J Grizzle's Square Table discussion

I'm about to start Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke if anybody else is reading it or wants to talk about it. I just finished Train Dreams, which is impressive and is a completely different book than Jesus' Son, the only other DJ book I've read. I've been meaning to read this one fora while, so now seems like the time.

I'm just underway, around page 40 (or up to 1965 in the chronology). To be honest, it hasn't got me yet. I just finished Train Dreams, and it's a tiny book that weaves a languid little illusory spell, and Tree of Smoke isn't doing that yet. But then again, it's six times as long as Train Dreams, so it's just beginning to stretch its legs.

Because it's set in Vietnam and half of it so far is told from a Vietnamese perspective, I can't help but compare it to Viet Tahn Nguyen's The Sympathizer, which I loved. Maybe the National Book Award winning Tree of Smoke will reach similar heights (The Sympathizer came by its Pulitzer honestly) but so far it's only good, not great.

You've got to be way ahead of me, but I started a few days ago. I'm around page 60 or so. I agree with your assessment up to this point. I'm not really blown away, and I find that I'm less patient with books these days. I'm not hooked after three chapters, and I'm worried this is going to waste my time. Has it gotten any better yet?

I'm about halfway through it, and, yes, it's gotten better, but it still hasn't exactly wowed me. It has its moments for sure, but there's a lot of dross, too.

Kenney wrote: "You've got to be way ahead of me, but I started a few days ago. I'm around page 60 or so. I agree with your assessment up to this point. I'm not really blown away, and I find that I'm less patient ..."

I'm on page 360-ish. It's one of those books that in certain spots makes me feel compelled to read and in others it's a slog.

Here are some things I'm thinking about as I'm reading (no spoilers):

--I can't decide if this is a book about how hopeless the world is, or about the courage it takes to face down the madness and sadness of the world without giving in to cynicism. The war scenes are predictably brutal, but the way the (mostly pretty privileged) characters skate around on the surface of the hopelessness of poverty and war in both the Philippines and Vietnam (Kathy is perhaps an exception) without ever really having their preconceived notions of the world altered (maybe this is coming for Skip, but it never did for the Colonel) is sometimes frustrating.

--How terrible is that we send 18 year old kids to fight wars?

--This is a book that seems to want to examine the world as a god-forsaken place (literally, having been forsaken by god). I'm curious about whether the bit about different administrations comes back.

I have about a hundred pages (of over 600) left, so I should finish in the next day or so.

I keep vacillating back and forth between thinking this is a truly great book and a severely overrated one that might just not be that good at all. The plot involving the titular Tree of Smoke is murky as best, and there are pages and pages of dialogue that get really labyrinthine and seem ultimately pointless. On top of that, I'm starting to have serious doubts about whether the disparate plot threads will come together at all.

Then there are moments when it seems like this is a beautiful lamentation about a fallen world and the illusions that allow us to function in it. I guess the truth is somewhere in between those two poles. We'll see in a hundred pages or so.

Here's my (3 star) review:

Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson's National Book Award winning Vietnam epic, ends with a former missionary, her belief long since burned away by the sadness of the world, looking over a crowd of people, seeing all their hidden sorrows, and thinking that "all will be saved." The way we read this novel hinges on how we take that final statement. Is it bit of hard-earned wisdom, or just another self-delusion in a book filled with characters in various stages of developing and being stripped of the kind of illusions we foster just to make it through the world and all its madness?

The novel follows the enigmatic Colonel Francis Sands and the disparate lives of those in his orbit. Sands, driven by his zealous ideology, runs afoul of his CIA superiors and goes rogue, becoming something of Kurtz-like figure in the Vietnam war, the darkest of hearts. His fall bears cataclysmic consequences on those around him, including his nephew Skip, his henchman Jimmy Storm, his Vietnamese cohorts Hao and Trung Than, and two GI grunt brothers from Arizona, Bill and James Houston. Their various stories explore both the horrors of the war and concessions we all have to make in order to survive in a fallen world.

While the novel packs a significant emotional and philosophical punch, these various plot threads and the story itself is often murky at best. Part of that murkiness is intentional, both as a invocation of the fog of war and as a nod to Sands' mythic nature, but the narrative sometimes suffers under its cloud nonetheless. There are some other flaws here as well--pages and pages of labyrinthine dialogue, jarring, seemingly inexplicable switches to present tense, and whole chapters that seem like just so much pointless dross. There are times when these begin to feel like fatal flaws, but then a passage so startlingly moving and profound comes along to buoy the whole thing along. In the end, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and while this might not be the Great American Novel it's advertised to be, it's a very good one for the whole world.

This book is so slow-going for me. I'm approaching 300 pages, and I can't help thinking that I'd almost be done if it were a regular novel. I am starting to grow fond of the characters though, but I am in complete agreement with your assessment of the dialogue as "labyrinthine" and certainly "pointless."

There were several times when I tried to go back and trace who was saying what in pages of dialog and eventually gave up. I'm looking forward to seeing how it comes together for you.

I finally finished reading this book last night. And I think your assessment is really on point. This book's brilliance comes in brief flashes (all too brief if you ask me). But I'll give the book the benefit of the doubt and blame the way I approached the reading of it. I admit I let it fall to the wayside far too often, putting it down for days at the time (even a week here and there). Whenever I picked it back up, it took far too long before I was drawn back in. It never really crystallized for me as a whole, like it seems to have done for you. I found myself gravitating more towards minor characters. James Houston and Kathy were two of my favorites, but they were only tangentially related to the major plot (if that). They're thematically important to be sure, but they don't really feature as much as other characters I found far less interesting. I did like Skip though, mostly when he was solitary and contemplative, less so when he interacted with other characters. What do you make of his confessionary letter to Kathy in the end? I never would have suspected he had real feelings for her. I think this is going to be one of those books where my opinion improves the more I reflect on it. I can't really endorse it as a pleasurable read, but I can't deny its power to provoke serious thought.