Tree of Smoke
by Denis Johnson
There is a moment in this sprawling, magnificent novel set in the Vietnam War when an assassin, who has killed a previous target using a lovingly handcrafted blowpipe, is told by his handler: “It’s a war. Go ahead and use a gun.” The line accomplishes two things at once. It shows us the casually ironic brutality of the handler, and it resonates with other times and places in the novel that see people reminding one another that they are in a war. “Yes, I believe we can furnish you all the weapons you want,” one soldier amusingly assures some new arrivals. “This is a war.” The fact that this is a war becomes a refrain of all-purpose absolution, an excuse for any desired action. Tree of Smoke does not only show that war is hell, though that cliché will always require drilling anew into the heads of those who believe it to be a tool of virtue. But Denis Johnson is also interested in the problem of how to navigate morally when there is always the plea, “It’s a war”, to fall back on. For this novel, war is absolute freedom. In it, men create their own hell. Continued →
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