Thumb Smile

The rather poorly manicured thumb you see in this photo is attached to a pretty happy guy.  I'll give you three guesses as to why the guy attached to the thumb is happy.

Good Guess.

Check out this letter that was written to my thumb, and possibly yours:

Dear Friends,

The novel you're holding is Denis Johnson's finest work, I believe, and one of the very best books we have ever had the honor to publish.  Tree of Smoke has haunted me in the sense that I've thought about it and dreamed about it since I finished reading it, and the impression it left has only deepened over time.  I think it is a great book, and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Galassi
President and Publisher
Farrar, Straus & Giroux

And here's the book's description:

Once upon a time there was a war . . . and a young American who thought of himself as the Quiet American and the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but who eventually came to witness himself as the Real American and finally as simply the Fucking American. That’s me.

This is the story of Skip Sands—spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong—and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, and its gritty, sympathetic portraits of men and women desperate for an end to their loneliness, whether in sex or death or by the grace of God, this is a story like nothing in our literature.

Tree of Smoke is Denis Johnson’s first full-length novel in nine years, and his most gripping, beautiful, and powerful work to date.

Now if my thumb and I could just figure out when we'll have time to read these 614 pages.  I guarantee you that some pretty good books will be pushed down the TBR pile just a smidge to make room.

Comments

[R Ellis]

Well that's exciting! I'm going to have to burrow through the ARC pile at work to see how I missed it...