Hent Bucher Tree of Smoke
By Denis Johnson
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. 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
