But the Colonel distrusts his superiors, resents the bureaucracy of the Washington establishment, and takes orders only from himself. His plans are limited only by his own imagination. Should he lace the North Vietnamese tunnels with psychedelic drugs? Should he plant a rumor that some dissident group in the military has its own nuclear weapon and plans to blow it up in Ho Chi Minh’s backyard? Should he send his own double agent into North Vietnam? As the Colonel’s sidekick, the unhinged Sergeant Jimmy Storm, announces: “We want ideas blown up right to where they’re gonna pop. We’re on the cutting edge of reality itself. Right where it turns into a dream.”
Johnson builds several sub-plots around this main axis. We follow the exploits of Bill Houston (a major character in Johnson's first novel, Angels) and his younger brother James, who find that the same behavior that earns medals in Vietnam leads to prison back in the States. We unravel the complex relationship between Nguyen Hao, an operative for the Americans, and his Viet Cong friend Trung Than, in which the line between loyalty and betrayal becomes so blurred that every course of action is compromised. We trace the path of a Kathy Jones, who comes to Southeast Asia as wife of a Christian missionary, but leaves as one more burnt out case, leaving behind her religious faith and almost everything else.
Some have suggested that Johnson's dedication of Tree of Smoke – “Again for H.P. and Those Who” – is his tribute to a “higher power.” Certainly his characters invariably end up (if they survive at all) at the point where the twelve step program should begin. But the path to recovery and redemption is always elusive in Tree of Smoke. We find no simple inferno-to-paradise roadmap, as in Dante; no glib resolutions, as in so many war stories. Remember that corny scene at the end of The Deer Hunter where everybody sings “God Bless America”? Remember when they saved Private Ryan? Tree of Smoke is not that kind of story. But in its harrowing, relentless unfolding of a national tragedy made all too personal, it ranks among the finest war novels of our time.
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!