Viet Thanh Nguyen’s latest work looks at how different countries remember Vietnam War
Nothing Ever Dies is a nonfiction follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer
BY Susan Bell
Nothing Ever Dies takes a different approach to the Vietnam War. (Photo/Courtesy of Harvard University Press)
In his first novel, The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen explored the Vietnam War through the lens of his conflicted protagonist, an American-educated spy for the Viet Cong.
Nguyen’s follow-up work, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, takes a rather different approach: The book is a nonfiction counterpart to its Pulitzer Prize-winning predecessor, tackling the way different countries have remembered the Vietnam War.
“All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory,” writes Nguyen, the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and professor of English and American studies and ethnicity at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Nguyen said he wants readers to understand the gravity of war while remaining aware of possibilities for optimism.
“Nothing Ever Dies gives us a framework for how to think about justice, forgiveness and reconciliation that would be completely sentimental if I talked about it in The Sympathizer,” Nguyen said.
The ethics of memory
Nguyen said he wanted the book to be about more than just how Americans and Vietnamese have remembered this particular war.
Memories are not simply images we experience as individuals, but are mass-produced fantasies we share with one another.Viet Thanh Nguyen
“This history has always been a preoccupation for me since I was a child,” Nguyen said. “I knew that this war had shaped my life and turned me into a refugee and brought me to the United States, so I wanted to do as comprehensive a study of our memories of this war as I could.” As he argues in his book, “memories are not simply images we experience as individuals, but are mass-produced fantasies we share with one another.”
The book has been acclaimed by The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus and The Library Journal, and Nguyen’s USC Dornsife colleagues as well.
“Viet has written a deeply personal yet highly scholarly meditation on the ethics of memory, using America’s war in Vietnam as the crux of these often searing questions,” said David St. John, USC Dornsife University Professor of English and Comparative Literature and chair of English.
Leo Braudy, USC Dornsife University Professor and Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature and professor of English, art history and history, said Nguyen’s work is a wide-ranging and substantial addition to the discussion of memory — national, cultural and personal.
“Nguyen deftly weaves into his analysis his own experience, born in Vietnam but, as he says, made in America, himself the crucible within which the many forms of memory mix and try, or fail, to blend,” Braudy said.
A wider audience
Nguyen said he had wanted to ensure the book had an appeal beyond academe.
“I wrote the book in a way that moved me because I believed that I wouldn’t be able to move my reader unless I moved myself,” he said. “I wanted to believe I could write a scholarly work that could be an emotional one as well, and I think I was able to do that.”
- The Sympathizer (Grove Press, 2015)
- Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (Harvard University Press, 2016)
Nothing Ever Dies
Vietnam and the Memory of War
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Product Details
HARDCOVER
$27.95 • £22.95 • €25.00
ISBN 9780674660342
Publication: April 2016
“[Nguyen] produces close readings of the novels, films, monuments, and prisons that form ‘the identity of war’ in Vietnam, ‘a face with carefully drawn features, familiar at a glance to the nation’s people.’ Nguyen draws insights from Levinas, Ricoeur, and other philosophers, and his approach has affinities with that of hybridists such as W. G. Sebald and Maggie Nelson. The book is also notable for its inclusivity, addressing Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong, and Korean experiences and the competition for narrative dominance in bookstores and box offices.”—The New Yorker“In Nothing Ever Dies, his unusually thoughtful consideration of war, self-deception and forgiveness, Viet Thanh Nguyen penetrates deeply into memories of the Vietnamese war… [An] important book, which hits hard at self-serving myths.”—Jonathan Mirsky, Literary Review“In Nothing Ever Dies, Nguyen has written a powerful meditation on the manner in which memories are produced, cultivated, even empowered and subdued… He’s a lucid and robust voice for the forgotten—forgotten people, forgotten places, and forgotten memories most of all… Nothing Ever Dies is one man’s powerful entreaty to a country which has seen nearly endless conflict (one war running upon the next) for generations.”—Matthew Snider, PopMatters“By taking the reader on a sweeping and sobering global tour of artifacts, places, art, texts, and monuments associated with Vietnam, Nguyen argues that our cultural need to reflect accurately upon our history and fully absorb its lessons is forever at war with the impossibility of ever fully knowing the truth, or retelling it accurately… Cautioning that we cannot remember what we do not see, he lists the ways in which the U.S. has failed to fully recognize its own role in Vietnam, let alone the Vietnamese citizens it ostensibly went to Vietnam to protect… It’s fitting that Nothing Ever Dies has emerged at a moment when the U.S. and most of Europe are fiercely questioning America’s ability to reconcile with the past. Nguyen might say that the only way we can truly acknowledge the past is to contend with how fallible our memories actually are.”—Aja Romano, Vox“Nothing Ever Dies is an account of humanity at its darkest, a realm of war, memory, identity and pain that ventures from the jungles of Vietnam to the killing fields of Cambodia.”—Jeffrey Fleishman, The Los Angeles Times“A penetrating analysis by the Pulitzer Prize–winning Nguyen on how the Vietnam War has been remembered by the countries and people that have been most affected by it.”—Listener [New Zealand]“Readers will discover the roots of Nguyen’s powerful fiction in this profoundly incisive and bracing investigation into the memory of war and how war stories are shaped and disseminated… Ultimately, Nguyen’s lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry, in the mode of Susan Sontag and W. G. Sebald, is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy.”—Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)“Nguyen’s work is a powerful reflection on how we choose to remember and forget.”—Kirkus Reviews“This thought-provoking book is recommended for all students of the Vietnam War and those interested in historical memory.”—Joshua Wallace, Library Journal“[An] eloquent…narrative of the Vietnam War’s psychological impact on combatants and civilians… This is primarily a work that comes to grips with memory and identity through the arts… Nguyen succeeds in delivering a potent critique of the war and revealing what the memories of living have meant for the identities of the next generation.”—Publishers Weekly“Is there hope for an ethics of memory, or for peace? Nothing Ever Dies reveals that, in our collective memories of conflict, we are still fighting the Forever War. Nguyen’s distinctive voice blends ideas with family history in a way that is original, unique, exciting. A vitally important book.”—Maxine Hong Kingston, author of To Be a Poet“Inspired by the author’s personal odyssey, informed by his wide-ranging exploration of literature, film, and art, this is a provocative and moving meditation on the ethics of remembering and forgetting. Rooted in the Vietnam War and its aftermath, it speaks to all who have been displaced by war and revolution, and carry with them memories, whether their own or of others, private or collective, that are freighted with nostalgia, guilt, and trauma.”—Hue-Tam Ho Tai, editor of The Country of Memory: Remaking the Past in Late Socialist Vietnam“Nothing Ever Dies provides the fullest and best explanation of how the Vietnam War has become so deeply inscribed into national memory. Nguyen’s elegant prose is at once deeply personal, sweepingly panoramic, and hauntingly evocative.”—Ari Kelman, author of A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek“Beautifully written, powerfully argued, thoughtful, provocative.”—Marilyn B. Young, author of The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990
Related Links
- Read a Los Angeles Times profile of Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Read a New York Times profile of Nguyen
- Read Newsweek’s profile of Nguyen, featuring a brief video interview with the author
- Listen to Nguyen’s interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross and, on WNYC’s The Takeaway, discussion of how America considers Vietnam (and vice-versa)
- In Time Magazine, read Nguyen on the immigrant’s critical role in creating and re-creating America
- In the New York Times, read Nguyen’s thoughts on the appointment of Bob Kerrey as chairman of the American-sponsored Fulbright University Vietnam, the country’s first private university
- Read an Asia Society interview with Nguyen on U.S.–Vietnam relations, past and present, political and cultural
- On KQED’s Forum, listen to Nguyen talk with Michael Krasny about the “American Dream” versus the “American Nightmare” and how his writing reflects his own experiences of marginalization and resistance
- Read Literary Hub’s interview with Nguyen about Nothing Ever Dies, his 2016 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Sympathizer, and how to broaden the way Americans think about Vietnam
- Read a Los Angeles Review of Books interview with Nguyen
- Read excerpts from Nothing Ever Dies at The American Scholar and Literary Hub
- Read a Bustle profile of Nguyen
- Read discussions with Nguyen in the Daily Progress (Charlottesville, VA) and the Santa Cruz Sentinel
- Visit Nguyen’s website
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