Tree of Smoke
Author: Dennis Johnson 2007 614pp
My rating 4*
Started January 6 2008, Finished January 12 2008.
Robert Stone goes up river in Vietnam to find Colonel Kurtz. Five stars for the potent middle half with its accumulating sense of convergence and foreboding, but three stars for both the slow moving, Stone-like implausibly talky (oratorical?) first 150 pages and the inconclusive final hundred pages where much that was building before sputters out. Overall, Tree of Smoke’s combination of high ambition and top flight prose outweigh the under plotting and earn it very high marks. Another big plus: in this book, Johnson does as good a job as I can remember of giving each character a unique, believable voice.
After reading this book, I read Michiko Kakutani’s New York Times review and was surprised by how many of her observations agreed with mine.
Anachronism watch: In a chapter set in 1968, a character remarks that “those F-16s sure tore the shit out of our mountain.” The F-16 first flew in 1974 and did not enter active service until 1978.
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1 comment:
I noticed the same thing and googled tree of smoke f-16 anachronism and found your blog. Made me angry because I expect a lit fiction guy who decides to tread into the military realm to double check his stuff in order to avoid charges of misrepresenting war from a lofty academic perch.
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