Denis Johnson’s “Tree of Smoke,” a 600-page journey through the physical, moral, and spiritual extremes of the Vietnam War and its aftermath, won the National Book Award for fiction tonight.

“I’m very sorry to miss this one chance to dress up in a tuxedo in front of so many representatives in the worlds of literature, and say thank you to the people who have given me my life,” the author said in a statement read by his wife, Cindy.

The 58-year-old Mr. Johnson, who lives in New Mexico, rarely talks to the media and is currently writing on assignment in Iraq. It was the fifth time in the past eight years that an author published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux has won in fiction, with previous works including Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections” and Richard Powers’s “The Echo Maker.”

Other National Book Award winners, each of whom received $10,000, included Tim Weiner’s “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA” for nonfiction, Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” for young people’s literature, and for poetry “Time and Materials,” by a former U.S. poet laureate, Robert Hass.

Joan Didion and National Public Radio host Terry Gross were presented honorary medals. Ms. Didion, who two years ago won the National Book Award in nonfiction for “The Year of Magical Thinking,” noted that Norman Mailer had been at that ceremony.

Mailer, who died Saturday at age 84, was “someone who really … knew what writing was for,” Ms. Didion said. Mailer also was praised by Mr. Hass, who recalled giving a poetry reading decades ago at Mailer’s home and how “enormously generous he (Mailer) was to young writers.”

The National Book Awards, founded in 1950, are sponsored by the nonprofit National Book Foundation.