The Sympathizer (1)

I'm yet to watch a single minute of the telly version of Professor Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer.

I'm tempted though — Robert Downey Jr and all that —u but there's a lingering mystery for me surrounding how this novel was deemed suitable for adaptation, as the story is really the least interesting thing about it.

Almost all the excitement comes from the constant stream of set-piece observations by its narrator, resulting in something that could handily stand in for a dictionary of quotations or aphorisms. 

 

I suppose the screenwriters can put some of these into the character's mouth, but unless one is Oscar Wilde it's relatively hard to set up dialogue as an exchange of epithets and the trouble here is that only 'The Captain' seems to be doing it, so how much voiceover is there? 

 

I shall I have to find out, I guess, but meanwhile I am going to dump a few of my favourites here, in several batches. Herewith, the first...

 

No one could make a guilty pleasure like the French.

 

If youth was not wasted, how could it be youth? 

 

Wars never die, I said. They just go to sleep. 

 

I had forgotten something, but what that something was, I did not know. Of the three types of forgetting, this was the worst. 

 

Country music was not necessarily lynching music, but no other music could be imagined as lynching’s accompaniment.

 

I always assume a man is at least a latent homosexual until proven otherwise.

 

In negotiations, as in interrogations, a lie was not only acceptable but also expected. All sorts of situations exist where one tells lies in order to reach an acceptable truth.

 

Isn’t it funny that in a society that values freedom above all things, things that are free are not valued? 

 

One could choose between innocence and experience, but one could not have both.

 

I naively believed that I could divert the Hollywood organism from its goal, the simultaneous lobotomization and pickpocketing of the world’s audiences.

 

Every full bottle of alcohol has a message in it, a surprise that one will not discover until one drinks it. 

 

I pitied the French for their naïveté in believing they had to visit a country in order to exploit it. 

 

The proper way to approach a prostitute is to adapt the attitude of a theatergoer, sitting back and suspending disbelief for the duration of the show.

 

Every man should have a false bottom in his luggage.

 

A talent is something you use, not something that uses you.

 

Amnesia was as American as apple pie, and it was much preferred by Americans over both humble pie and the fraught foods of foreign intruders.

It is always better to admire the best among our foes rather than the worst among our friends. 

 

The mall was bordered by an example of America’s most unique architectural contribution to the world, a parking lot. 

 

Like rolling one’s own cigarettes, or rolling one’s R’s, lying was a skill and a habit not easily forgotten.

 

Vodka was one of the three things the Soviet Union made that were suitable for export, not counting political exiles; the other two were weapons and novels.

 

Disarming an idealist was easy. One only needed to ask why the idealist was not on the front line of the particular battle he had chosen.

 

After all, nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was wielding that gun to take away someone else’s freedom and independence. 

 

And, a slightly longer one...

 

Americans are a confused people because they can’t admit this contradiction. They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent. You can’t have both. You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence. The problem is that those who insist on their innocence believe anything they do is just.

 

More to come...