Tree of Smoke just fell victim to my "hundred pages" rule. If, one hundred pages in, a novel hasn't hooked me, I reserve the right to put it down.* Life is too short, and my reading time too sparse, to plow on. I know, who am I to dismiss a novel so casually. On the other hand, who is the novelist to not make anything interesting happen for an entire hundred pages?
It's a shame, because like so many readers who know Denis Johnson only by that short story he wrote about a car wreck back in the 1990s, I wanted to see his Great Novel. And Smoke was lauded as the year’s great epic novel, and it won the National Book Award, giving it some kind of official stamp of literary greatness. What could go wrong?
I should have realized that, this being a war novel, the odds were stacked against it, National Book Award or no. I am generally so bored by war as subject matter in fiction that I am unable to separate the quality of the writing from the theme. Still, the writing here struck me as merely "correct." It fits all the technical requisites of good writing, without adding any intangible greatness -- that most crucial ingredient. (After putting Smoke down, I reread The Great Gatsby, and became even more sure of my assessment as a result of the comparison.)
It's a shame, because like so many readers who know Denis Johnson only by that short story he wrote about a car wreck back in the 1990s, I wanted to see his Great Novel. And Smoke was lauded as the year’s great epic novel, and it won the National Book Award, giving it some kind of official stamp of literary greatness. What could go wrong?
I should have realized that, this being a war novel, the odds were stacked against it, National Book Award or no. I am generally so bored by war as subject matter in fiction that I am unable to separate the quality of the writing from the theme. Still, the writing here struck me as merely "correct." It fits all the technical requisites of good writing, without adding any intangible greatness -- that most crucial ingredient. (After putting Smoke down, I reread The Great Gatsby, and became even more sure of my assessment as a result of the comparison.)
But not only were some folks entertained by Tree of Smoke, they found it downright funny. On the back of the book’s jacket, Jonathan Franzen blurbs that the God he wants to believe in has a sense of humor like Denis Johnson’s. It is at this point that I throw my arms up in utter confusion – did they put that jacket on the wrong book, or am I just one of those Hitchens women who don’t comprehend funny?
At any rate, I might have been better off starting with another of Johnson's novels -- some people I know speak well of at least one of them.
*I would love to be convinced to read the rest of it. If you have a compelling reason that I should do so, please let me have it.
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