and we’re halfway around the world, tagging along with Seaman Apprentice William Houston Jr.-the devil in Johnson’s first novel, Angels -as he wades just barely sober through the jungle of Grande Island, in the Philippines. Tree of Smoke begins in 1963 with the assassination of President Kennedy, only it’s 3 a.m. In fact, since the publication of his first novel, in 1983, he has been preoccupied with the paradoxical notions of self-sacrifice and salvation in our modern world-but never before has Johnson’s writing been quite so haunted and harrowing as it is in his massive new novel, twenty-five years in the works.

What tends to get left out of most discussions of that book is that Johnson structured it loosely around the Stations of the Cross. 'A true legislator of the tortured American soul in ceaseless prose of redeeming brilliance' - Alan Warner.Denis Johnson is best known for his slim novel-in-stories Jesus’ Son, which since its publication in 1992 has become something of a young writers’ how-to guide. 'There isn't an American voice I love more than Denis Johnson's' - Michael Herr.

'Prose of amazing power and stylishness' - Philip Roth. 'The God I want to believe in has a voice and a sense of humour like Denis Johnson's' - Jonathan Franzen. It is also the story of two brothers heading towards self-destruction, and a story about double agents, missionaries, killers for hire and lost souls desperate for sex, death or God and thus an end to their loneliness.His first full-length novel in nine years, and one that describes a war where disinformation has become self-delusion, 'Tree of Smoke' is Johnson's most gripping, visionary and ambitious work to date. That's me.' This is the story of Skip Sands, a CIA spy engaged in psychological operations against the Viet Cong, and the disasters that befall him. '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. New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENT.

Tree of smoke