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book review of 'the sympathizer'
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(courtesy photo: báo Thể thao & Văn hoá)
The more powerful a country is, the more disposed its people will be to see it as the lead actor in the sometimes farcical, often tragic pageant of history. So it is that we, citizens of a superpower, have viewied the Vietnam. War as a solely American drama in which the febrile land of tigers and
the elephants was mere backdrop and the Vietnamese mere extra.
The outlook is reflected in the literature -- and Vietnam was a very literary war, producing an immense library of fiction and nonfiction. Among all those volumes, you'll find only a handful (Robert Olen Butler's " A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain" comes to mind) with Vietnam-mese characters speaking in their own voices.
Hollywood has been still more Americentric. In films like "Apocalypse Now" and" Platoon", the Vietnamese (often other Asians portraying Vietnamese) are never more than walk-ons whose principal roles seem to be die or wail in the ashes of incinerated villages. Which brings me to Viet Thanh Nguyen 's remarkable debut novel. "The Sympathizer" --Nguyen born in Vietnam but raised in the United States, brings a distinct perspective to the war and its aftermath. His books fills a void in the literature, voice to the previously voiceless while it compels the rest of us to look at the events of 40 years ago in a new light.
But this tragicomic novel reaches beyond its historical context to illuminate more universal themes: the internal misconceptions and misunderstandings between East and West, and the moral dilemma faced by people forced to choose not between right and right. The nameless protagonist-narrator, a memorable character despite his anonymity, is an Amercanized Vietnamese with a divided heart and mind. Nguyen's skill in portraying this sort of ambivalent personality compares favorably with masters like Conrad, Greene and le Carré.
Duality is literally in the protagonist's blood, for he is a half-caste, the illegitimate son of a teenage Vietnamese mother (whom he loves) and a French Catholic priest (whom he hates). Widening the split in his nature, he was educated in the United States, where he learned to speak English without an accemt and developed another love-hate relationship this one with the country that he feels has coined too many "super" terms (supermarkets, superhighways, the Super Bowl, and so on)" from the federal bank of its narcissism."
The narrator's acrobatic abilty to balance between to worlds is his strength and weakness, as he makes clear in his opening lines: " I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not
surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds ... able to see any issue from both sides. Sometimes I flatter myself that is a talent," he continues, but wonder if what I have should even be called talent. After all, a talent is something you use, not something that uses you. The talent you cannot use, the talent that possesses you -- that is a hazard." And a hazard it proves to be. The protagonist's narrative, which takes the form of a confession written to a mystery man known as "the commandant," begins in the final days of the war, as Communist forces close in on Saigon. The narrator is aide-de-camp to "the general"(one of several characters who, like the narrator, is never identified by name), the chief of the South Vietnam's national Police and, with it, of Special Branch, the secret police.
But the narrator is also a mole, a Communist undercover agent assigned to keeps tabs on the general and Special Branch's activities. His closed friend is Bon, an assassin with the C.I.A.'s Phoenix program, " a genuine patriot" who volunteered to fight after Communists murdered his father for the crime of being a village chief. The narrator's North Vietnamese handler, Man, is also an old chum. Indeed, the narrator, Bon and Man were high school classmates who in their youth melodramatically swore allegiance to one another by becoming blood brothers. This complex relationship with the narrator in the tenuous middle, riven by conflicting loyalties, is a recipe for tragic betrayals, and those come, one after the other.
Working through a C.I.A. spook named Claude, the narrator dispenses liberal bribes to engineer an air evacuation to the United States for the general, the generals' wife and their huge extended family. Bon is also to be lifted out with his wife and child. The narrator wants to stay and take his place in a re-unified Vietnam, but Man, convinced that the general and his cohort will plot a counterrevolution from abroad, gives him a new mission that is an extension of his old one:" You general isn't the only one planning to keep on fighting," he explains. "The war's been going on too long for them to simply stop. We need someone to keep an eye on them."
Nguyen presents a gripping picture of the fall of Saigon, its confusion chaos and terror, as the narra-
tor flees with the others under a storm os shellfire from his Viet Cong and North Vietnamese
comrades. Bon's wife and child are killed before their plane takes off, giving him to more deaths to avenge.
This rich narrative stew is assembled in the novel's first 50 pages, then set on a low simmer. From that brief, intense beginning we proceed to a picaresque account of the narrator's experiences as a refugee-cum-spy in Los Angeles. He lands a clerical job with his former professor, has an affair with an older Japanese-American woman and sends messages to Man (written in invisible ink) via an intermediary in Paris. here the novel becomes both thriller and social satire. If you like your humor written in charcoal, this is the funniest part of the book, through it's occasionally spoiled by the zingers that belong on "The Daily Show" more than they do in a serious novel.
The narrator's espionage activities lead him to make a foray into the movie business. He is hired by a director,"the auteur" (who bears a resemblance to Francis Ford Coppola), to round up the Vietnamese in a Phillipine refugee camp to work as extras in hid film (which bears a resemblance to"Apocalypse Now"). Nguyen adroitly handles the shifting tones of these episodes, now hilarious, now sad,as the narrator tries to do what Nguyen had sone: de-Americanize the Portrayal of the war. But, unlike Nguyen, he fails.
Thereafter, the book's mood darkens. The narrator falls into a web or deceit and treachery spun by his dual role and the schisms in his soul. Man's suspicious prove accurate. The general and some other die-hards, guilt-ridden for not fighting to the death, bored with their mediocre in the States (the general has become owner of a liquor store).plot a counterrevolutionary invasion with the help of a right-wing congressman.
The narrator assists in the planning, while sending reports to Man. However, to avoid having his cover blown, he is compelled to take part in two assassinations. One victim is an ex-Special Branch officer,"the other is a Vietnamese journalist at a California newspaper. The descriptions of the murders are tense, psychologically complex, riveting. The narrator's conscience becomes as torn as the rest of him. "Remorse over the crapulent major's death with ringing me up a few times a day, tenacious as a debt collector," he thinks.
(A parenthetical quibble, Good asit is."The Sympathizer' is sometimes marred by overwriting. Lines like this -- The waiters with the main courses propped on their shoulders" --appear a bit too often.)
The general eventually assembles a ragtag army of former South Vietnamese soldiers, armed and funded by the Americans. Man, kept abreast of the scheme, orders the narrator to remain in the States even as this army heads back to Asia, but he is once again rent by divided loyalties. He feels he must go to save Bon, his blood brother from dying in what he's sure will be a suicide mission. He finds himself caught in his familiar dilemma," with no idea how I would manage to betray Bon and save him at the same time."
The blood of friendship is thicker than the water of ideology. The narrator joins th general's army. What happens to it is predictable, what happens to the narrator and Bon is anything but. I don't want to give anything away, except to say that in its chapters.,"The Sympathizer" becomes an absurdist tour de force that might have been written by a Kafka or Genet.
As that narrative unfolds, the protagonist makes several starting discoveries, among which is the identity of the commandant's own boss, the commissar. Under interrogation, the narrator goes temporally insane; but in his madness he achieves a new mental clarity. He sees that the revolution for which he's sacrificed so much has betrayed him and everyone who fought for it -- as revolutions as prone to do.
Even the people who call the shots must admit that the fruit of victory are rotten,and the narrator in turn must recognize "this job, about how a revolution fought for independence and fredoom could make things worth less than nothing."
But that revelation produces an insight that saves him from complete despair:" Despite it all-- yes, despite everything in the face of nothing," he writes at the end of the "confession" that is this book,
" we still considers ourselves revolutionary. We remain that most hopeful of creatures, a revolution-
ary in search of a revolution, although we will not dispute being called a dreamer doped by an illusion ... We cannot be alone! Thousands more must be staring into darkness like us, gripped by scandalous thoughts, extravagant hopes and forbidden plots. We lie in wait for the right moment and the just cause, which, at this moment, is simply wanting to live."
Philip Caputo is the author of "A Rumor of War" and 14 others books. He is currently working on a novel set in Mexico.
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viet thanh nguyen/ author of 'the sympathizer'
(vietnamese's name: nguyễn thanh việt)
(courtesy photo: báo Thể thao& Văn hóa)
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