Tree of Smoke - post VI

Tree of Smoke is a really lesson in reading. The first 200 pages seemed to be going nowhere fast and then with a bang this book grabs your round the throat and you are hooked.

As the action calms down from the James Houston storyline of combat in Tet in 1968 it moves to concentrate on the Tree of Smoke plan being carried out by Skip Sands uncle. The colonel plans to use a double agent to plant disinformation. The only problem is that the rest of the CIA don’t seem to be prepared to go along with it and the colonel is falling apart and falling off the pace as the war changes tack and becomes something embarrassing to the authorities.

It’s 1969 and the idea that the war can be won is evaporating and now the true sense of despair is setting in. For those that have been taken through the hell of fighting and lost their morals and minds to the war the idea of going back to civilisation and back home is completely alien.

“I’m here because I won’t go back to my homeland. Go back to what? A bewildering place full of left-leaning feminine weirdos. What if I do go back? What then? Retire to North Carolina and die and get a forty-foot bridge over a creek named after me.”

If Johnson managed to convey the sense of fear and confusion of war then he follows that up with a very believable picture of the sense of reality drift felt by those in Vietnam who have lost touch with everything that they left behind at home.

Films like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket also get that sense across but here it is much more tangible and as a the spy versus spy story emerges that grips you almost as much as the battlegrounds in the jungles of Tet.

With his mother dead, the colonel murdered and the war closing him out – something Skip Sands so much wanted to be part of - where next? That’s what keeps you reading.

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: Venusberg

It is hard not to think of Scoop with this story about a journalist becoming a foreign correspondent. Although this is described on the back as being wildly funny in places and you can only guess that either that is to come or the level of what it took to make you laugh in the 1930s was quite different.

As the main character Lushington packs his bags and heads for the Baltics he leaves behind a girlfriend who has fallen in love with an old school friend of the foreign correspondents. Where the chance for humour comes from is the fact that the country he is heading for is also the place his love rivals has settled in.

Boarding the boat the adventures start with an exiled Russian aristocrat and a couple of Austrians, one of which Lushington gets the chance to take to his cabin.

Waiting for it to really get going. Maybe tomorrow…

Tree of Smoke - post V

The book finally takes off and it is the novel that you hoped it would be when you opened the first page.

The year is 1968 and the Vietcong are making their Tet offensive and all of the main characters are dragged into the fighting with the main focus being on the young infantryman James Houston.

Skip has faded into the background and the colonel is breaking up much in the same way his political class is back in the US. He cannot understand anymore anything other than the search for a breakthrough and the killing.

Likewise Houston has gone past a barrier by killing a man and entering into the world of kill and move where living is by instinct rather than by any real design. He seems to have become remote from the world of his mother and signs up for a second tour and is immersed in the fighting.

Johnson manages to convey in just a few pages just why those that fought in Vietnam were unable to come home and just forget about it. The horror of a situation where mass confusion is accompanied by death and destruction makes the life of working in a normal job something so remote it could be happening on another planet.

With the characters coming alive and the action moving up several gears this book has taken 300 pages to reach it but at last some of the blurb on the dust jacket seems to be justified. You finally realise what the Tree of Smoke is as it refers to a plan to use a double agent to plant disinformation back into North Vietnam.

More tomorrow…

book review - A Void

It would be foolhardy to pretend that this entire book makes immediate sense. But that does not make it any less enjoyable and as every page turns and the plot deepens you are not only engrossed but continually amazed that Georges Perec put this novel together without using a single ‘e’.

In a postscript the author admits that he was partly put up to the challenge as a bet by a friend but then as he started he discovered that it challenged his approach to writing and he became almost obsessional about the task.

The book starts following the thoughts of Anton Vowl who starts to note down thoughts in his diary about a void. He feels he is being sucked into the void and then sure enough he disappears. His small collection of friends meets and agrees that they will do their best to help solve the mystery.

They are connected initially by their mutual friendship with Vowl but as it unfolds they discover more intimate bloodlines flow between them and importantly with the missing man and that is why they all face the prospect of death.

One by one they either disappear or are killed. As the net tightens ironically the plot widens and events of the past are connected with the deaths and disappearances and a family feud is uncovered. Although there is a killer on the loose the void that the characters are falling into is the absence of e.

At the close of the book the character walking out of Proust, detective Swann, is happy killing the final victims, and even with the mystery solved there is a dark humour running through the book until the end. There are some hidden moments for those that have a knowledge of French literature with a nod to Poe and the Murder on the Rue Morgue as well as Proust. No doubt there are others but those were the two that I managed to recognise.

Most of the stuff about mathematics and philosophy did pass me by but in the end it is not as crucial to understanding the story and is part of Vowl’s world and setting up the idea that he is somehow trying to pinpoint the sense of the void. This only really starts to get going once Vowl has gone and the different characters meet at the country estate of one of Vowl’s acquaintances and discuss the case. Then one by one the different characters face up to their destiny and meet an odd and untimely death.

Ultimately though you either sign up for this experience or you don’t. Personally it was sometimes hard going and the pace that was caused by different and sometimes static language made it difficult to follow. But there is a story there and it emerges strongly at the climax. What is the point of language if it is not there to experiment with and play around with? Perec pushes it here all the way but does so with a smile and a great deal of intelligence.

This was more of a journey than most books but in the end the complex murder mystery and the void causes by the absence of e leave you deep in thought with the same smile Perec probably had on his face when he finished writing this.

Version read – Vintage paperback

bookmark of the week

My brother, who recently had a holiday in the South East, picked this one up for me to add to the collection. It is a classic leather bookmark that can be found at any major castle or country house. These might be on the way out with magnetic alternatives becoming more common but the leather embossed with images of the attraction remains a firm favourite.

book review - The Kindly Ones

A good storyteller will start with a theme and then echo it throughout the work and then finish by reminding the reader of the opening strains of the book in the final pages. Anthony Powell does that here referring to a lesson from his tutor about Greek mythology and the furies, mythical figures that circled in times of war.

The hope is that the furies, the kindly ones will not be heralding war. They are first mentioned at the start when Powell is remembering his childhood living with his parents near Colchester in 1914. They then reappear as the Second World War goes beyond the hoped for peace of the Munich agreement and into something more serious.

In a way this book marks a change from some of the others because it is as if the band has stopped and a more somber music has started but some of the characters have not noticed.

So as a result Peter Templer is still carrying on with women and making his money in the City and Moreland is struggling to keep his marriage together, and appears to finally fail and lose his wife to Sir Magnus Donners who is also continuing to carry on much as normal.

Ironically the barometer that shows things have changed comes from Widmerpool who appears in uniform when it is unfashionable to make the point that he is ready for war.

The past still manages to come round and interrupt and divert Jenkins – with jean Templer’s husband taking him out for an evening -but at this half way stage in the 12 book opus this is more about closing certain doors before new ones are opened. The most dramatic illustration of this is the death of Uncle Giles, who has been popping up in most of the other books. He will pop up no more except in memory after dying at a boarding house run by the ex-cook who used to be employed in the house near Colchester. It is those sorts of coincidences that make Powell’s world do circular.

As Jenkins starts to realise that he is going to have to play some sort of role in the forthcoming war he starts to anxiously contact people who he thinks might be able to help him. One of those is Widmerpool but his old acquaintance cannot help but exploit his position and make Nick feel idiotic and helpless. A chance encounter might get him into the army but that question mark is hanging over until the next book.

Throughout the first six books there has been a theme about honour and the role of some of the men in the First World War. Peter Templer’s racing car driving brother-in-law never managed to live down his sense of failure for not having fought. Jenkins has that image in his head when he starts to try to get his role in the army firmed up from just a name on a reserve list.

There is a sense of growing up here not just in the character Jenkins but also in the country. The prospect of war is something that might be ignored by some, exploited by others or embraced by a few but it forces a change and a reaction.

The days sketched out so well in the first couple of books of debutante dances and a care-free social scene seem long behind and in terms of changing the pace and setting things up this book manages to do just that. It seemed to be going backwards with a long opening chapter about the past but the echoes of the war of 1914 become almost deafening by the time 1939 comes round.

Version read – Flamingo paperback

Tree of Smoke - post IV

Do you ever come across those books where you have to read them in big chunks to get the pace right? This is one of those because reading it in 50-60 page chunks has left me wondering just what was going on. But getting through 100 odd pages today things became a lot clearer.

This is ultimately about a series of characters that intertwine and exist without knowledge of each other. What they all have in common is a connection with the Vietnam War but that is in the background more than the foreground for most of the characters.

The focus is still on the CIA agent Skip Sands but things are expanding with his Uncle, the woman he had a brief affair with in the Philippines and the younger of the Houston brothers all coming into a Vietnamese orbit.

There is a humour here with a host of extreme characters but there is also sadness at the strength of the belief in a certain ideal, something beyond the Kennedyesque, that is going to be shattered not just by the failure in Vietnam but by the way the US forces and people change in a culture of excess.

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

The problem with opening someone’s mind with literature sharing the emotions of love, fear and courage is that the mind is never quite the same again.

After being pumped full of books by Luo the Little Seamstress finally decides that the countryside is not enough for her and so she heads off to the city leaving her father and the two students behind her.

Things are made slightly easier by the fact that Luo has been absent for a month not long before her decision and he left her needing an abortion. It would be a shame to reveal the final line but it brings a real smile to the face.

Those who have the arrogance to believe that they can educate, improve and then control someone are very much mistaken – and rightly so.

A review will follow soon…

Lunchtime read: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

With their stack of foreign literature the two students become intoxicated reading of romance, chivalry and intrigue. The problem is that they start to take risks as a result of their new found intellectual freedom.

In the case of Luo it is physical risks crawling over a mountain precipice every day to take a book to read to the Little Seamstress but in the case of the narrator he gets carried away reading out loud the Dumas tale of the Count of Monte Cristo and is almost denounced by the village headman.

You sense that doom is coming because they are unable to contain their enjoymenty of the books but also crucially cannot stop sharing the contents with people.

Although this is primarily a book about the hardships endured by people as part of the cultural revolution it is also a story about the power of literature – the power to change lives and the way that words can transform the limits of someone’s horizons.

Last chunk tomorrow…

book review - The Girls of Slender means

In the Ballad of Peckham Rye Muriel Spark uses an outlandish character to act as a provocative catalyst to bring out sides of people that are otherwise buried. In The Girls of Slender Means it is the act of a bomb going off that has the same impact on one character in particular.

The title refers to a group of girls that are living in a women’s club that is a hostel with the group of early twenty something’s living on the top floor. The scene is set in a war torn London with the club standing despite bomb damage around and the scars of the blitz and the war still in evidence all around.

The girls in the club are all living with next to nothing and making do – slender means – sharing dresses and borrowing things from each other to make the best of it. One thing they seem to try to have an influence over is the men who come into the club and Nicholas appears on the scene and sleeps with the most attractive but stirs passions in some of the others.

As a result of several flashbacks we know that Nicholas dies at the hands of some natives he was trying to convert as a missionary. How does he get there from the situation of a bored poet come anarchist celebrating the Attlee government success after the war?

The turning point it watching horrified through a window while the elocution teacher Joanna, who he has started to fixate on, chants clearly psalms before she meets her death in the collapsing house after a bomb, long thought to be in the garden by one of the owners of the club, finally detonates.

His death also sparks off memories for one of the girls in the group who had initially met Nicholas and tried to help him get published. She tracks down the truth of his demise and puts the last pieces in the jigsaw.

In some respects this could be taken as a religious message about the power of faith over death but there is also something else about the death signifying the end of innocence. The irony is that this book is set in 1945 when presumably any innocence has long since gone after the bitter years of war. But the girls of slender means seem to have drifted through the war and the fact their club is still standing is a sign that not much has altered.

One of the other telling moments is when on VJ day Nicholas witnesses in horror a man stabbing a woman in the crows and then slipping away without a care in the world. His café anarchism is challenged and found wanting and in the end inspired it seems by a vicar’s daughter he too sets out to find something that he is happy to die for.

A more dynamic result compared to Ballad of Peckham Rye comes as a result of the twist and the moment of horror with the fire and the death. Putting this alongside Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell it provides another interpretation on wartime London.

Version read – Penguin paperback

Tree of Smoke - post III

The words on the back of the dust jacket are effusive about this book and 100 odd pages in you can’t disagree with them but so far there is not much to sway you in the direction of praise heaping.

The reason is that despite things becoming slightly clearer – the characters settling down helps – there is still a great deal of confusion. As 1965 draws to an end Skip seems to have been sent into the wilderness simply to witness the murder of a priest and discover that his belief in his country is going to be tested.

The narrative then moves to the Houston brothers, one in the navy and one about to join the infantry and as a result the action starts to move closer to Vietnam. The year is 1966 and Skip, the Houston brothers and thousands of others are being sent into the war zone to make sense of the madness.

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

There is a vivid passage in the book when the two leading characters get their hands on a copy of Balzac. The book is banned and the emotions it talks about – love, passion and the freedom it paints – mesmerize the two students being re-educated in the countryside.

The impact of the French authors words spread beyond the two friends and reach the little seamstress who is stunned by the ideas of love and heads off into the woods and makes love to Luo.

The Balzac comes from four-eyes a bespectacled student living in another village serving his time. The book is given out as a thanks for helping him get local folklore songs that can land him a job on a magazine charting the success of the cultural revolution. But after handing out Balzac he clams up and refuses to share anymore forcing the friends to take the decision to steal the suitcase full of books the night of four-eyes departure from the village.

Literature might help them escape but they still have to have coal, plough the fields and suffer the prospect of doing so for three years.

More tomorrow…

Tree of Smoke - post II

There are several points of view with the narrative moving along with Skip Sands the CIA officer being sent on his Uncle’s business to check out what is happening in a village on from Manila.

Skip is told to meet a priest who knows the area and has been preaching there for years. Meanwhile things switch to follow the priest on his way to try and retrieve the body of a Seventh day Adventist who has been killed.

The action then switches back to Sands, but through the eyes of a woman, who it turns out is the widow of the missionary who has been found dead near a river in the jungle.

The book is not that easy to follow and part of the reason is that despite your initial expectations being of a Vietnam epic the action here is on the fringes and the point that is being made is different. Everyone is on some sort of secret mission and the shadow that falls across them all is Vietnam and the damage it is doing. Kennedy’s death is referred to on numerous occasions acting as a wider metaphor for the end of innocence and control.

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

There has been a fantastic series running on BBC 2, Wild China, about China’s landscape and wildlife. That seemed like a very thin excuse to pop to the library and pick up something with a Chinese flavour.

This book is clearly written by someone who spent many years in exile and is remembering his life as a student being transplanted from his home in the city to the countryside as part of Mao’s cultural revolution.

He is sent off with his best friend and together they discover a world of initial mistrust and backwardness with ancient beliefs mixing in with back breaking manual labour. The escape the two friends manage to find comes from their relationship with each other and their ability to act as cinema interpreters for the village.

Their travels take them into the orbit of another village and there they come across the tailors daughter. The little seamstress is charming and they are both slightly smitten by her but it is the friend Luo who seems to gain her attention. She certainly springs into life to nurse him when he falls ill with malaria.

More tomorrow…

bookmark of the week

Took the kids to Godstone Farm today for some exhausting fun. Every other time we have been there the shop has never had bookmarks but a promotional one pitching their new website was there so hey presto this week's bookmark of the week.