pacing. Some find the characters well-defined and realistic, while others feel they lack an arc or character development.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

13 customers mention "Historical accuracy"13 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the historical accuracy of the book. They find it captures that time in history brilliantly, providing remarkable insight into the Vietnam War era and human psyches involved. The novel is described as a powerful portrait of Vietnam and the people who were there. Readers enjoy the Vietnam war setting and find the writing evocative and surreal.

"Dennis Johnson has written a brilliant novel that evokes the historical period with the kind of wit and imagination it requires...." Read more

"...to the people who flunked the marshmallow test; it's a decent comment on the Vietnam war without a whole lot of battle scenes; it also includes some..." Read more

"...one, by this deep, fiery FEELING that one has encountered profound art and literature, the masterpiece that Conrad's work is...." Read more

"...This novel is a very rich and powerful portrait of Vietnam and the people who were trying to make the best of their lives." Read more

60 customers mention "Story complexity"20 positive40 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the story complexity. Some find the narrative stunning and exciting, with compelling characters and a simple plot line. Others mention disorganization and confusion, with long periods of the book that feel meandering.

"...I'd like to ponder it a bit more. It's (obviously) not a book for everyone. It's talky. It takes its own sweet time...." Read more

"...The story keeps moving, and the pages fly by deceptively fast...." Read more

"...However, alongside that are long periods of the book that feel meandering and left me feeling like I'd lost who the speaker was or even the point..." Read more

"...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..." Read more

48 customers mention "Writing quality"26 positive22 negative

Customers have mixed views on the writing quality. Some find it outstanding, articulate, and literary with an exact tone. Others find it unreadable, tedious, and difficult to read. The prose is well-strung but lacks an interesting or creative narrative.

"...dialogue carries the story - at at once tough, believable, and literary, and integral to the layering of Johnson's deep, organically wrought cast of..." Read more

"...The book is actually a very lame rewrite, with the aforementioned pseudo-philosophical meditations thrown in, of the movie Apocalypse Now, Redux, a..." Read more

"...Clearly, he has a great command of the English language, and his ability to emote and deliver poignant feelings on behalf of his characters does not..." Read more

"...'s National Book Award, but this one has to be my pick for its beautiful writing and its sense of compassion. An unforgettable novel." Read more

25 customers mention "Character development"12 positive13 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the character development. Some find the characters well-defined and realistic, staying with them for a while. Others feel the characters are not believable, there is no character arc, and there are no clear heroes or villains in the world presented in the book. The scenes and characters don't ring true, leaving loose ends everywhere.

"...are seriously messed up, but they just might be the most interesting characters in the book...." Read more

"...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...." Read more

"...To me it was a book that included unique, compelling characters; an exciting plot line (albeit certainly far from easy to understand); and..." Read more

"This book did not live up to expectations. The author never really developed his characters and abandons them mid story...." Read more

21 customers mention "Pacing"14 positive7 negative

Customers have different views on the pacing of the book. Some find it engaging and fascinating, with a believable story. Others find it boring, pointless, and tiresome.

"...Johnson's brilliant dialogue carries the story - at at once tough, believable, and literary, and integral to the layering of Johnson's deep,..." Read more

"...so loosely strung together as to render the work unafffecting and meaningless...." Read more

"...The characters are well defined and the interplay is exact and realistic...." Read more

"...are woven seamlessly into the plot and make for an incredibly rich experience...." Read more

13 customers mention "Story quality"7 positive6 negative

Customers have mixed views on the story quality. Some find it engaging and sad, with a well-told tale. Others feel the author abandons characters mid-story, creates ridiculous situations, and predictably ends the story. There are also complaints about lack of closure in some storylines.

"It's a deep, complex, funny, tragic novel--sometimes a bit too mythical for its own good. The prose style is amazing--quite the equal of Faulkner...." Read more

"...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...." Read more

"A deep and sad book about the American hallucinogenic involvement in Asia, specifically the Philippines and Vietnam...." Read more

"...a waste of time - a week for me - two words come to mind: pastiche and derivative...." Read more

10 customers mention "Length"5 positive5 negative

Customers have different views on the book's length. Some find it engaging with a plausible depth and dimensions, while others consider it too long and difficult to read.

"...But in my reading, Johnson gives this new and plausible depth and dimensions...." Read more

"...A book so long it can only be described as obsessional, not to mention hugely annoying and boring...." Read more

"...SMOKE's size might intimidate some, and it is over 600 pages, but it is big and fast, easy to read, a comfortable book to open and hold...." Read more

"This book is not for a casual reader: it's long and convoluted and at times confusing due to a very sprawling plot...." Read more

22 customers mention "Readability"3 positive19 negative

Customers find the book difficult to read and unsatisfactory. They describe it as a waste of time, paper, and ink. Readers mention that the book doesn't meet their expectations and is not really a war novel.

"...Its fallacious assumptions and incorrect behaviors cause it to fail, as do many other events and scenes described throughout the book." Read more

"To sum up what makes this book such a waste of time - a week for me - two words come to mind: pastiche and derivative...." Read more

"This book did not live up to expectations. The author never really developed his characters and abandons them mid story...." Read more

"...I kept reading this waste of paper and ink suffering through to the tiresome and predictable end...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2007
    Dennis Johnson has written a brilliant novel that evokes the historical period with the kind of wit and imagination it requires. Someone who did not live during that time may find the novel outrageous. It is important to remember that during the war, the U.S. Army was seriously experimenting with the Frisbee as a tactical weapon. Psychological warfare (psyops) involved such bizarre methods as flying helicopters equipped with loudspeakers over enemy territory in order to broadcast the wailing admonitions of family ghosts intended to dissuade the Viet Cong from their evil ways.

    Colonel Sands, a swaggering, hard-drinking CIA operative who is nevertheless prescient, reminds me a little of the enigmatic Jean-Paul Vann, the central real life character of Neil Sheehan's A BRIGHT AND SHINING LIE. Johnson grew up around State Department types, and is able to recreate them with humor and pathos.

    As one who took part in that unfortunate piece of history called The Vietnam War, I can vouch for Johnson's ability to insert the acupuncture needle exactly in the part of the brain/heart that enlivens historical memory. A great novel. Although it will disappoint those who attempt to read it as a traditional spy novel, it will thrill those entering its pages if they have a capacity to appreciate the insanity of wartime bureaucracy. People these days are fond of saying, about the strangeness of reality, "You can't make this stuff up." Well, he didn't. But he did.
    9 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2010
    The skinny: I loved Tree of Smoke, but I'm going to take some time this weekend to figure out more precisely why - this book fascinated and frustrated me. It's a very different type of Vietnam novel, focusing on the "secret war" instead of on the clash of arms, although there's that as well. But it's not verismo along the lines of The Things They Carried or psychedelic verismo a la Going After Cacciato - two great novels of Vietnam. Like ambitious Vietnam books, it speaks to broad topics on which it's hard to have an original thought. Yet Johnson succeeds and seems a wholly credible witness to the times and places he writes about so stylishly. For me, as good as his eye is and as intriguing as the Byzantine machinations of his characters, Johnson's brilliant dialogue carries the story - at at once tough, believable, and literary, and integral to the layering of Johnson's deep, organically wrought cast of Americans, Vietnamese, Brits, Germans, and others. (I frankly don't understand the fusillades he's drawn on both his dialogue and his characters.)

    Tree of Smoke struck me more than a few times as an odd Asian doppleganger-counterpart to Roth's American Pastoral - depicting "the War that Deranged the Americans," individually and in their clusters of society, both home and abroad, exposing all their tender nerves and mythologized beliefs. Johnson gives us more than a few Kurtz-like figures, and Conrad resonates throughout the descent of Skip Sands, "Johnny Storm," and others into various forms of call-it-what-you-will. Johnson's Houston brothers vault from SE Asia to invade/descend into Roth's American scene, although two-thirds a continent away from suburban New Jersey. I suppose this kind of thing - call it "madness as a metaphor" for short, but the book is so much more than that - are about as hackneyed in a Vietnam novel as anything else; after all, for many writers, soldiers, and civilians, Vietnam was the psychedelic war, and the psychotic war, and many other related things to many people. But in my reading, Johnson gives this new and plausible depth and dimensions. And he does so, I should add, with a ferocious sense of humor and with descriptive powers that are flat-out supernatural. On page 4, in which he spins out the fate of an unlucky higher jungle primate, we get an early display of Johnson's powers, a hint of his sensibility, and a sense of how this may all play out.

    I've docked the book a star for its threadbare "Ah....the nefarious CIA devours its own" theme that so many writers are drawn to. Democracies have a hard time with secret organizations, and democratic peoples spin yarns - delirious imaginings, conspiracies, short stories, novels, editorials, and such - about anything they can't peer into as deeply as they wish; I'm more than a little tired of this, and I apologize for a pet peeve. (If having said as much seems a spoiler, it will be one for only the most obtuse of readers, to include anyone who takes on the book without first having read the dust jacket or the cover of the paperback.)

    But in the end, a lot of readers - as we can see from the reviews of those who were less impressed with the book than I was - will wonder about what Johnson has left us with. For so protean a novel, each of us will decide for ourselves. I'd like to ponder it a bit more. It's (obviously) not a book for everyone. It's talky. It takes its own sweet time. It's extremely calculated in its ambiguities. Readers who are not of Johnson's generation, who weren't devouring newspapers in the 1960s and 1970s, or who were never in uniform, may view much of this novel as obscure or pedantic. But Johnson ties things up pretty well by page 614, and Tree of Smoke gripped me, hard. To me, it created a literary world well worth inhabiting, and it made me want to read a great deal more Denis Johnson.
    34 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2024
    If you are looking for a historical fiction book about the Vietnam story, this is not that book. Full stop.

    Instead, we get a book that follows the intertwining and interweaving of a cast of characters from the US, Canada, Vietnam, etc., and how something like the Vietnam War often throws them together in the mosh pit of life. But the characters have nothing more at the end of the book to say about it. Life just sort of happens to them ... most end poorly. And after 615 pages we are left with 'Jesus will save you', just as he can every other broken person in the world... delivered in a set of massive, multi-page spanning, run-on paragraphs.

    Those final paragraphs summarize the thoughts of one of the few characters that ‘survived’. She, Kathy, over the course of the book, has been ground down from a young, idealistic, Christian wife widowed early in the book, and who throughout the book is in southeast Asia in support of the humanitarian effort and becomes intertwined with one of the main characters. In the end, though, she apparently sees nothing more to her life’s work than to be a shill for such efforts, asking for money to continue to support efforts that she herself now sees as having delivered several female children out of the fall of Saigon, only to be adopted by American parents, some of them placed in a modeling competition where the now young teen with a ‘blue skirt and yellow T-shirt tight across her training bra, with lipstick and mascara, she looked like a little whore, arrogant and sullen…’ is the lead in to her taking the stage to ask for more money. These are not good people, and even the good people aren’t good people in the end.

    I came to this book from it’s placement as 100th in the New York Times '100 Best Books of the 21st Century'. I have not read any other Denis Johnson books, so I will have to take it at their word that his other stories are good enough to warrant the praise that the literary press seems to have heaped upon him. This book does not incline me to want to read others.

    Clearly, he has a great command of the English language, and his ability to emote and deliver poignant feelings on behalf of his characters does not go unnoticed to the reader. However, alongside that are long periods of the book that feel meandering and left me feeling like I'd lost who the speaker was or even the point the author was trying to make. Too much of it feels like background someone would write for how a scene should look in a movie without ever touching what the point of the scene was in the first place.

    It certainly needed a good editor to fix the multiple, obvious grammatical errors and sentences that honestly just don't make for good reading. But also could have benefited from catching other factual errors such as a mention of F-16s being used in Vietnam, when in fact that aircraft didn't enter military service until 1978. While we are not reading this book for historical accuracy, as I mentioned at the top, they throw the reader out of the storyline when encountered in more than one place.

    B.R. Meyers, writing in 2007 for The Atlantic, said ‘..the rest of it evinces no more feel for the English language and often a good deal less, and America’s most revered living writer touts “prose of amazing power and stylishness” on the back cover, and reviewers agree that whatever may be wrong with the book, there’s no faulting its finely crafted sentences—when I see all this, I begin to smell a rat. Nothing sinister, mind you. It’s just that once we Americans have ushered a writer into the contemporary pantheon, we will lie to ourselves to keep him there. Having read nothing by Denis Johnson except Tree of Smoke, his latest novel, I see no reason to consider him a great or even a good writer, but he is apparently very well thought of by everyone else.’ I find it hard to disagree.

    Overall, the LA Times reviewer David L. Ulin I think summarized it well 'it gets too diffuse, too sprawling, until we ourselves grow disconnected, detached, and lost ... it never brings us close enough to believe that these characters matter, that there is something fundamental- lives, souls, the question of deliverance-at stake'. In a word, ennui.
    3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Palash Verma
    4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
    Reviewed in India on February 18, 2015
    A gripping book, right from the start. Must read for covert co-op theme based action. A genius.
  • Neninow
    5.0 out of 5 stars un grande scrittore
    Reviewed in Italy on July 22, 2013
    il prodotto è arrivato in tempi rapidissimi. denis johnson si sta rivelando uno scrittore con capacità sorprendenti di decrizione del reale, con un linguaggio intrigante e un ritmo svelto e accattivante
  • Rundu
    3.0 out of 5 stars Un long voyage dans le temps
    Reviewed in France on December 17, 2012
    Des longueurs et une intrigue parfois poussive m'ont laissée sur mes réserves. J'adore Denis Johnson mais il manque quelque chose dans Arbre de fumée pour être happé par le napalm et l'humidité des lieux décrits.
  • Steve Miller
    5.0 out of 5 stars very enjoyable read
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 6, 2008
    I bought this having read very good reviews in the newspapers. I wasn't disappointed. It is beautifully written in such a clear way that despite its bulk it is easy to read. I've just ordered two more by the same author.
  • Amazon Customer
    4.0 out of 5 stars Great read
    Reviewed in Canada on January 4, 2020
    Great read