Bourgeois Realism

“Tree of Smoke,” by Denis Johnson, 2007

Every fiction book has politics embedded within it.  Especially ones about the Vietnam War.  This one foregrounds the chaotic mess that was the U.S. experience and gives you a good taste of what being in Vietnam was and is like.  But in the background of this miasma is a strong smell, like a distant waste-dump – that of a pro-war attitude, full of patriotic good intentions and virulent anti-communism.

You are being smoked!

This book shadows “The Ugly American” and the “The Quiet American,” both earlier and better books by Burdick/Lederer and Graham Greene.  At 700 pages, it is an overly long, bloated, sometimes preciously poetic work that centers on the fractured intellectualism of a CIA psychological operations team in Vietnam.  In its somewhat naturalistic method, it reads like “Matterhorn” by Karl Malantes, but without that book’s more perceptive politics or impact.

Our diffident hero, Skip Sanders, spends nearly 200 pages in the Philippines ‘setting the mood’ before even showing up in a villa in Cao Phuc (Cow Fuck), Vietnam.  Skip keeps a .25 caliber pistol around in case anything real happens, while working undercover as a Del Monte or Canadian Bible consultant. He wears a white T-shirt, Bermuda shorts, a mustache and a crew cut while hoping to get his crack at the dirty Commies.   His uncle Col. Francis Sanders, who is based on a supposedly real CIA psychological-operations legend, is going to arrange it for him. 
  

The only torture shown is by a crazed African-American tunnel rat, who savages a Viet Cong suspect by digging his eyeballs out.  The only Viet Cong shown is a turncoat, Trung Than, who during Tet ‘68 sets up his comrades to be killed in Saigon by ratting them out to the CIA.  Trung’s reason for giving up on his 20 year struggle against colonialism and imperialism is unclear, except he doesn’t like what Johnson calls the ‘kolkhoz’ in North Vietnam.  As I understand, the name for a collective farm in Vietnamese is “ruộng chung” not the Russian ‘kolkhoz,’ so Johnson's use of the term is indicative.

There is a parallel story about James, a working-class kid in the U.S. Army fighting in Vietnam, and his broken-down family - his lumpen brothers, his sad religious mother, all still in Phoenix.  James re-ups twice, hoping to eventually become a bloody killer in the LURP (Long Range Recon Patrol) and extract revenge on the ‘gooks.’ Johnson's treatment of this family reflects his obsession with crime, violence and alcoholism as the essence of working class life.  The CIA story and the soldiers' stories do not connect - a class barrier even within the plot.  In fact, this book is basically 3 disconnected stories. The book ends with 75 pages involving 2 different codas that seem arbitrarily tacked on.  Editor!!

The CIA folks eat food and drink booze all the time, as if Vietnam was just one big buffet.  They constantly indulge at various cafes, bars, hotels and hooches, while Skip is served delicious French-inspired food at his CIA-connected villa.  While waiting for his ‘mission,’ Skip translates Artaud and muses deep, poetic thoughts.  This basically gives him intellectual cover for making the reader think something profound is happening.  Nothing profound is. 

The thin plot centers on the CIA psy-ops group turning Trung into a double-agent.  Trung is to be sent back by the CIA to North Vietnam to scare “Uncle Ho” into thinking a group of rogue U.S. military types are going to drop a nuclear bomb on them.  This psy-ops operation is ‘the tree of smoke.’ This is to create panic and perhaps an attempt at forcing Vietnam to surrender or give up.  General Curtis LeMay was actually advocating a nuclear attack on North Vietnam … a reality not brought up here.  This book treats the idea as a clever deep 'fantasy.'   

Earlier in an internal CIA bulletin, Col. Francis suggests that CIA ‘intel’ is being distorted by higher ups for political reasons.  This creates friction with the local CIA station, and this leads to a lethal struggle between the two CIA groups.

GIs and what they think about the war ...in a nicer moment

In this book, no anti-war GI’s exist.  No Black-power brothers exist.  No acts by GIs against the war or the brass or the military occur.  Every reference to anti-war protest in the U.S. is from a right-wing point of view.  In the 1968 chapter on Tet, there is no mention of the Communist capture of Hue.  Instead the book treats Tet as a complete NLF failure.  There is never an idea of the opinions of the majority of Vietnamese peasants.  Until you notice every peasant ville around the U.S. LZ base suddenly empties before Tet ‘68.

The story centers on the CIA, yet there is only one irrelevant mention of the CIA’s infamous Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam.  There is no history here, just a leftover Frenchman’s villa and a dog. There is no hint that the U.S. invasion of Vietnam was a war crime.  Or a hint that the years-long U.S. interventions in the Philippines were similar events.  Johnson’s war is mostly a bloody, fucked-up, exotic but perhaps ‘poetic’ mess - from the American military’s point of view. In a way, this book is a sophisticated whitewash.  I contend that real ‘war intel’ was distorted by the writer for political reasons.  That is the actual ‘tree of smoke.’

Note:   The Author Denis Johnson was the son of a State Department-CIA liaison. He also was a grad of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, an upper middle-class writers’ training ground.  He published in the Paris Review, which 'used' to have CIA ties.  He lived in the Philippines for awhile, which is probably why that section got stuffed into this book.

Other reviews on Vietnam, fiction and non-fiction, below:  “Matterhorn,” “Kill Anything That Moves,” “People’s History of the Vietnam War,” “Ken Burns,” “Soldiers in Revolt,” “In the Crossfire – Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary,” “The Sympathizer.”  Type titles using blog search box, upper left.

Other fiction on Vietnam, not reviewed below: Bao Ninh’s “The Sorrow of War;” all of Tim O’Brien’s books; and others: “Dispatches,” “Dues,” “The Farther Shore,” “In Pharaoh’s Army,” “The Bamboo Bed,” “Fire in the Hole,” “Black Virgin Mountain.”   And non-fiction:  “Working-Class War.”

And I got it at the Library!

Red Frog

March 4, 2019