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"The astonishing sequel to The Sympathizer, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, The Committed follows the "man of two minds" as he comes to Paris as a refugee. There he and his blood brother Bon try to escape their pasts and prepare for their futures by turning their hands to capitalism in one of its purest forms: drug dealing. No longer in physical danger, but still inwardly tortured by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, and struggling to assimilate into a dominant culture, the Sympathizer is both charmed and disturbed by Paris. As he falls in with a group of left-wing intellectuals and politicians who frequent dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese "aunt," he finds not just stimulation for his mind but also customers for his merchandise-but the new life he is making has dangers he has not foreseen. Both literary thriller and brilliant novel of ideas, The Committed is a blistering portrayal of commitment and betrayal that will cement Viet Thanh Nguyen's position in the firmament of American letters"--… (more)
User reviews
A few quotes:
On America and France:
“Americans loathed symbols, except for patriotic, sentimental ones like guns, flags, Mom, and apple pie, all of which the average American proclaimed he would defend to the death. One had to love such a practical, pragmatic people, impatient with interpretation, eager just to get the facts, ma’am. If one tried to interpret a movie’s deeper significance with Americans, they would reflexively claim that it was just a story. To the French, nothing was ever just a story. As for facts, the French thought them rather boring.”
On capitalism:
“Capitalists love to point out how many tens of millions have died under Stalin and Mao, all while conveniently forgetting how hundreds of millions have died under capitalism. What were colonialism and slavery but forms of capitalism? What was the genocide of the natives of the Americas but capitalism?”
On revolution:
“…when the revolutionaries take themselves too seriously, they cock their guns at the crack of a joke. Once that happens, it’s all over, the revolutionaries have become the state, the state has become repressive, and the bullets, once used against the oppressor in the name of the people, will be used against the people in their own name.”
“Politics is always
The Sympathizer returns, arriving in Paris, as a refugee, along with his blood brother, Bon. He is still struggling with the aftermath of his cruel, reeducation, and hooks up with a group of left-wing intellectuals. Unfortunately, he is also pulled into a band of Vietnamese, drug-dealers, which leads into all kinds of bloody mayhem. The Sympathizer has not escaped anything.
There is so much good writing here, plenty of introspection, along with deep looks at colonialism but these 400 pages felt like 600 pages, while I was reading it. Never-ending philosophical asides, teamed up with gruesome bouts of torture, made this an uneasy read. I loved the original novel and there are plenty of glowing reviews on this one, so you may want to judge for yourself. I remain Uncommitted.
The Sympathizer has returned, now in the Paris of 1981, as burdened as ever with his many dualities and in an even greater state of confusion. He reunited with his blood brother Bon, after writing endlessly in his other blood brother’s reeducation camp, Man. With these two as men
In Paris, Bon and he settle into a life of crime, the kind of business available to outcasts like Vietnamese, as well as Algerians and Arabs, the victims all of French colonialism, and, of course, distinctive in hues of yellow and brown. You can’t get lower than No Name, as exemplified by his job in the worse Asian restaurant in Paris, as toilet cleaner. He does, however, pull himself up with the indirect help of his sophisticated committed communist aunt, who intellectualizes with French socialists who enjoy French capitalism; he becomes their drug supplier, building his book of business with his Chinese gang. Three things readers will find in abundance: blood and guts, as in wholesale bloodbaths; sex, sexual longing, sexual musing, sexual objectification, and sexual debauchery; and political philosophizing, as in Camus, Sartre, and Fanon, revolving around the destructiveness of colonialism and the oppression imposed by victorious revolutionaries. Readers will encounter lots of the latter, but don’t despair, because No Name has developed a very sharp sense of black humor that makes your reeducation go down easier than Man’s brand.
Speaking of Man, he returns on a fated mission that serves to drive up No Name’s angst levels. Bon knows Man’s coming, and Bon has committed to killing him. No Name has the opposite commitment, keep Man alive, and hope two closely held secrets aren’t revealed. No Name has no luck on that score, and Viet treats readers to an ambiguous ending. You get the feeling he’s not done with No Name, as new unfinished business arises at the end.
As good as The Sympathizer, but with more action, humor, and sex, and better than most novels you’ll read this year, and that’s saying a lot, since the year is still young.
Whereas the first book of confessions was panoramic in scope and covered a plethora of events that took place in multiple countries over an extended period, the action in The Committed is more narrowly focused on brief window of time when the narrator finds himself working in Paris as a drug dealer for a newly formed organized crime operation. This becomes an important distinction because, while it deals with many of the same important issues as the first volume (e.g., the adverse effects of colonialism, cultural ambiguity, immigration, political commitment), it lacks much of the original’s dark humor and the action portrayed in the sequel is not nearly as interesting or engaging. Stated a little more plainly, the new book works far less well as spy novel/thriller than its predecessor.
The more I read this book, the more I found myself disappointed by it. To be sure, Nguyen is a very talented writer with a wonderfully creative imagination. However, the level of philosophical discourse embedded in this story—which ranged from diatribes against colonial oppression to the communism vs. capitalism debate to the nature of loyalty and commitment—was so heavy handed that it thwarted the impact of an already thin plotline. Also, the stylistic decision to switch the narration from the first person to a second person version of the same individual (presumably done to emphasize the protagonist’s split personality) was clunky and ended up being quite grating. Finally, the story relies so completely on the reader’s understanding of events from the first book that it is difficult to regard it as a fully stand-alone work. Unfortunately, then, it is not possible for me to recommend this novel to anyone who has not already read and enjoyed The Sympathizer.
The Sympathizer and his blood brother, Bon, crash with his French Vietnamese aunt (really no relation) only to be introduced to her intellectual friends and to the French underworld with jobs at “the worst Asian restaurant in Paris.” Since the latter is really only a front for illegal drug dealing, the refugees are enlisted to develop a new clientele among his “aunt’s” intellectual acquaintances. Of course, this leads to the classical drug turf war and the usual violence that comes along with it. The plot is highly convoluted, frequently odd, incredibly violent, and often quite opaque, but Nguyen redeems it with lots of dark comedy that drips with irony.
Indeed, the thriller aspect of the novel is not really very prominent. Instead, Nguyen devotes large amounts of space to French philosophy and his protagonist’s questioning of his own commitments and betrayals. Notwithstanding markedly slowing the pace, these digressions give the novel a literary power absent in most crime genre fiction. Matters include his secret role as a communist spy, his torture at the hands of another friend in a post-war reeducation camp, his identity as an Asian minority, and especially his betrayal of Bon, a staunch anti-communist who lost his wife and child in the war.
Lines
I held on to the leather bag for this same nostalgic reason. Even though it was not very large, the bag, like Bon’s, was not full. Like most refugees we barely had any material belongings, even if our bags were packed with dreams and fantasies, trauma and pain, sorrow and loss, and, of course, ghosts. Since ghosts were weightless, we could carry an infinite number of them.
As for America, just think of Coca-Cola. That elixir is really something, embodying as it does the addictive, teeth-decaying sweetness of a capitalism that was no good for you no matter how it fizzled on the tongue.
When I explained that the luwak, the civet cat, ate the raw beans and excreted them, its intestines supposedly fermenting the beans in a gastronomic way, she burst out laughing, which rather hurt. Kopi luwak was very expensive, especially for refugees like us, and if there was anything that the French should love, it should have been civet-percolated coffee.
They, too, wore shirts and slacks and had arms, legs, and eyes as I did. But while we shared the same elements that made us human, they were clearly filet mignon, rare and perfectly seared, while I was boiled organ meat, most likely intestine.
Over the next few weeks, I made my deliveries with the nonchalant air of the law-abiding citizen, assured in the knowledge that the police tended not to look twice at Asians, or so Le Cao Boi had reassured me. At the restaurant, he pointed to how the Arabs and the blacks did us the unintentional favor of being our racial decoys, drawing the attention of police who thought them to be as brown, sticky, and aromatic as hashish itself.
To drink whiskey, in sufficient quantities, regardless of sufficient quality, is to polish the fuzzy mirror of one’s self and to adjust, in the manner of an optometrist, the focus of one’s lenses.
Organized religion was the first and greatest protection racket, an economy of perpetual profit built on voluntary fear and coerced guilt. Donating money to churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, cults, et cetera, to help ensure a spot for one’s soul in the express elevator to that penthouse in the sky known as the afterlife was marketing genius!
He opened the tin to reveal the sweetest cookie of all, the ultimate male prosthesis, a perpetually hard gun capable of rapid-fire ejaculation.
The Sympathizer has returned, now in the Paris of 1981, as burdened as ever with his many dualities and in an even greater state of confusion. He reunited with his blood brother Bon, after writing endlessly in his other blood brother’s reeducation camp, Man. With these two as men
In Paris, Bon and he settle into a life of crime, the kind of business available to outcasts like Vietnamese, as well as Algerians and Arabs, the victims all of French colonialism, and, of course, distinctive in hues of yellow and brown. You can’t get lower than No Name, as exemplified by his job in the worse Asian restaurant in Paris, as toilet cleaner. He does, however, pull himself up with the indirect help of his sophisticated committed communist aunt, who intellectualizes with French socialists who enjoy French capitalism; he becomes their drug supplier, building his book of business with his Chinese gang. Three things readers will find in abundance: blood and guts, as in wholesale bloodbaths; sex, sexual longing, sexual musing, sexual objectification, and sexual debauchery; and political philosophizing, as in Camus, Sartre, and Fanon, revolving around the destructiveness of colonialism and the oppression imposed by victorious revolutionaries. Readers will encounter lots of the latter, but don’t despair, because No Name has developed a very sharp sense of black humor that makes your reeducation go down easier than Man’s brand.
Speaking of Man, he returns on a fated mission that serves to drive up No Name’s angst levels. Bon knows Man’s coming, and Bon has committed to killing him. No Name has the opposite commitment, keep Man alive, and hope two closely held secrets aren’t revealed. No Name has no luck on that score, and Viet treats readers to an ambiguous ending. You get the feeling he’s not done with No Name, as new unfinished business arises at the end.
As good as The Sympathizer, but with more action, humor, and sex, and better than most novels you’ll read this year, and that’s saying a lot, since the year is still young.
It is a tale narrated with the same memorable voice as the previous novel, The Committed follows the unnamed Sympathizer as he arrives in Paris in the early 1980s with his blood brother Bon. He says "our bags were packed with dreams and fantasies, trauma and pain, sorrow and loss, and, of course, ghosts. Since ghosts were weightless we could carry an infinite number of them." (p 5) The pair try to overcome their pasts and ensure their futures by engaging in capitalism in one of its purest forms: drug dealing.
Traumatized by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, Man, and struggling to assimilate into French culture, the Sympathizer finds Paris both seductive and disturbing. In his attempts to deal with his ghosts he acquires lessons from a coterie of left-wing intellectuals whom he meets at dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese "aunt." Through these he experiences stimulation for his mind but also customers for his narcotic merchandise. Strewn throughout the novel are references from the works of Sartre, Fanon, Kristeva, and de Beauvoir, and these are in addition to his interactions with the drug-dealing crime boss he works for in Paris. But the new life he is making has perils he has not foreseen, whether the self-torture of addiction, the authoritarianism of a state locked in a colonial mindset, or the seeming paradox of how to reunite his two closest friends whose worldviews put them in absolute opposition. The Sympathizer will need all his wits, resourcefulness, and moral flexibility if he is to prevail.
Both literary thriller and novel of ideas, The Committed is a blistering portrayal of commitment and betrayal. Its intensity was sometimes difficult to consider, but necessary to maintain the idea of what his new life meant to him. This novel maintained my interest and left me looking forward to a potential third novel by this outstanding author.
"that's what nobody tells you about the afterlife. It smells like rotten mean and putric water