Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke is first and foremost, a big novel-big on character, big on language, big in time span, and big in length, 614 pages to be exact. It is has been criticized for not being so big on plot. That’s a valid criticism of the book, but it may also be one that misses the point-this novel begs to be experienced in a non-linear, dreamlike fashion. Indeed, like so much about the Vietnam War, where most of it takes place, the novel is less intent on time and place than it is on a state of mind, and changes in state of mind.
The central character is one William “Skip” Sands, a budding CIA officer whom we meet not long after JFK’s assassination at his first post in the Philippines, assisting in the fight against the Huk insurrection. Skip is wide-eyed, in country for the first time, and in love with his vision of America, which he knows will prevail against the godless Communists at this mid-point in the chronology of the Cold War. He is drawn into the orbit of his uncle, the “Colonel”, a WWII hero and something of a legend in intelligence circles. The “Colonel” is larger than life in Skip’s eyes and in his own eyes as well. After the Huk insurrection is quelled the Colonel moves on to Vietnam, and at Skip’s insistence, arranges for Skip to join him there. While in the Philippines we also meet Sgt. Jimmy Storm, who serves as the Colonel’s right hand, and Kathy Jones, a missionary nurse whose husband is kidnapped by the rebels and probably killed. Skip has a brief affair with her after her husband’s death is confirmed as she seeks relief from her grief and he from the beginnings of the disillusionment which starts to seep in after the CIA arranges the killing of a Roman Catholic priest wrongly thought to be smuggling guns to the Huks.
We also briefly meet the Houston brothers, one just leaving the Navy and one enlisting in the army, lying about his age to escape the dead-end nature of life in his small Arizona hometown, and who ends up assigned to the recon unit the Colonel arranges through Byzantine manipulation of the military beaucracy to become his personal unit for his various and often outside-the-chain-of-command operations. There is also Trung, a North Vietnamese agent who is a turncoat to his cause, and Hao, a life long friend of Trung’s who arranges his contact with the Americans, culminating in Trung connecting with the Colonel.
The Colonel becomes increasingly convinced that America will lose the war or lacks the will to do what is necessary to win, and operates more and more outside the chain-of-command. This progression reaches it’s apex in a campaign of misinformation he designs using Trung to plant the idea among the North Vietnamese that the United States is contemplating using nuclear weapons as the tide of war continues to shift in favor of the North Vietnamese. Skip, now fully caught up in his uncle’s illusions even while his Star-Spangled naiveté dissipates, is a full partner in this plan along with Storm.
The story is told from multiple points-of-view-Skips, the Colonel, Storm, the Vietnamese, Kathy, the Houston brothers, and even their mother, whose counsels are laced with ever increasing religious fervor. The frequent shifts in point-of-view seem are jarring, but this seem deliberate as we leap from one time and place to another-the jungle outpost of Jimmy Houston and his buddies, Saigon and it’s environs, the Tet offensive, a small boarding house where an assassin awaits his victim. No one is ever sure who is on whose side, and allegiances keep changing. Then the military and CIA become aware of the Colonel’s off-the-book activities, and what has been at best an unstable situation quickly disintegrates for all concerned. The Colonel disappears, maybe dead, maybe not. Hao informs on his former friend Trung to the “official” intelligence apparatus, and Trung’s death is planned. Storm, never all that stable, begins to come apart at the seams, and the younger Houston, his unit pulled from its lazy existence working for the Colonel into real combat operations, realizes to late that signing up for another tour may be the end of him.
“You don’t understand,” Nash said. “I’m not ready for this at all. I’ve only been here three days!”
“I just took a second tour, “James said. “I don’t which of us is the stupider #$%^.”
Skip quickly grows out his immaturity and blind patriotism, but has become eroded morally and spiritually by the endless ethical grey zone where he lives, works, and breathes. So jaded has he become that even acquiesces to the Colonel’s request to stay at a critical time for Operation Tree of Smoke rather than attend his mother’s funeral upon her sudden death.
Skip’s fate, set in Southeast Asia some years after the end of the war, is probably inescapable. The war makes him what he becomes, and he is so dead of soul and weary of will that he cannot make the choices needed to become something other than what he is. The other characters, especially Jimmy Houston, live post-war lives that cannot escape the scarring of a war that started out so clearly and ended in a mist of incomprehension and national self-doubt.
As mentioned earlier the plot is rather secondary to this novel. It is there, but the thread is easy to lose in the vastness of the setting, the multitude of characters, and the richness of the dialogue. At times the conversations are so strange and dreamlike that the characters seem outside the weirdness of the landscape and the situation in which they find themselves. The cast of Tree of Smoke often does not seem to know who they are anymore, and they wander among the paths of the jungle and the streets of Saigon looking for something, anything, to assure them that somewhere is a center that is still holding as the surreal hell of war continues to envelop them.
The dialouge is fast, furious, fun, and profane. Here is a sample:
One of the grunts from the LZ came into the clearing, and said “God#$%^! God@#$%!”
James realized he himself probably looked liked that-sweaty, dirty, wild in the eyes. “S@#$! s@#$!” the boy said. He ran to the clearing’s edge and faced the purple distance, the shadows of other mountains. “S@#$!”
One of his friends said, “S@#$ what?”
The boy came back and sat down shaking his head. He took both his friend’s hands in his won as if in some foreign style of heartfelt greeting.
“S@#$. I killed a guy.”
“I guess. S@#$.”
The boy said, “It ain’t no different than shooting a deer.”
“When did you ever shoot a deer?”
“I guess I had it mixed up with the movies. But this was just-bing. And now it’s over.”
“It don’t sound like it’s over, Tommy.”
“Hey. Half his skull flew up in the air. Is that over enough for you?”
“Lay it down. You’re losing control of yourself.”
“Yea, okay,” Tommy said. “I gotta lay it down.”
“Hey, let go of my hand, you fruit.”
Dark humor, death, and loss of innocence-the essence of war in a few sparse lines.
I enjoyed this novel on its own, but I suppose comparisons to the war in Iraq and the run-up, especially the faulty intelligence (I’m still wondering where the WMDs are, myself) are inevitable. They can be made, but I found Tree of Smoke to be much more about its own era.
Tree of Smoke is not a novel for everyone. But if you are looking for a knowing and compassionate interpretation of the human consequences of the Vietnamese war, then this is the novel for you.
