However, I don’t think a book review is necessarily the best venue to make grand sweeping statements.

And, were I inclined to inflate my rhetoric to a grandiose level like Myers, I might here wax philosophical about opinion, perspective, history, and the value of great art to ignite debate and discussion within the marketplace of ideas. Put simply, most people tend to either hate or love Tree of Smoke, which, I believe, is a sign of great art. Myers’s baseless zealotry aside, it’s worth looking at the popular reception of Tree of Smoke, and what better place to do so than scouring Amazon reviews, right?Ī cynic might say that Amazon reviews are the bottom-barrel of literary criticism, yet it’s still worth considering the almost perfectly mathematical split between 5- and 4-starred reviews of the book and 1- and 2-starred reviews (although none of the negative reviews I read on Amazon suggested that praising Johnson’s novel disenfranchised one from political opinions).

Myers specifically attacks Johnson’s rhetorical style, his diction and syntax, and concludes that those idiots who would praise such inane, base, and clichéd language (idiots like me, that is) are clearly the cause of all current social and political problems and “have no right to complain about incoherent government.” Uh, sure. He’s the critic who feels the need not only to trumpet his hatred of the work he’s assessing, but also to lambaste the dignity, taste, and intellect of anyone who would disagree with him. Here, Myers displays the worst kind of vitriol. Myers’s downright mean review, “A Bright Shining Lie” in The Atlantic. It still remains an urgently divisive work.Īlthough plenty of critics and readers loved the novel, including The New York Times‘s Jim Lewis (who cautiously called it “something like a masterpiece”) and Michiko Kakutani, it has had more than its fair share of haters. Picador’s edition retains the original orange and yellow cover, only now affixed with the proud blazon “National Book Award Winner.” However, that Tree of Smoke won this prestigious award no doubt ruffled a few feathers. One year after it topped book critics’ best-of 2007 lists everywhere (including ours), Denis Johnson’s Vietnam War epic Tree of Smoke is finally available in a handsome trade-paperback.

Tree of smoke