Farrar, Straus and Giroux
September 2007
On Sale: September 4, 2007
Featuring: Skip Sands
624 pages ISBN: 0374279128 EAN: 9780374279127 Hardcover Add to Wish List
Once upon a time there was a war . . . and a young
American who thought of himself as the Quiet American and
the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted
instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but
who eventually came to witness himself as the Real American
and finally as simply the Fucking American. That’s
me.
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This is the story of Skip Sands—spy-in-training, engaged in
Psychological Operations against the Vietcong—and the
disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war
hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel.
This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and
James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a
war in which the line between disinformation and delusion
has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, and its
gritty, sympathetic portraits of men and women desperate for
an end to their loneliness, whether in sex or death or by
the grace of God, this is a story like nothing in our
literature.
Tree of Smoke is Denis Johnson’s
first full-length novel in nine years, and his most
gripping, beautiful, and powerful work to date.