Reading Denis Johnson is like watching those car chase reality shows on TV. The speed and hi-jinks get your adrenalin pumping. And though the plot seems simple enough, the ending is always a surprise. Cops will tell you that there is only one way to pursue a vehicle, but a thousand ways for the chase to come to an end – none of them very pleasant.
Johnson’s characters follow a similar destiny. Some crash, others burn out, a few simply run out of gas. The most daring pull off the road into the fields, slamming through fences and barriers, hoping to find some makeshift path so daunting others won’t dare follow. But someone always follows. When you are hell bent and out of control, you never really escape – least of all from yourself.
Until a few weeks ago, Johnson was best known for a thin book of short stories, Jesus’ Son, a gripping collection which evokes the monologues of folks in rehab programs as they tell how they finally hit bottom. But Johnson’s latest novel, Tree of Smoke, has more buzz than a six-pack of malt liquor, and takes the hard-edged, gut wrenching world of Jesus’ Son to a new level. Last week, Tree of Smoke was nominated for a National Book Award, and the smart money says Johnson takes home the prize. In a year of prominent novels by big name authors (DeLillo, Chabon, Roth, Ondaatje), this ranks among the very best.
Some readers may steer clear of Tree of Smoke because they don’t have the stomach for another Vietnam story. After all, how much is there left to tell after the coals have been raked over by The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, The Things They Carried, Platoon, The Quiet American and so many other lesser efforts? But don’t let that stop you. Johnson’s exceptional novel never falls into the expected clichés of the stereotypical “war novel.” In fact, combat scenes account for very little of Tree of Smoke, and many of the most fascinating battles in its pages are merely psychological. Not that the author steers clear of bloodshed and violence. But in a Denis Johnson novel, no enemy troops are necessary for the “bang, bang, shoot, shoot” scenes, and sometimes the most piercing wounds are self-inflicted.
The novel builds around the figure of Francis Xavier Sands – known to all as “the Colonel” – a hard drinking, renegade CIA agent, and his wary if loyal nephew Skip Sands. Skip is a junior operative in the espionage ranks and, like so many others, he is hypnotized by the Colonel’s charisma and sheer cussedness. The Colonel played football under Knute Rockne at Notre Name, flew combat missions with the Flying Tigers in Burma, survived and escaped as a Japanese POW during World War II – and is now mounting a single-handed effort to disrupt and destroy communism in Southeast Asia.
Article comments
1 - Rodney Welch
What did you make of that final sentence?
2 - Ted Gioia
I think the last sentence of Tree of Smoke is very much like the final page of The Brothers Karamazov. It's where the author of a complex, sometimes morally ambiguous book tips his hand and lets the reader know what he really thinks. So the last sentence is very important in Tree of Smoke. But I won't say more here, because I don't want to spoil things for people who haven't yet read the book.
3 - Rodney Welch
Well, I'll talk in code, too, but ... to me it seemed to be more ambiguous, because it was just so sudden, and seemed to come out of nowhere, so that you don't know if it's "real" or not.
But that's what I loved about it, too -- it affected me so strongly that I immediately re-read the book. Can't say it cleared things up anymore, exactly, because as you know it just hits you so hard, like WHAM.
I think that whole last page is one of the most beautiful things I've read in my life. I read it aloud, twice. It's a bold, bright ending to a brilliant novel.
Here's a sudden thought: it's a true Tree of Smoke ending, just like in the Book of Joel. It illuminates and obscures.
I wasn't thinking Brothers K, but good point, as the book fairly drips with literary references.
(More thoughts, if you're interested.)
4 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net , which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to Boston.com. Nice work!