TREE OF SMOKE is yet another terrific Viet Nam novel, an anti-war novel, but it is more than that on its deepest level. It is written with great compassion about the condition of humanity.

The opening paragraph, noting the senseless death of one man (who happens to be President Kennedy), is beautifully juxtaposed with the sniping death of the monkey, and the mutual anguish of it. For senseless killing kills and kills the killer too. It is a karma entrenched in human history, a cycle that we cannot shake.

Not only are monkeys used literally and symbolically throughout the novel but the young American's Vietnamese counterpart, Trund, is nicknamed Monk, and double-meanings and allusions to Buddhism and Judeo-Christianity envelope the better angels of the novel's worldview.

Just as Joseph Heller's CATCH-22 was about World War II but read as an anti-Viet Nam War novel, this is a Viet Nam novel that can be read as an anti-Iraq War novel. The 'tree of smoke' in the title represents many things, among them the mushroom cloud of weapons of mass destruction and the fear of them used as both an excuse and a weapon.

Some critics have said that the 'tree of smoke' was imaginary, and I won't argue that (although President Nixon's secret plan to win the war was based upon this threat), but this is a novel, and its deeper meanings will resonate with readers in different ways.

TREE OF SMOKE's size might intimidate some, and it is over 600 pages, but it is big and fast, easy to read, a comfortable book to open and hold. The story keeps moving, and the pages fly by deceptively fast. There is a strong field of nominees for this year's National Book Award, but this one has to be my pick for its beautiful writing and its sense of compassion. An unforgettable novel.

While reading "Tree of Smoke" I felt like I was staring at seared bark, my nostrils overwhelmed by the charred remains of the trunk I was clinging to with monumental focus and resolve. The novel was filled with intense and energetic prose but I didn't know what was going on and I didn't feel moved or much of anything other than admiration for the style, skill and detail. Then I came to the last fifty pages and without it being at all obvious or sappy the book came together and suddenly I was at the top of tree seeing and feeling everything.

To call this a Vietnam novel is like calling Moby Dick a whaling novel. Clearly its heart and soul rests in that country but the characters and locales sprawl out to the Philippines and the United States. There is very little war but what there is hits explosively and critically as the Tet offensive certainly did. Was it the end of American innocence? Maybe but no where does the novel suggest it was end of American stupidity abroad. There are a few Bush 43 era phrases that remind us of how little we've learned.

The characters are the weakest aspect to a novel that hurls forward on a level that makes them secondary to the dark hole at the center of this world. Colonel Sands, the nearest thing to the plot's mastermind, is a larger than life figure, a rogue spy who will do anything to win against the communists. His nephew Skip Sands feels like the moral center of the novel although his morality is squishy at the beginning and goes downhill. Then there is the lone female character,Katharine Johnson, a cross between Katharine Hepburn in the "African Queen" and the town slut. Other characters such as the Houston brothers and Jimmy Storm are madmen whose lives only make sense in a crazy war and then just barely. There are few key Asian characters including a double agent and the Filipino Rex Harrison but I didn't find them persuasive.

So what its all about Alfie? Why the hype about this being the great American novel? Its because the book takes the reader on a demanding, thrilling, crazy ride and its truths explodes deep inside as if the reader's psyche was one of those Vietcong tunnels that crop up memorably but mysteriously throughout the book. These truths kept on exploding even I closed the covers and turned out the lights.

Denis Johnson has proven himself in previous works as a writer with a unique voice. With Tree of Smoke he moves into a new level of writer, to sit along side Delillo and Pynchon. I read other reviews here that were very dismissive but I felt this book was a great achievement, very compelling. Highly recommended.