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Tree Of Smoke
''Tree of Smoke'' is a 2007 novel by American author Denis Johnson which won the National Book Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It is about a man named Skip Sands who joins the CIA in 1965, and begins working in Vietnam during the American involvement there. The time frame of the novel is from 1963 to 1970, with a coda set in 1983. One of the protagonists of ''Tree of Smoke'' is Bill Houston, who was the main character in Johnson's 1983 debut novel ''Angels''. There are several references in the novel to the title phrase, which has Biblical origins in three cited passages: Song of Solomon 3:6; Book of Joel 2:30, 31; and Exodus 33:9, 10. Plot Tree of Smoke is an American novel about the Vietnam War by Denis Johnson. It primarily follows William "Skip" Sands, a newly minted CIA agent operating in Vietnam during the American insurgency. It also follows James Houston, an infantry private, his brother Bill, and a Canadian nurse named Kathy Jones. The nov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denis Johnson
Denis Hale Johnson (July 1, 1949 – May 24, 2017) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet. He is perhaps best known for his debut short story collection, '' Jesus' Son'' (1992). His most successful novel, ''Tree of Smoke'' (2007), won the National Book Award for Fiction. His other novels include ''Angels'' (1983), ''Fiskadoro'' (1985), '' The Stars at Noon'' (1986), '' Resuscitation of a Hanged Man'' (1991), '' Already Dead: A California Gothic'' (1997), ''The Name of the World'' (2000), '' Nobody Move'' (2009), ''Train Dreams'' (2011), and '' The Laughing Monsters'' (2014). Johnson was twice shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His final work, a book of short stories titled ''The Largesse of the Sea Maiden'', was published posthumously in 2018. Johnson also wrote plays, journalism, and nonfiction. Early years Denis Johnson was born on July 1, 1949, in Munich, West Germany. Growing up, he also lived in the Philippines, Japan, and the suburbs of Washing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, as ''The Atlantic Monthly'', a literary and cultural magazine that published leading writers' commentary on education, the abolition of slavery, and other major political issues of that time. Its founders included Francis H. Underwood and prominent writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Greenleaf Whittier. James Russell Lowell was its first editor. In addition, ''The Atlantic Monthly Almanac'' was an annual almanac published for ''Atlantic Monthly'' readers during the 19th and 20th centuries. A change of name was not officially announced when the format first changed from a strict monthly (appearing 12 times a year) to a slightly lower frequency. It was a mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Spy Novels
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2007 American Novels
7 (seven) is the natural number following 6 and preceding 8. It is the only prime number preceding a cube. As an early prime number in the series of positive integers, the number seven has greatly symbolic associations in religion, mythology, superstition and philosophy. The seven Classical planets resulted in seven being the number of days in a week. It is often considered lucky in Western culture and is often seen as highly symbolic. Unlike Western culture, in Vietnamese culture, the number seven is sometimes considered unlucky. It is the first natural number whose pronunciation contains more than one syllable. Evolution of the Arabic digit In the beginning, Indians wrote 7 more or less in one stroke as a curve that looks like an uppercase vertically inverted. The western Ghubar Arabs' main contribution was to make the longer line diagonal rather than straight, though they showed some tendencies to making the digit more rectilinear. The eastern Arabs developed the digit fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Matthiessen
Peter Matthiessen (May 22, 1927 – April 5, 2014) was an American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer, zen teacher and CIA Operative. A co-founder of the literary magazine ''The Paris Review'', he was the only writer to have won the National Book Award in both National Book Award for Nonfiction, nonfiction (''The Snow Leopard'', 1979, category Contemporary Thought) and National Book Award for Fiction, fiction (''Shadow Country'', 2008)."Washington Post Obituary" Obituary, Washington Post, April 6, 2014. He was also a prominent environmental activist. Matthiessen's nonfiction featured nature and travel, notably ''The Snow Leopard'' (1978) and Native Americans in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shadow Country
''Shadow Country'' is a novel by Peter Matthiessen, published by Random House in 2008. Subtitled ''A New Rendering of the Watson Legend'', it is a semi-fictional account of the life of Scottish-American Edgar "Bloody" Watson (1855–1910), a real Florida sugar cane planter and alleged outlaw who was killed by a posse of his neighbors in the remote Ten Thousand Islands region of southwest Florida. Matthiessen revised, condensed, and combined his three previously published novels about Edgar Watson to create this single-volume novel, which is divided into three sections that conform to the three original books. ''Shadow Country'' won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2008"National Book Awards – 2008" |
Richard Powers
Richard Powers (born June 18, 1957) is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel ''The Echo Maker'' won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction."National Book Awards – 2006" . Retrieved 2012-03-27. (With linked information including essay by from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.) He has also won many other awards over the course of his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship. As of 2021, Powers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Echo Maker
''The Echo Maker'' is a 2006 novel by American writer Richard Powers. It won the National Book Award for Fiction"National Book Awards – 2006" . Retrieved 2012-03-27. (With essay by Harold Augenbraum from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.) and was a finalist."Fiction" ''Past winners & finalists by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Surowiecki
James Michael Surowiecki ( ; born April 30, 1967) is an American journalist. He was a staff writer at ''The New Yorker'', where he wrote a regular column on business and finance called "The Financial Page". Background Surowiecki was born in Meriden, Connecticut, and spent several childhood years in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, where he received a junior high-school education from Southwestern Educational Society (SESO). He is a 1984 graduate of Choate Rosemary Hall and a 1988 alumnus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar. Surowiecki pursued PhD studies in American history on a Mellon Fellowship at Yale University from 1988 to 1995, but did not complete his studies and did not receive a doctoral degree. In 1995, he founded the now-defunct e-magazine ''Rogue'' and began a career in journalism. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and is married to ''Slate'' culture editor Meghan O'Rourke. Career Surowiecki's writing has appeared in a wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katie Roiphe
Katie Roiphe (born July 13, 1968) is an American author and journalist. She is best known as the author of the non-fiction book '' The Morning After: Fear, Sex and Feminism'' (1994). She is also the author of ''Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century's End'' (1997), and the 2007 study of writers and marriage, ''Uncommon Arrangements''. Her 2001 novel ''Still She Haunts Me'' is an imagining of the relationship between Charles Dodgson (known as Lewis Carroll) and Alice Liddell, the real-life model for Dodgson's ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland''. She is also known for allegedly planning to name the creator of the Shitty Media Men list in an article for Harper's magazine. Background and education Roiphe grew up in New York City, daughter of psychoanalyst Herman Roiphe and noted feminist Anne (née Roth) Roiphe. She attended the all-female Brearley School, received an AB from Harvard University/ Radcliffe College in 1990, and received a PhD in English Literature fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meghan O'Rourke
Meghan O'Rourke (born 1976 in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York) is an American nonfiction writer, poet and critic. Background and education O'Rourke was born January 26, 1976, in Brooklyn, New York. The eldest of three children born to Paul and Barbara O’Rourke, she had two younger brothers. Her mother was a longtime teacher and administrator at Saint Ann's School (Brooklyn), Saint Ann's, an elite independent school in Brooklyn, and later headmaster of the Pierrepoint School in Westport, Connecticut. Her father, a classicist and Egyptologist, also taught at Saint Ann's and Pierrepont. O'Rourke attended St. Ann's through high school. She earned a bachelor's of arts degree in English language and literature from Yale University in 1997 and a master of fine arts degree in poetry from Warren Wilson College in 2005. Career Journalism Immediately after graduating from Yale, O'Rourke began an internship as an editor at ''The New Yorker.'' She was promoted to fiction/nonfiction ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
