![]() ![]() "Tree of Smoke" is some kind of CIA project. However extensively the novel's story is summarised it is going to be sold short. We are talking CIA here we are talking, more generally, about a literary mission that invites comparison with Don DeLillo, Robert Stone, Joseph Conrad (especially towards the end) and of course, Graham Greene (one of the characters is undecided whether he is a quiet American or just an ugly one). What makes it a distinctly modern key is that, with every turn, the promised revelation is more securely concealed. ![]() For me, the effect of the comparison was counter-productive: Bellow instantly seemed as old and venerable as George Eliot.Īnd now we have what is in some ways a Victorian novel: 600 pages, zillions of characters and a plot that offers a key to the variously contested mythologies of American involvement in south-east Asia (Vietnam, principally, but with substantial sections in the Philippines as well). After I'd recommended The Name of the World, a literary friend responded with an email contrasting Johnson's self-described "zoo of wild utterances" with Bellow's infinite loquacity. Needless to say, he is not everybody's cup of tea. ![]()
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