Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

First edition of Tree of Smoke published by FSG in 2007

I'll start by saying that Tree of Smoke is one of my favorite books; it tells the sprawling tales of Skip Sands and the Houston brothers, among others, during and partially after the Vietnam war. Focused largely around the CIA's involvement in the war during its formative years, Tree of Smoke is told from many intertwining points of view, including Vietnamese intelligence officers, German assassins, and world-weary Colonels. Johnson's novel even has a complete, masterful recreation of the Tet offensive that is insanely gripping. Readers of his other work will remember the Houston brothers from his first novel Angels, which takes place later in time during the 1980's. Johnson's novel isn't particularly weird or rare, having won the National Book Award for 2007 and being a bestseller, but it is awesome, as is my copy he signed pictured below. This first edition hardcover also features great jacket art and design done by Susan Mitchell, which is increasingly rare these days. I strongly recommend picking up a copy especially seeing as they're not in short supply.

 

An inscription made out to me on the title page—note that he initially misspelled my name so there's an e with a dot over it

The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford

Fourth Bantam paperback printing of The Short-Timers from 1988

The Short-Timers was Vietnam veteran Gustav Hasford's first novel based largely on his experiences as a combat correspondent during the war. First published in 1979 to the bestseller list and currently out of print, The Short-Timers was adapted into the Stanley Kubrick film Full Metal Jacket in 1987 to great acclaim. Kubrick's film largely remains true to the novel with minor differences, and Hasford himself helped pen the screenplay; following an Oscar nomination, however, the amount of Hasford's actual work came under scrutiny by co-writers Kubrick and fellow veteran Michael Herr. At the same time, it was discovered that Hasford had been checking out and never returning books from various university libraries around the country under a phony social security number. Nearly ten thousand stolen books were discovered in his storage locker in California, for which he ultimately paid restitution and served three months in jail. The Short-Timers is a great piece of fiction by itself, and without it Full Metal Jacket couldn't have existed; that said, Hasford's literary career was a short, staggering one that only saw the publication of a sequel to this novel 12 years later (probably written for the money) and a flimsy, unnoticed detective novel published a year before his death. The Short-Timers is without a doubt Hasford's slim masterpiece, and supports believers of the notion that some writers only have one good book in them.