I've been slogging through Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke
I've been interested to hear people's experiences with this. I absolutely loved
Jesus' Son when I read it years ago, and then this year realized that I hadn't delved any deeper into his catalog, so I picked up
Angels, which I think is one of his earlier books. It was good but not great, but similar to
Jesus' Son in kind of an unsettling way that made me wonder if the langorous, poetic feeling of
Jesus' Son that I loved so much might just be sort of his "schtick".
Then I started reading all of these rave reviews of
Tree Of Smoke with a grain of suspicion, and eventually saw a really excoriating review of it The Atlantic which kind of confirmed my fears and convinced me not to read it. That was my main worry, that the style from
Jesus' Son that was so dreamy and poetic transposed to such a gigantic length would turn out to be, like you put it, "aimless and wearying". I think I made the right choice.
Also, I have kind of an innate suspicion that nobody can really do Vietnam better than Tim O'Brien.