MixedBookforumTree of Smoke, a tortuous epic of American counterinsurgency in Asia, presents an array of characters bearing familiar Johnsonian auras of desperation, threat, and abjection … Not all of Johnson’s characters find themselves so tormented, and some enjoy blessedly uncomplicated states of narcissism or depravity or mere unscrupulousness. But the people whom Johnson asks his readers to care about tend to be those who suffer queasy bouts of inner terror … Tree of Smoke carries with it a self-conscious air, as if Johnson has sought to create the definitive novel of the war, one that recapitulates the tropes that have evolved out of nearly half a century of writing and films about the conflict. But the book’s depictions, particularly the bleak tale of four-tour veteran James Houston and the soldiers with whom he serves, come perilously close to cliché.
