Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson: Introduction
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson stands as one of the most powerful and complex novels about the Vietnam War ever written. Published in 2007, this 700-page epic won the National Book Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Set between 1963 and 1970 with an epilogue in 1983, the novel takes readers deep into the psychological and moral chaos of America’s involvement in Southeast Asia. Johnson spent over 25 years crafting this masterwork, creating what many critics consider the definitive fictional account of the Vietnam War.
The book follows multiple characters whose lives intersect during the conflict, exploring themes of loss, betrayal, and the destruction of innocence through Johnson’s distinctive prose style.
What is Tree of Smoke About?
Tree of Smoke is fundamentally about the moral and psychological breakdown that war brings to everyone it touches. The story centers on the Vietnam War but extends far beyond traditional combat narratives to explore the shadowy world of CIA operations, psychological warfare, and the blurred lines between truth and deception.
The novel takes its title from biblical passages that speak of smoke rising as a beacon or signal. In the story, this “tree of smoke” becomes a massive intelligence project – thousands of index cards containing information about Vietnamese culture, folklore, and military intelligence that Colonel Sands believes will help America win the war. However, like smoke itself, this project proves to be an illusion that can’t be grasped or trusted.
The book explores how war destroys not just bodies but souls, showing characters who lose their sense of right and wrong, their connections to family and home, and ultimately their humanity. Johnson doesn’t focus on heroic battlefield moments but instead examines the quieter devastation that occurs in bars, brothels, remote villages, and CIA safe houses across Southeast Asia.
Through multiple interconnected storylines, Tree of Smoke reveals how the Vietnam conflict corrupted everyone involved – from idealistic young agents to hardened military officers, from Vietnamese civilians to American soldiers. The war becomes a kind of madness that spreads like a virus, infecting all who come into contact with it.
Main Characters in Tree of Smoke
William “Skip” Sands serves as the novel’s primary protagonist, a young CIA operative working in psychological operations against the Viet Cong. Fresh out of training and eager to serve his country, Skip idolizes his uncle, Colonel Sands, and believes he’ll play an important role in winning the war. However, he finds himself assigned to meaningless tasks like cataloging Vietnamese folklore while living in isolation. Skip represents the idealistic American who slowly realizes the futility and corruption of the war effort.
Colonel Francis Xavier Sands, Skip’s uncle, is a legendary World War II hero and CIA operative who has become obsessed with defeating the Viet Cong through psychological warfare. Known simply as “The Colonel,” he commands respect and fear from those around him. His pet project, the “Tree of Smoke” intelligence database, becomes his obsession as he slowly descends into madness. The Colonel represents the dangerous combination of American arrogance and military mysticism that characterized much of the Vietnam-era leadership.
James and Bill Houston are half-brothers from Arizona who represent the ordinary American soldiers caught up in the war. Bill serves in the Navy and struggles with demons even before seeing combat. James, the younger brother, enlists in the Army at seventeen and volunteers for dangerous reconnaissance missions because he can no longer imagine life without war. Both brothers suffer from what we would now recognize as PTSD, turning to alcohol and crime when they return home.
Kathy Jones is a Canadian nurse working with a Christian aid organization in Vietnam, helping to arrange adoptions for Vietnamese orphans. A young widow whose missionary husband was killed in the Philippines, she struggles with her faith throughout the war. Her brief affair with Skip provides one of the few moments of human connection in the novel.
Sergeant Jimmy Storm serves as Colonel Sands’ loyal but unstable assistant, becoming increasingly prominent as the story progresses. Storm embodies the war’s psychological toll, appearing to be perpetually under the influence of drugs and becoming obsessed with finding the Colonel after his mysterious disappearance.
Nguyen Hao and his family represent the Vietnamese perspective, showing how the war destroys local communities. Hao works as a driver and operative for Colonel Sands while secretly feeding information to other CIA agents to secure his family’s relocation from Vietnam.
Summary of Tree of Smoke
Tree of Smoke opens in 1963 with the assassination of President Kennedy, but readers experience this world-changing event from the perspective of Seaman Apprentice William Houston Jr., who is wandering through the Philippine jungle in the middle of the night. This opening establishes the novel’s approach – major historical events filtered through the confused perceptions of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances.
The story properly begins when William “Skip” Sands completes his CIA training and is assigned to work under his uncle, Colonel Francis Xavier Sands, in Southeast Asia. Skip has high expectations of contributing meaningfully to America’s mission, but he quickly discovers that his role involves mundane tasks like copying and cross-referencing his uncle’s massive collection of index cards about Vietnamese culture and intelligence. The Colonel calls this database the “Tree of Smoke” and believes it contains vital information that will help America win the war, though Skip realizes much of the information is outdated and useless.
During his training in the Philippines, Skip witnesses the assassination of Father Carignan, a priest suspected of gun-running for communists. Though Skip finds no evidence of wrongdoing, the priest is killed by Dietrich Fest, a German assassin contracted by the CIA. This incident introduces Skip to the moral ambiguity that will define his experience in the war – innocent people die based on suspicion and convenience rather than evidence.
As Skip’s training continues, he begins an affair with Kathy Jones, a Canadian nurse whose husband disappeared in the jungle. Their relationship provides moments of human connection in an otherwise dehumanizing environment, though it ultimately cannot survive the pressures of war.
Meanwhile, the novel introduces the Houston brothers from Arizona. Bill Houston has already served in the Navy and returned home, struggling with the psychological aftermath of his military service. His younger brother James enlists in the Army at seventeen, partly to escape their difficult home life with their born-again Christian mother. James volunteers for dangerous reconnaissance missions in Vietnam, drawn to the intensity and purpose that combat provides.
Colonel Sands establishes his own semi-independent operation at a landing zone called Cao Phuc, where he commands a borrowed Army platoon and develops increasingly eccentric theories about psychological warfare. He believes that understanding Vietnamese folklore and culture will provide the key to defeating the Viet Cong, leading to his obsession with the Tree of Smoke project. The Colonel’s methods become more questionable as he operates outside normal CIA channels, writing inflammatory articles criticizing agency practices.
The Colonel’s grand scheme involves using a double agent to feed misinformation to the Viet Cong. Working through Nguyen Hao, a South Vietnamese businessman who serves as his driver and local contact, the Colonel recruits Trung Than, a disillusioned Viet Cong soldier who agrees to become a double agent. Skip is tasked with learning everything he can about Trung using his limited Vietnamese language skills.
However, the operation quickly becomes compromised. Hao, desperate to secure relocation for his family, begins feeding information about the double agent operation to other CIA handlers. When Colonel Sands discovers the leak, he incorrectly suspects Skip of betraying the operation to their CIA superiors. In reality, Skip has remained loyal, but his uncle’s paranoia has grown beyond reason.
The Tet Offensive of 1968 marks a turning point in the novel. Colonel Sands’ platoon suffers heavy casualties during the fighting, and in one shocking scene, the Colonel mercy-kills a Viet Cong prisoner who is being tortured by American soldiers. This act, while arguably humane, represents the complete breakdown of military discipline and legal boundaries that characterized much of the Vietnam conflict.
Following the disaster at Cao Phuc, Colonel Sands is stripped of his command and ordered to return to CIA headquarters – an order he characteristically ignores. His already unstable mental condition deteriorates further as he realizes his grand schemes have failed. The legendary war hero becomes increasingly isolated and erratic, eventually disappearing under mysterious circumstances.
The climax of the double agent plot occurs when Colonel Sands learns that the entire operation has been compromised. He orders the assassination of Trung Than, sending the German killer Fest to eliminate the double agent at a small hotel. However, Sergeant Jimmy Storm discovers the plot and kills Fest instead, allowing Trung to escape. This betrayal within betrayal illustrates the complete breakdown of trust and loyalty that the war has created.
Colonel Sands dies under mysterious circumstances, though his legend continues to grow even in death. The CIA, needing someone to blame for the Colonel’s illegal activities and operational failures, decides to make Skip the scapegoat. Another American operative helps Skip escape Vietnam and disappear for several years.
In the novel’s epilogue, set in 1983, readers learn the ultimate fates of the main characters. Skip has tried to build a new life but struggles with the psychological damage from his war experience. He eventually gets involved in gun-running in Malaysia and is caught, tried, and executed along with his fellow conspirators. This brutal ending emphasizes how the war’s corruption followed its participants long after the conflict ended.
James Houston’s story follows a similar downward trajectory. Unable to readjust to civilian life, he turns to alcohol and crime like his brother Bill before him. Both brothers represent the countless American veterans who returned home psychologically damaged and unable to find their place in peacetime society.
The novel concludes with Jimmy Storm, still obsessed with his legendary commander, searching throughout Southeast Asia for Colonel Sands or proof of his death. Storm’s quasi-mythological quest suggests that some people never escape the war’s psychological grip, spending their remaining years trying to make sense of the senseless.
Throughout these intersecting storylines, Tree of Smoke presents the Vietnam War not as a series of military engagements but as a psychological and spiritual catastrophe that destroyed everyone it touched. Johnson shows how the conflict’s moral ambiguity corrupted idealistic young Americans, devastated Vietnamese communities, and ultimately served no clear purpose beyond perpetuating its own existence.
Major Themes in Tree of Smoke
Loss serves as the dominant theme throughout Tree of Smoke, manifesting in countless forms across every character’s experience. The most obvious losses are human – friends blown up in combat, family members who die while soldiers are deployed overseas, and the countless unnamed victims whose bodies litter the landscapes of war. However, Johnson explores more subtle forms of loss that prove equally devastating to his characters’ humanity.
Psychological loss permeates every aspect of the novel. Characters lose their sense of normalcy, security, and home as they become immersed in the war’s chaos. They lose the ability to distinguish between right and wrong as survival becomes their only moral guideline. Skip loses his idealistic faith in his country’s mission, while the Houston brothers lose their connection to family and civilian life. Even more tragically, characters begin losing their essential humanity as killing becomes routine and life loses its value.
The destruction of trust and loyalty forms another central theme. Characters constantly betray each other – Hao betrays both the Colonel and Trung Than to secure his own family’s safety, while the CIA prepares to betray Skip to protect the agency’s reputation. These betrayals reflect the war’s fundamental dishonesty, where official missions often mask hidden agendas and where allies can become enemies without warning.
The theme of illusion versus reality runs throughout the novel, embodied in the “tree of smoke” metaphor itself. Like smoke, many of the novel’s central elements prove insubstantial when examined closely. The Colonel’s intelligence database contains mostly useless information, his psychological warfare theories fail in practice, and his legendary status is built more on myth than reality. Skip’s belief in his important mission proves illusory, as does the brothers’ faith that military service will improve their lives.
Religious and spiritual themes appear frequently, reflecting Johnson’s long-standing interest in questions of faith and redemption. Kathy struggles with her Calvinist beliefs after losing her husband, while other characters invoke God to justify the war’s violence. The novel’s title comes from biblical passages about divine judgment and sacrifice, suggesting that the war represents a kind of spiritual reckoning for American society.
The corruption of innocence affects nearly every character as they are forced to compromise their values to survive. Skip begins as an idealistic young man eager to serve his country but ends up complicit in assassination and betrayal. The Houston brothers start as typical American teenagers but become hardened by violence and unable to function in civilian society.
Background of Tree of Smoke
Denis Johnson was uniquely qualified to write about the psychological landscape of the Vietnam War era. Born in Munich in 1949 to a father who worked for the State Department as a liaison between the USIA and CIA, Johnson grew up in an environment where intelligence work and international conflict were family business. His childhood was spent moving between countries including the Philippines, Japan, and various locations around the world, giving him firsthand experience with the cultural displacement that characterizes much of his fiction.
Johnson’s literary career began early with poetry, publishing his first collection at age nineteen. However, it was his work with prisoners, particularly death row inmates in Arizona during the late 1970s and early 1980s, that provided crucial experience for understanding the psychology of violence and moral breakdown that would later inform Tree of Smoke. This prison work directly influenced his breakthrough novel “Angels” (1983), which introduced the character of Bill Houston, who reappears in Tree of Smoke.
The author spent over twenty-five years developing Tree of Smoke, beginning work on it in the early 1980s. This extended gestation period allowed Johnson to research extensively and reflect deeply on the Vietnam conflict’s lasting impact on American society. Unlike many Vietnam War novels written by combat veterans, Johnson approached the subject as an observer who had lived through the era and witnessed its aftermath without participating directly in the military conflict.
Johnson was already well-established as a master of short fiction, particularly known for “Jesus’ Son” (1992), before undertaking this ambitious novel. His reputation for precise, lyrical prose and his ability to capture the voices of America’s marginalized populations made him an ideal chronicler of the Vietnam War’s psychological casualties.
The novel’s publication in 2007 came at a time when America was engaged in another controversial conflict in Iraq, lending contemporary relevance to Johnson’s exploration of how warfare corrupts both individuals and institutions. Critics immediately recognized the book’s significance, with many comparing it to classic works like “Catch-22” and “The Things They Carried”.
Tree of Smoke represented the culmination of Johnson’s career-long interest in American violence, spiritual crisis, and the search for meaning in chaos. The National Book Award recognition confirmed the novel’s status as a major work of American literature and established Johnson as one of the premier chroniclers of late twentieth-century American experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is Tree of Smoke based on real events?
A: While Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson is fiction, it draws heavily on real historical events and CIA operations during the Vietnam War era. Johnson researched extensively for over twenty years, and many of the novel’s psychological warfare operations and intelligence activities reflect actual CIA programs from the period. The characters are fictional, but their experiences mirror those of real people who served in Southeast Asia.
Q: How long does it take to read Tree of Smoke?
A: At approximately 700 pages with around 156,000 words, Tree of Smoke typically takes 10-12 hours of reading time for average readers. Most people reading at a moderate pace will need 2-3 weeks to complete the novel. The book’s complex narrative structure and dense prose make it a challenging but rewarding read.
Q: Why did Tree of Smoke win the National Book Award?
A: The novel won the 2007 National Book Award for Fiction because critics recognized it as an exceptional work of literature that captured the complexity and moral ambiguity of the Vietnam War like no previous novel. Johnson’s masterful prose, complex characterization, and unflinching examination of American involvement in Southeast Asia impressed the judges.
Q: Do I need to read Denis Johnson’s other books to understand Tree of Smoke?
A: No, Tree of Smoke stands alone as a complete novel. While the character Bill Houston appeared in Johnson’s earlier novel “Angels,” readers don’t need prior knowledge of that book to understand his role in Tree of Smoke. The novel provides all necessary background information about its characters and their relationships.
Q: Is Tree of Smoke too depressing to read?
A: Tree of Smoke deals with heavy themes including war, death, and moral corruption, making it emotionally challenging. However, Johnson’s beautiful prose and deep insights into human nature provide redemptive moments throughout the darkness. Readers interested in serious literature about important historical topics will find the experience worthwhile despite its difficult subject matter.
Q: What makes Tree of Smoke different from other Vietnam War novels?
A: Unlike most Vietnam War fiction that focuses on combat, Tree of Smoke explores the psychological and intelligence operations that shaped the conflict. Johnson examines the war’s impact on CIA operatives, support personnel, and civilians rather than traditional soldiers. The novel’s scope, spanning nearly a decade and multiple countries, provides a broader perspective than most war fiction.
Conclusion
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson stands as a monumental achievement in American literature, offering the most comprehensive and psychologically penetrating fictional account of the Vietnam War ever written. Through its complex narrative spanning seven years and multiple perspectives, the novel reveals how the conflict’s moral ambiguity corrupted everyone it touched, from idealistic CIA operatives to working-class soldiers to Vietnamese civilians.
Johnson’s masterwork succeeds because it doesn’t simplify the war into heroes and villains but instead shows how ordinary people became complicit in extraordinary evil through small compromises and bureaucratic pressures. The novel’s title metaphor of smoke – something that appears substantial from a distance but proves insubstantial when examined closely – perfectly captures both the illusions that sustained American involvement and the elusive nature of truth in wartime.
What makes Tree of Smoke endure as literature is Johnson’s remarkable prose style, which combines poetic beauty with unflinching honesty about human nature. His ability to capture authentic dialogue and interior experience creates characters who feel genuinely human rather than symbolic. The novel’s length and complexity mirror the war itself – sprawling, confusing, and ultimately tragic, but impossible to ignore or forget.
For readers interested in understanding how the Vietnam conflict shaped American society and consciousness, Tree of Smoke provides unparalleled insight into the psychological damage that warfare inflicts on individuals and institutions. Johnson’s twenty-five years of work on this novel produced a book worthy of its National Book Award recognition and its status as one of the most important American novels of the early twenty-first century.
The novel’s continued relevance lies in its exploration of themes that extend far beyond Vietnam – the corruption of idealism, the difficulty of maintaining moral integrity under pressure, and the lasting psychological wounds that violence creates in both perpetrators and victims. In an age of ongoing military conflicts, Tree of Smoke serves as both historical record and cautionary tale about the true costs of war.
