While I wasn't in love with Tree of Smoke, I had it on good authority that I would appreciate Denis Johnson's slim novella about the end of the train era in the American West. It was indeed a brilliant, quick little read, and reminds me of how much I enjoyed the compact inventiveness of Jesus's Son. It seems this style is simply more suited to Johnson's talents that some of the sprawling epics he has produced.
The story is a really touching exploration of one man's loneliness out there amidst all the pines and boxcars of rural Idaho. We listen in to the whole arc of Robert Grainier's life as he bumps from job to job and place to place, not even himself quite knowing where he's going. But in addition to this depiction of the hardscrabble realities of the early 20th century, we find some very funny stories and some truly psychedelic visions. Best of all though, Johnson's elegiac tone lifts an ordinary life to the level of art, and gives us that uncanny sense of just how many fully human lives have been, and are being, lived.
The story is a really touching exploration of one man's loneliness out there amidst all the pines and boxcars of rural Idaho. We listen in to the whole arc of Robert Grainier's life as he bumps from job to job and place to place, not even himself quite knowing where he's going. But in addition to this depiction of the hardscrabble realities of the early 20th century, we find some very funny stories and some truly psychedelic visions. Best of all though, Johnson's elegiac tone lifts an ordinary life to the level of art, and gives us that uncanny sense of just how many fully human lives have been, and are being, lived.
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