ABSTRACT
The large canon of creative literature—fiction, drama, and poetry—about the Vietnam War and its legacy in the United States is diverse in genre, authorship, and theme. Beginning with the first wave of published Vietnam literature in the mid- to late 1970s, through recent offerings such as Denis Johnson’s 2008 National Book Award-winning novel Tree of Smoke, this vast assemblage of literary treatments of the war, its aftermath, and the home front testifies to the lingering influence of the Vietnam War on American society.
