Page 4 - Boca ViewPointe - May '21

Page 4, Viewpointe May 2021

Book Review

Politics and Academia: Bloody of one of his blood brothers, an editor who maintains a

Machismo and Menstrual salon in Paris for Vietnamese expatriates and intellectuals;
he gives her an early peek at his Confession. Here he is
Bleeding also reunited with another survivor, the Boss, a Chinese
expatriate from Vietnam who has reinvented himself as
Viet Thanh Nguyen. The Committed. New York: Grove successful capitalist. Vo and Bon now undertake the lives
Press. 2021. on the lower strata of society. In his first twenty- four hours,
Christine Smallwood. The Life of the Mind. New York: he is forced to clean a fetid toilet in the Delights of Asia
Hogarth, 2021. restaurant that employs him, and then undertake a mission
“Misery acquaints a man [and woman] with strange for the Boss to punish a recalcitrant debtor. The traumas of
bedfellows.” Shakespeare their lives have left Bo psychologically with loss of voice
“and there will be blood. . .” Exodus 7:19 and Vo with a poor sense of self-esteem or an identity of
two minds, with several implications, Oriental and Western,
By Dr. Ronald J. Meyers Communist and Capitalist, spy and revolutionary, and
perhaps bi-polar, manic depressive as well.
The V ietnamese indoctrinated to him in the lycee school that he attended The author Viet Thanh Nguyen currently lives in
expatriate Viet Thanh where incidentally his father now served as his teacher California and teaches writing at USC and here can be said
Nguyen has written a and principal. Bon for his part bore witness to his own to represent disillusionment with virtually all political views.
sequel to his harrowing father’s execution by the Viet Cong, and later lost his His hero is a double agent who served as an anti-communist
and well received account wife and son, also to the Communists as they sought to spy until he was arrested and subjected to re-education in the
of the life of an immigrant flee Saigon in the last hours of the South Vietnam regime. gulags of Vietnam and then was sent to study in America. His
in The Sympathizer. This The difference between the two companions was that Bon American life figures in flashbacks, during which he courted
novel takes the form of a remains an implacable hater of Communism while Vo Lana, the daughter of his handler, the General, and also
Confession by the perished sees Communism as just another example of oppression where he likely became acquainted with gangster authors
hero Vo Danh, with ink in the long history of his country’s oppressors. like Dashiell Hammett, Elmore Leonard and Mario Puzo. In
derived from the wounds of two shots to his brain by his After the prologue which describes the flight of Boat another flashback, Vo returns to Vietnam as an officer with
blood brother. The events of The Committed deal with the people, the novel treats Vo and Bon’s life in Paris during
plight of the individuals left behind after the ignominious the 1980’s where Vo seeks out his Aunt, actually a relation Book Review on page 5
withdrawal of America from Vietnam, April 1975. Bon,
blood brother and Vo a.k.a. Camus, Crazy Bastard, fled
as Boat persons after undergoing cruel indoctrination by
the Communists, under the auspices of another blood Board Of Directors
brother, named Man, in the Pulan Galang re-education
camp. Their Catholic families originally had fled the
north when it fell to Ho Chi Minh and the Communist, April 2019 – April 2020 Officers/Executive Committee
and they were supportive of the South Vietnamese
regime which tolerated and supported freedom of Chairman and President Barry J. Haberman District 5 Dan Gabrielle (La Corniche)
observance of the Catholic religion. Vo was the child of Vice Chair Steve Retzer Esplanada, Caravelle, Palomar, La Corniche,
miscegenation between a French soldier and a Vietnamese Vice President Gail Ehrlich and El Dorado
peasant; he was raised with a patriotic reverence for his 2nd Vice President Jim Collins District 6 Marvin Lazarowitz (Villa Stel)

Villa Flora, Montego Bay, Villa Stel, and Palladium
homeland but a strong identification with French culture Secretary Steve King
Treasurer Harvey Kaplan District 7 Joyce Britt (Villa Sonrisa)
The Plum/Cortina, Villa Sonrisa and Pointe 100
District Directors District 8 Len Kagan (Costa del Sol)
District 1 Costa del Sol and Costa Brava
Encantada, Valencia and The Palms District 9 Robin Gliboff (Edgewater)
District 2 Steve King (Imperial Royale) Edgewater Pointe Estates and Stratford Court
Promenade, Imperial Royale, Imperial, Regency
and Panaché At Large Directors At Large Directors
District 3 Steve Retzer (La Mirada) Through 2020 Through 2021
La Mirada and Meridiana Carsten Bethge (Valencia) Howard Davis (La Corniche)
District 4 Bob Greenstein (La Paz) Jim Collins (Caravelle) Gail Ehrlich (Villa Flora)
El Viento, La Paz, and Southwinds Harvey Kaplan (Meridiana) Barry J. Haberman (Encantada)

Norbert Graber, R. Ph.
and Lynn Graber, R. Ph.

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