Elliot’s Reading Week of 4/11/21: Viet Thanh Nguyen

Elliot’s Reading Week of 4/11/2: Viet Thanh Nguyen 

I started reading Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Committed (2021), which win a sense is the 2nd volume of his Pulitzer-winning The Sympathizer, which followed the life course of a young Vietnamese refugee who settles in SoCal and gets involved with a small militant group aiming to overthrow the communist government in Vietnam. The seeming 2nd volume picks up the plot line some 5 or so years later, following a period in which the protagonist - do we ever know his name? - is captured and subject to “reeducation” in Vietnam. I’m not sure if my interpretation is correct; I didn’t go back and re-read the Sympathizer - maybe it’s better just to take this newer novel on its own terms: the protag, along with his best friend, escape from or finish their “reeducation”and make their way to Europe where they settle in Paris: The best friend is still committed to overthrowing the Vietnamese government; the protagonist, less so. OK, this novel is confusing, though, even to the most willing of readers: the time line puzzled me, we hear a lot about the reeducation and about the protagonist’s work as a spy, but there’s nothing concrete about this and it’s hard, maybe impossible, to know where the protag stands or what his aims re. A good 100 pp into the novel, I’m still not sure; the main thing the protag is interested in is in the Western lifestyle, which he hopes to emulate through profits from selling hash for a group of Vietnamese thugs who hides behind a front of the word restaurant in Paris (funny!). Some of the scenes are very powerful - notably, when the portage is mugged in a park by two from a rival rx gang - but the whole novel feels unsettled as it never, up to this point - far enough along - we still know so little about the protag and what makes him tick. To what is he actually committed? 4/16/21