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A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
The Vietnam War continues to play itself out in fiction, autobiography, and history books, but no American author has captured the experiences of the Vietnamese themselves--and caught their voices--more tellingly than Robert Olen Butler, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain. The 15 stories collected here, all written in the first person, blend Vietnamese folklore, the terrible, lingering memories of war, American pop culture and family drama. Butler's literary ventriloquism, as he mines the experiences of a people with a great literary tradition of their own, is uncanny; but his talents as a writer of universal truths is what makes this a collection for the ages.
290 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1992
475 people are currently reading
18605 people want to read
About the author
Robert Olen Butler
86 books454 followers“I’ll never stop believing it: Robert Olen Butler is the best living American writer, period.”
– Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels—The Alleys of Eden, Sun Dogs, Countrymen of Bones, On Distant Ground, Wabash, The Deuce, They Whisper, The Deep Green Sea, Mr. Spaceman, Fair Warning, Hell, A Small Hotel, The Hot Country, The Star of Istanbul, The Empire of Night, Perfume River—and six volumes of short fiction—Tabloid Dreams, Had a Good Time, Severance, Intercourse, Weegee Stories, and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Butler has published a volume of his lectures on the creative process, From Where You Dream, edited with an introduction by Janet Burroway.
In 2013 he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. He has also received both a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His stories have appeared widely in such publications as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, The Paris Review, Granta, The Hudson Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and The Sewanee Review. They have been chosen for inclusion in four annual editions of The Best American Short Stories, eight annual editions of New Stories from the South, several other major annual anthologies, and numerous college literature textbooks from such publishers as Simon & Schuster, Norton, Viking, Little Brown & Co., Houghton Mifflin, Oxford University Press, Prentice Hall, and Bedford/St.Martin and most recently in The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, edited by Richard Ford.
His works have been translated into twenty-one languages, including Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Polish, Japanese, Serbian, Farsi, Czech, Estonian, Greek, and most recently Chinese. He was also a charter recipient of the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award given by the Vietnam Veterans of America for “outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran.” Over the past two decades he has lectured in universities, appeared at conferences, and met with writers groups in 17 countries as a literary envoy for the U. S. State Department.
He is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. Under the auspices of the FSU website, in the fall of 2001, he did something no other writer has ever done, before or since: he revealed his writing process in full, in real time, in a webcast that observed him in seventeen two-hour sessions write a literary short story from its first inspiration to its final polished form. He also gave a running commentary on his artistic choices and spent a half-hour in each episode answering the emailed questions of his live viewers. The whole series, under the title “Inside Creative Writing” is a very popular on YouTube, with its first two-hour episode passing 125,000 in the spring of 2016.
For more than a decade he was hired to write feature-length screenplays for New Regency, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney, Universal Pictures, Baldwin Entertainment Group (for Robert Redford), and two teleplays for HBO. Typical of Hollywood, none of these movies ever made it to the screen.
Reflecting his early training as an actor, he has also recorded the audio books for four of his works—A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Hell, A Small Hotel and Perfume River. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree from the State University of New York system. He lives in Florida, with his wife, the poet Kelly Lee Butler.
– Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels—The Alleys of Eden, Sun Dogs, Countrymen of Bones, On Distant Ground, Wabash, The Deuce, They Whisper, The Deep Green Sea, Mr. Spaceman, Fair Warning, Hell, A Small Hotel, The Hot Country, The Star of Istanbul, The Empire of Night, Perfume River—and six volumes of short fiction—Tabloid Dreams, Had a Good Time, Severance, Intercourse, Weegee Stories, and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Butler has published a volume of his lectures on the creative process, From Where You Dream, edited with an introduction by Janet Burroway.
In 2013 he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. He has also received both a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His stories have appeared widely in such publications as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, The Paris Review, Granta, The Hudson Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and The Sewanee Review. They have been chosen for inclusion in four annual editions of The Best American Short Stories, eight annual editions of New Stories from the South, several other major annual anthologies, and numerous college literature textbooks from such publishers as Simon & Schuster, Norton, Viking, Little Brown & Co., Houghton Mifflin, Oxford University Press, Prentice Hall, and Bedford/St.Martin and most recently in The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, edited by Richard Ford.
His works have been translated into twenty-one languages, including Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Polish, Japanese, Serbian, Farsi, Czech, Estonian, Greek, and most recently Chinese. He was also a charter recipient of the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award given by the Vietnam Veterans of America for “outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran.” Over the past two decades he has lectured in universities, appeared at conferences, and met with writers groups in 17 countries as a literary envoy for the U. S. State Department.
He is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. Under the auspices of the FSU website, in the fall of 2001, he did something no other writer has ever done, before or since: he revealed his writing process in full, in real time, in a webcast that observed him in seventeen two-hour sessions write a literary short story from its first inspiration to its final polished form. He also gave a running commentary on his artistic choices and spent a half-hour in each episode answering the emailed questions of his live viewers. The whole series, under the title “Inside Creative Writing” is a very popular on YouTube, with its first two-hour episode passing 125,000 in the spring of 2016.
For more than a decade he was hired to write feature-length screenplays for New Regency, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney, Universal Pictures, Baldwin Entertainment Group (for Robert Redford), and two teleplays for HBO. Typical of Hollywood, none of these movies ever made it to the screen.
Reflecting his early training as an actor, he has also recorded the audio books for four of his works—A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Hell, A Small Hotel and Perfume River. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree from the State University of New York system. He lives in Florida, with his wife, the poet Kelly Lee Butler.
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September 3, 2025
DA CIÒ CHE SCOPRIRÒ OGGI DIPENDERÀ IL MIO DOMANI, COME GIÀ È STATO PER IERI
Edward Hopper: Summer Evening (1947).
A New Orleans, nello stato di Louisiana, come ricordato dal titolo italiano (quello originale è invece Un buon profumo da una strana montagna, titolo di uno degli ultimi racconti, dove entra in scena, nel modo più inaspettato e insolito, perfino Hồ Chí Minh), c’è a sud un quartiere che si chiama Westbank dove vive un folto gruppo di vietnamiti del Sud:
Se attraversate il ponte per entrare in città, prendete l’interstatale in direzione nord e poi vi immettete su una superstrada che porta il nome di uno chef, arriverete in un posto chiamato Versailles. Lì troverete i vietnamiti del Nord. Lì a Versailles sono cattolici. Io sono buddhista. Ma tutto ciò che so della vita l’ho imparato da un comunista in una buia sera nella provincia di Phước Tuy, nella Repubblica del Vietnam del Sud.
E da qui parte il racconto, il primo del libro, portato avanti da un io narrante, una delle tante prima persona singolare, una per ciascun racconto, diciassette perle qui raccolte, che hanno portato al loro autore un premio Pulitzer (1993) e che regalano momenti splendidi, struggenti, emozionanti, avvolti nella delicatezza.
Delicatezza che sa come si pronuncia in vietnamita, lingua che qui si apprende non essere fatta per i sordi in quanto:
Dovete sapere una cosa sulla lingua vietnamita. Il significato delle parole è dato dal tono di voce che usiamo nel pronunciarle: il suono è importante, ma è altrettanto importante ciò che fa la voce, se sale o se scende, se resta uguale, se si arrotola o ti sale dritta dalla gola, molto tesa. Tutto questo modifica il significato delle parole, a volte totalmente.
Lo statuto del premio Pulitzer dice che la preferenza deve essere data a libri che parlano della vita e della cultura americane.
E quindi queste diciassette voci vietnamite, questi diciassette io-narrante, a volte uomini a volte donne, giovani e vecchi, bambini e centenari, che raccontano in una perfetta fusione di passato e presente il loro Vietnam, quella guerra diventata così famosa, spartiacque, che raccontano fantasmi o ombre, raccontano la loro fuga o la loro partenza, il loro arrivo o il loro approdo, le difficoltà o il loro inserimento, lo sradicamento, il loro odierno Vietnam americano nello stato della Louisiana, in quell’incrocio pazzesco di culture che è New Orleans, sono state giudicate attinenti e vibranti voci della vita e della cultura americane.
Versailles, USA.
E in fondo le risaie stanno bene anche in Louisiana e il bayou ricorda il delta del Mekong. E anche se i vietnamiti di New Orleans si portano dietro i vestiti tradizionali, a cominciare dagli aó dài femminili, e gli altarini, i buddha, la vicinanza col mondo di spiriti fantasmi e ombre, l’incenso e le spezie, sanno e vogliono integrarsi, far parte della comunità della nuova terra d’accoglienza.
Mantenendosi sempre lontano dall’esotico e dal folklore, poggiando su un linguaggio piano e scorrevole, senza mai lasciarsi scivolare verso forme di lirismo, direi che più di una volta il racconto diventa poesia.
Tutti e diciassette i narratori dei racconti sono creature del mio inconscio ha affermato Butler.
E qualcosa, da qualche parte, conduce a una specie di Spoon River. Questi magnifici diciassette racconti parlano di tutti. Siamo tutti vietnamiti.
Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam, ci siamo stati tutti insegna Michael Herr nel suo capolavoro Dispacci.
Il mercatino dei coltivatori allestito all’alba di ogni sabato a Versailles.
Edward Hopper: Summer Evening (1947).
A New Orleans, nello stato di Louisiana, come ricordato dal titolo italiano (quello originale è invece Un buon profumo da una strana montagna, titolo di uno degli ultimi racconti, dove entra in scena, nel modo più inaspettato e insolito, perfino Hồ Chí Minh), c’è a sud un quartiere che si chiama Westbank dove vive un folto gruppo di vietnamiti del Sud:
Se attraversate il ponte per entrare in città, prendete l’interstatale in direzione nord e poi vi immettete su una superstrada che porta il nome di uno chef, arriverete in un posto chiamato Versailles. Lì troverete i vietnamiti del Nord. Lì a Versailles sono cattolici. Io sono buddhista. Ma tutto ciò che so della vita l’ho imparato da un comunista in una buia sera nella provincia di Phước Tuy, nella Repubblica del Vietnam del Sud.
E da qui parte il racconto, il primo del libro, portato avanti da un io narrante, una delle tante prima persona singolare, una per ciascun racconto, diciassette perle qui raccolte, che hanno portato al loro autore un premio Pulitzer (1993) e che regalano momenti splendidi, struggenti, emozionanti, avvolti nella delicatezza.
Delicatezza che sa come si pronuncia in vietnamita, lingua che qui si apprende non essere fatta per i sordi in quanto:
Dovete sapere una cosa sulla lingua vietnamita. Il significato delle parole è dato dal tono di voce che usiamo nel pronunciarle: il suono è importante, ma è altrettanto importante ciò che fa la voce, se sale o se scende, se resta uguale, se si arrotola o ti sale dritta dalla gola, molto tesa. Tutto questo modifica il significato delle parole, a volte totalmente.
Lo statuto del premio Pulitzer dice che la preferenza deve essere data a libri che parlano della vita e della cultura americane.
E quindi queste diciassette voci vietnamite, questi diciassette io-narrante, a volte uomini a volte donne, giovani e vecchi, bambini e centenari, che raccontano in una perfetta fusione di passato e presente il loro Vietnam, quella guerra diventata così famosa, spartiacque, che raccontano fantasmi o ombre, raccontano la loro fuga o la loro partenza, il loro arrivo o il loro approdo, le difficoltà o il loro inserimento, lo sradicamento, il loro odierno Vietnam americano nello stato della Louisiana, in quell’incrocio pazzesco di culture che è New Orleans, sono state giudicate attinenti e vibranti voci della vita e della cultura americane.
Versailles, USA.
E in fondo le risaie stanno bene anche in Louisiana e il bayou ricorda il delta del Mekong. E anche se i vietnamiti di New Orleans si portano dietro i vestiti tradizionali, a cominciare dagli aó dài femminili, e gli altarini, i buddha, la vicinanza col mondo di spiriti fantasmi e ombre, l’incenso e le spezie, sanno e vogliono integrarsi, far parte della comunità della nuova terra d’accoglienza.
Mantenendosi sempre lontano dall’esotico e dal folklore, poggiando su un linguaggio piano e scorrevole, senza mai lasciarsi scivolare verso forme di lirismo, direi che più di una volta il racconto diventa poesia.
Tutti e diciassette i narratori dei racconti sono creature del mio inconscio ha affermato Butler.
E qualcosa, da qualche parte, conduce a una specie di Spoon River. Questi magnifici diciassette racconti parlano di tutti. Siamo tutti vietnamiti.
Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam, ci siamo stati tutti insegna Michael Herr nel suo capolavoro Dispacci.
Il mercatino dei coltivatori allestito all’alba di ogni sabato a Versailles.
October 15, 2025
Vietnamese people are not less inteligent. Why does the author make them sound like that, especially when they speak their own language. I understand you make them use simple sentences when they talk English, which is not their mother tongue, but why do they talk the same when they speak or think in Vietnamese, a language they are supposed to be fluent in . Another reviewer said that he felt he was reading a bad translation instead of a work written in English. I agree.
Most of the stories are about Vietnamese who left their country after the War and settled around New Orleans. I read better books about the War.
Most of the stories are about Vietnamese who left their country after the War and settled around New Orleans. I read better books about the War.
November 2, 2020
Exemplary short story collection! Have not been moved this way since Jhumpa Lahiri's (also Pulitzer Prize-winning) "Interpreter of Maladies."
CANNOT POSSIBLY BE MISSED by any serious student of the Short Story or modern American literature. A late night top-notch Scotch... or an aroma that arrives at you with an intimate immediacy.
CANNOT POSSIBLY BE MISSED by any serious student of the Short Story or modern American literature. A late night top-notch Scotch... or an aroma that arrives at you with an intimate immediacy.
February 21, 2013
Robert Olen Butler served in Vietnam 1969 to 1971 - first as a counter-intelligence agent, and then as a translator. In an interview he remembers the time he spent in the country:
The army got me coming out of the University of Iowa, but they sent me to language school for a year before I went over. I spoke fluently from my first day there. And then I did work in intelligence for five months out in the countryside. I loved Vietnam and I loved the culture and I loved the people, I mean instantly. And had access to all of that in most ways other outsiders didn’t. I had contacts with woodcutters and farmers and fishermen and provincial police chiefs and so forth and then, this was in 1971, the unit stood down. Some units were starting to go home at that point. I got transferred to Saigon where I worked as a translator and administrative assistant for an American Foreign Service officer who was an advisor to the mayor of Saigon. So it was a civilian-clothes job. I lived in an old French hotel and I worked at Saigon city hall. But every night I would go out after midnight and wander alone into the steamy back alleys of Saigon where nobody ever seemed to sleep. I’d crouch in the doorways with people and talk to them. The Vietnamese people are perhaps the warmest, most generous spirit-people in the world, and they invited me into their houses, and into their culture, and into their lives. And of course, that shaped me as an artist.
After the return to the U.S. he wrote stories, which were accepted and published by various literary journals, such as The Southern Review, The Hudson Review and New England Review. The reviews were good, too - some of the stories got reprinted in a volume of The Best American Short Stories, and in 1987 Butler received the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award from the Vietnam Veterans of America for outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran. he received broad recognition in 1993, when a collection of these stories - published a year before and titled A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Many novels have been written about the Vietnam War - both by American and Vietnamese authors - but here the concept is new: Butler gives voice to the Vietnamese refugees to America, who have settled in southern Louisiana - near New Orleans. These stories explore the immigrant experience - the contrast between the immigrants and Americans, and the two countries - Vietnam and the United States - with their vastly different cultures and customs; the distant Far East is contrasted the definition of the West. Each of the stories is narrated in the first person by a different Vietnamese immigrant, and all are filled with a sense of longing and nostalgia for their past lives - their country with its natural beauty and way of life, specific places and moments, the friends and relatives they had to leave behind. The Grove reissue contains two additional stories - Salem and Missing - which are set in post-war Vietnam, and form a neat narrative coda.
The Vietnam War ended in 1975, after the fall of Saigon, forcing more than three million Vietnamese to flee for safety - hundreds of thousands dying in the process of often dangerous crossing. The majority - around 1,4 million - settled in the United States. These refugees found themselves in a peculiar situation - their old country was taken away from them and transformed into something different, and the new country proved to be completely different, too. Like Tom Hank's character in The Terminal, they can't go home - and struggle to live in the new environment. Some stay together in hopes of preserving their heritage and culture, while others openly want to shed it. There are other Vietnamese here in Lake Charles, Louisiana - the protagonist of Snow remarks - but we are not a community. We are all too sad, perhaps, or too tired. But maybe not. Maybe that's just me saying that. Maybe the others are real Americans already.
In Crickets, the Vietnamese man and his wife had a hard time adapting to American culture and life. Their American-born son adapted easily and shows little interest in Vietnamese language and culture, making his father think of a childhood game as a way of becoming closer to the boy. In Relic, a Vietnamese man sees America as a land of opportunity. He wishes to break away from the Vietnamese community but his business depends on it. He feels that the other Vietnamese are preventing him from becoming fully American and more succesful. The relic of the title is a shoe that was supposedly worn by John Lennon when he was shot to death. The man sees the shoe as a symbol of America, and longs to own the other shoe so his collection can be complete, and he can be complete as a person, an American person. But even he lives in the past: he remembes the wife he left in Vietnam, who did not want to abandon her country and chose to stay there with their children, but expresses no desire to return to them; he wishes to get away from the Vietnamese community as he feels that it drags him back to Vietnam, and become a part of the American community, pursue his own American Dream and estabilish his own identity in his new country.
Butler's Vietnamese characters are unique, with their own quirks and distinctive characteristics. In Love a jealous husband used to bring doom on his wife's suitors in Vietnam, and struggles to do the same in the U.S.; he journeys to New Orleans to search for a voodoo master who will put a curse on the man whom he suspects she is having an affair. Letters from my Father is narrated by a Vietnamese girl, who has grown up without her American father, and with whom she is having a difficult and distant relationship. She discovers a stack of his old letters to the U.S. government, where he writes with fury and longing, demanding his daughter be allowed entrance to the U.S. and accusing the government of deliberately keeping them separate for years, arguing that if she was white they would welcome her with open arms. In The Trip Back a Vietnamese woman eagerly awaits to be reunited with her grandfather, and has been arranging for him to live in the U.S. for years. He is finally allowed to immigrate to America and her husband drives to pick him up from the airport. There he discovers that the elderly man has gone senile, and lives so deeply in the past that he is able to remember the color and smell of the South China Sea, but has no recollection of his granddaughter, who loves him deeply. Her husband fears that he too will become like the old man, unable to remember both his homeland and his wife.
Mr. Green is narrated by a Vietnamese woman, who remembers her grandfather. The story touches on the theme of subjugation of women in Vietnamese society before and during the war, with the grandfather telling her that she can't pray for the souls of her ancestors because she is a female. She came to the U.S. with his parrot, Mr.Green, whose favorite saying is "not possible", and tries to find her identity in a society experiencing the sexual revolution and second-wave feminism, coping wit the feelings of love and obligation, resentment and death.
Fairy Tale is an all-American tale of succes, and seems to be written to spite critics accusing the author of putting on a yellowface and exploiting Asian characters - it's an unbearably cliched story of a Miss Noi (as in Hanoi without the Ha), a Vietnamese prostitute who works as a stripper in a New Orleans bar and meets a G.I. who asks her out. It's almost ridiculously stereotypical and predictable, but very consciously so - it's very self-aware of all its flaws, and by this it turns them into its advantages. It's also full of humor, employing the peculiar feature of the Vietnamese language where the meaning of the word depends on how it is said - one man wants to woo Miss Noi by trying to say "May Vietnam live for ten thousand years" in Vietnamese, but what he says - very clearly - is "The sunburnt duck is lying down".
These stories also employ elements of mysticism and Vietnamese folklore, such as the beautiful Mid-Autumn, where an expectant mother tells a fairy tale to her unborn child, about the emperor who went to the moon and found happiness there, remembering her lover who died in Vietnam. In the title story a dying man is visited by the ghost of Ho Chi Minh, with whom he has worked as a youth; Ho confessess to his friend that he is not at peace, and political tensions between the Vietnamese Americans play in the background. A Ghost Story is a story which the narrator claims to be true, about the ghost of a beautiful Vietnamese woman, Miss Linh, who saved his acquaintance from a disaster. When he found her again to thank her, she devoured him alive. The man telling the story also has seen the woman two times, and although she spared his life he is also devoured - by a ghost of a whole country, which continues to torment him in his new American life. In America he is a ghost, riding the Greyhound in an attempt to escape his demons. The last two stories Salem and Missing are narrated by two soldiers, Vietnamese and American, who stay in the country. Salem comes from the pack of cigarettes that the Vietnamese soldier finds on a body of an American GI that he has killed - along with the picture of his girlfriend, and Missing is the only story in the collection narrated by an American. It's a reversal of the theme of Vietnamese immigrants trying to live in American society - here an American is trying to live among the Vietnamese in their country and culture The narrator is a U.S. soldier who has stayed in Vietnam after the war and married a Vietnamese girl, and together they raise their daughter. He has been living in a village with his family in peace for a long time, until one day someone brings an American newspaper which has a photo of him taken from a distance, recognizing him as one of the soldiers who went MIA and implying that he needs help to be brought back from Vietnam to America. But the narrator thinks differently - "I'm not missing. I'm here", he says, and he feels it - he is in his village, with his people and family.
The stories in this collection are written with care and compassion, giving voice to those who are largely unheard in this particular branch of fiction. It is remarkable that such a deeply felt and personal book about Vietnamese immigrants would be written by a white American - which is only a testament to the author's respect and admiration for the people he met in Vietnam, and who moved him to write these stories. They are beautifully written, full of honesty and compassion, without pretension. Different voices of these stories come together in this remarkable collection - a worthy winner of the Pulitzer, which I am very happy to have discovered and will gladly return in the future.
The army got me coming out of the University of Iowa, but they sent me to language school for a year before I went over. I spoke fluently from my first day there. And then I did work in intelligence for five months out in the countryside. I loved Vietnam and I loved the culture and I loved the people, I mean instantly. And had access to all of that in most ways other outsiders didn’t. I had contacts with woodcutters and farmers and fishermen and provincial police chiefs and so forth and then, this was in 1971, the unit stood down. Some units were starting to go home at that point. I got transferred to Saigon where I worked as a translator and administrative assistant for an American Foreign Service officer who was an advisor to the mayor of Saigon. So it was a civilian-clothes job. I lived in an old French hotel and I worked at Saigon city hall. But every night I would go out after midnight and wander alone into the steamy back alleys of Saigon where nobody ever seemed to sleep. I’d crouch in the doorways with people and talk to them. The Vietnamese people are perhaps the warmest, most generous spirit-people in the world, and they invited me into their houses, and into their culture, and into their lives. And of course, that shaped me as an artist.
After the return to the U.S. he wrote stories, which were accepted and published by various literary journals, such as The Southern Review, The Hudson Review and New England Review. The reviews were good, too - some of the stories got reprinted in a volume of The Best American Short Stories, and in 1987 Butler received the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award from the Vietnam Veterans of America for outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran. he received broad recognition in 1993, when a collection of these stories - published a year before and titled A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Many novels have been written about the Vietnam War - both by American and Vietnamese authors - but here the concept is new: Butler gives voice to the Vietnamese refugees to America, who have settled in southern Louisiana - near New Orleans. These stories explore the immigrant experience - the contrast between the immigrants and Americans, and the two countries - Vietnam and the United States - with their vastly different cultures and customs; the distant Far East is contrasted the definition of the West. Each of the stories is narrated in the first person by a different Vietnamese immigrant, and all are filled with a sense of longing and nostalgia for their past lives - their country with its natural beauty and way of life, specific places and moments, the friends and relatives they had to leave behind. The Grove reissue contains two additional stories - Salem and Missing - which are set in post-war Vietnam, and form a neat narrative coda.
The Vietnam War ended in 1975, after the fall of Saigon, forcing more than three million Vietnamese to flee for safety - hundreds of thousands dying in the process of often dangerous crossing. The majority - around 1,4 million - settled in the United States. These refugees found themselves in a peculiar situation - their old country was taken away from them and transformed into something different, and the new country proved to be completely different, too. Like Tom Hank's character in The Terminal, they can't go home - and struggle to live in the new environment. Some stay together in hopes of preserving their heritage and culture, while others openly want to shed it. There are other Vietnamese here in Lake Charles, Louisiana - the protagonist of Snow remarks - but we are not a community. We are all too sad, perhaps, or too tired. But maybe not. Maybe that's just me saying that. Maybe the others are real Americans already.
In Crickets, the Vietnamese man and his wife had a hard time adapting to American culture and life. Their American-born son adapted easily and shows little interest in Vietnamese language and culture, making his father think of a childhood game as a way of becoming closer to the boy. In Relic, a Vietnamese man sees America as a land of opportunity. He wishes to break away from the Vietnamese community but his business depends on it. He feels that the other Vietnamese are preventing him from becoming fully American and more succesful. The relic of the title is a shoe that was supposedly worn by John Lennon when he was shot to death. The man sees the shoe as a symbol of America, and longs to own the other shoe so his collection can be complete, and he can be complete as a person, an American person. But even he lives in the past: he remembes the wife he left in Vietnam, who did not want to abandon her country and chose to stay there with their children, but expresses no desire to return to them; he wishes to get away from the Vietnamese community as he feels that it drags him back to Vietnam, and become a part of the American community, pursue his own American Dream and estabilish his own identity in his new country.
Butler's Vietnamese characters are unique, with their own quirks and distinctive characteristics. In Love a jealous husband used to bring doom on his wife's suitors in Vietnam, and struggles to do the same in the U.S.; he journeys to New Orleans to search for a voodoo master who will put a curse on the man whom he suspects she is having an affair. Letters from my Father is narrated by a Vietnamese girl, who has grown up without her American father, and with whom she is having a difficult and distant relationship. She discovers a stack of his old letters to the U.S. government, where he writes with fury and longing, demanding his daughter be allowed entrance to the U.S. and accusing the government of deliberately keeping them separate for years, arguing that if she was white they would welcome her with open arms. In The Trip Back a Vietnamese woman eagerly awaits to be reunited with her grandfather, and has been arranging for him to live in the U.S. for years. He is finally allowed to immigrate to America and her husband drives to pick him up from the airport. There he discovers that the elderly man has gone senile, and lives so deeply in the past that he is able to remember the color and smell of the South China Sea, but has no recollection of his granddaughter, who loves him deeply. Her husband fears that he too will become like the old man, unable to remember both his homeland and his wife.
Mr. Green is narrated by a Vietnamese woman, who remembers her grandfather. The story touches on the theme of subjugation of women in Vietnamese society before and during the war, with the grandfather telling her that she can't pray for the souls of her ancestors because she is a female. She came to the U.S. with his parrot, Mr.Green, whose favorite saying is "not possible", and tries to find her identity in a society experiencing the sexual revolution and second-wave feminism, coping wit the feelings of love and obligation, resentment and death.
Fairy Tale is an all-American tale of succes, and seems to be written to spite critics accusing the author of putting on a yellowface and exploiting Asian characters - it's an unbearably cliched story of a Miss Noi (as in Hanoi without the Ha), a Vietnamese prostitute who works as a stripper in a New Orleans bar and meets a G.I. who asks her out. It's almost ridiculously stereotypical and predictable, but very consciously so - it's very self-aware of all its flaws, and by this it turns them into its advantages. It's also full of humor, employing the peculiar feature of the Vietnamese language where the meaning of the word depends on how it is said - one man wants to woo Miss Noi by trying to say "May Vietnam live for ten thousand years" in Vietnamese, but what he says - very clearly - is "The sunburnt duck is lying down".
These stories also employ elements of mysticism and Vietnamese folklore, such as the beautiful Mid-Autumn, where an expectant mother tells a fairy tale to her unborn child, about the emperor who went to the moon and found happiness there, remembering her lover who died in Vietnam. In the title story a dying man is visited by the ghost of Ho Chi Minh, with whom he has worked as a youth; Ho confessess to his friend that he is not at peace, and political tensions between the Vietnamese Americans play in the background. A Ghost Story is a story which the narrator claims to be true, about the ghost of a beautiful Vietnamese woman, Miss Linh, who saved his acquaintance from a disaster. When he found her again to thank her, she devoured him alive. The man telling the story also has seen the woman two times, and although she spared his life he is also devoured - by a ghost of a whole country, which continues to torment him in his new American life. In America he is a ghost, riding the Greyhound in an attempt to escape his demons. The last two stories Salem and Missing are narrated by two soldiers, Vietnamese and American, who stay in the country. Salem comes from the pack of cigarettes that the Vietnamese soldier finds on a body of an American GI that he has killed - along with the picture of his girlfriend, and Missing is the only story in the collection narrated by an American. It's a reversal of the theme of Vietnamese immigrants trying to live in American society - here an American is trying to live among the Vietnamese in their country and culture The narrator is a U.S. soldier who has stayed in Vietnam after the war and married a Vietnamese girl, and together they raise their daughter. He has been living in a village with his family in peace for a long time, until one day someone brings an American newspaper which has a photo of him taken from a distance, recognizing him as one of the soldiers who went MIA and implying that he needs help to be brought back from Vietnam to America. But the narrator thinks differently - "I'm not missing. I'm here", he says, and he feels it - he is in his village, with his people and family.
The stories in this collection are written with care and compassion, giving voice to those who are largely unheard in this particular branch of fiction. It is remarkable that such a deeply felt and personal book about Vietnamese immigrants would be written by a white American - which is only a testament to the author's respect and admiration for the people he met in Vietnam, and who moved him to write these stories. They are beautifully written, full of honesty and compassion, without pretension. Different voices of these stories come together in this remarkable collection - a worthy winner of the Pulitzer, which I am very happy to have discovered and will gladly return in the future.
September 16, 2015
Even as the light purple hues of dusk shifted into night, I sat still, completing this book. Never mind that the only reading light I had was the dim glare of outdoor lighting because by then, I was transfixed. I had been transported to another world and I only realized this once those gigantic Southern bugs started to land on my page and I heard the faint whimper of my dog as she stared at me through the sliding glass doors—probably wondering what in the world I was doing sitting outdoors without her.
I had the great privilege to sit in on Butler's From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction seminar and now I see how his advice is indeed personal. In order to head back to the Vietnam of 1971, when he served as a Vietnamese linguist, he also had to transport himself from America, back to what must have been a dark time for him. I remember him telling a room full of students (paraphrasing this) that the test is not in the four hours that the writer goes back to this dreamlike state of imaginative trauma, rather, it is in how he or she manages to exist for the next twenty hours of real life, after he or she has revisited such a place.
Reading this 1993 Pulitzer-prize-winner, you get a sense that Butler wrote these stories from where he dreams.
Whenever a short-story collection adds a distinct checkmark to my reading experience, I often find myself flipping back through the pages with curiosity, closely examining each line just to understand the ‘how.’ It is in the bewitching voices of each Vietnamese character: young, old, male, female. Those first-person perspectives that drew me closer to each story. The haunting concoction of Vietnamese and American cultures. Butler took a huge risk when he decided to write about the challenges of the immigrant war survivor in America.
That night, I found myself in the mind of a Vietcong soldier, a Vietcong defector, an American MIA, and a Vietnamese refugee. With each convincing story and compelling voice of the narrator, I was transported to Vietnam and then back to America, to immigrant settlements in Louisiana: like Versailles and Lake Charles. When you read short-story collections often, it is thrilling whenever you run across a collection whose thematic appeal stands apart in this genre because you know that years later, if you you need to point to a collection that encompasses Vietnam in such a way, you will point to this one.
I had the great privilege to sit in on Butler's From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction seminar and now I see how his advice is indeed personal. In order to head back to the Vietnam of 1971, when he served as a Vietnamese linguist, he also had to transport himself from America, back to what must have been a dark time for him. I remember him telling a room full of students (paraphrasing this) that the test is not in the four hours that the writer goes back to this dreamlike state of imaginative trauma, rather, it is in how he or she manages to exist for the next twenty hours of real life, after he or she has revisited such a place.
Reading this 1993 Pulitzer-prize-winner, you get a sense that Butler wrote these stories from where he dreams.
Whenever a short-story collection adds a distinct checkmark to my reading experience, I often find myself flipping back through the pages with curiosity, closely examining each line just to understand the ‘how.’ It is in the bewitching voices of each Vietnamese character: young, old, male, female. Those first-person perspectives that drew me closer to each story. The haunting concoction of Vietnamese and American cultures. Butler took a huge risk when he decided to write about the challenges of the immigrant war survivor in America.
That night, I found myself in the mind of a Vietcong soldier, a Vietcong defector, an American MIA, and a Vietnamese refugee. With each convincing story and compelling voice of the narrator, I was transported to Vietnam and then back to America, to immigrant settlements in Louisiana: like Versailles and Lake Charles. When you read short-story collections often, it is thrilling whenever you run across a collection whose thematic appeal stands apart in this genre because you know that years later, if you you need to point to a collection that encompasses Vietnam in such a way, you will point to this one.
December 9, 2019
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain was a beautiful collection of short stories about Vietnamese refugees in America and the ghosts and closets in their pasts. I can see why it won the 1993 Pulitzer having also read Black Water which for me did not measure up and I doubt I will like the other runner-up, At Weddings and Wakes.
There are fifteen stories here which, all told in the first person, mostly alternate between male and female narrators. In the third story, "The Trip Back", the male narrator is taking a Mr. Chinh from the airport, fresh from Vietnam, to meet his granddaughter decades after she fled as a refugee. During the long drive from the airport, he reflects on his own status as a refugee: "But you must understand that ultimately this doesn't have anything to do with being a refugee in the United States. When I got to the two rivers again, Old and Lost, I could recognize the look of them, like a lake, but it was only my mind working." (p. 37). Needless to say, the grandfather is senile ('old and lost') and does not recognize his granddaughter...
In "Fairy Tale", a prostitute that has been shipwrecked by her GI boyfriend in New Orleans and working again on Bourbon Street, talks about the men: "I have many men say they were in my country and they always sound a little funny, like they have a nasty secret or a sickness that you should be careful not to catch. And sometimes they just call it "Nam," saying that word with broken glass in their voice or saying it through their noses and their noses wrinkle up like the word smells when it comes out." (p. 52). This particular story does have a happy ending. What it reminded me of though was that that generation of 'Nam vets is dying out, my step-father having been gone for over 15 years now, and yet I can still remember this very attitude of his towards the little he would divulge of his three years "over there." He was, to be honest, a rather despicable racist violent man, abusive of my mother (also recently passed away), but I sincerely did try to understand what he lived through. (See my thoughts in the review of Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam.)
There are a few more mystical stories such as "Relic" that were pleasant if haunting. In this story, the narrator has acquired, he believes anyway, one of the shoes that John Lennon wore on the morning he was assassinated in New York. "I wait until I can draw an adequate breath. Then I turn in my chair and gently lower the show to the floor and I place it before my bare right foot. I make the sign of the cross and slip my foot into John Lennon's shoe, sliding my forefinger into the loop at the back and pulling gently, just as John Lennon did on the day he joined the angels. (p. 142). I felt that the analogy of Lennon's last day and this old man's attempt to find somewhere to belong was poignant and original.
The final, eponymous story, "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain," is a sad, nostalgic love story and a fantastic end to this book: "I crossed the room to my wife...but when I came near the bed, she lifted her silk gown and threw it aside and I pressed close to her...I want to be with her in that square and with the rest of those we'd buried, the tiny limbs and the sullen eyes and the grey faces of puzzled children and the surprised adults and the weary old people who have gone before us, who know the secrets now. (p. 243)
This is not a long book, but it is full of beautiful imagery and moving stories. Highly recommended.
There are fifteen stories here which, all told in the first person, mostly alternate between male and female narrators. In the third story, "The Trip Back", the male narrator is taking a Mr. Chinh from the airport, fresh from Vietnam, to meet his granddaughter decades after she fled as a refugee. During the long drive from the airport, he reflects on his own status as a refugee: "But you must understand that ultimately this doesn't have anything to do with being a refugee in the United States. When I got to the two rivers again, Old and Lost, I could recognize the look of them, like a lake, but it was only my mind working." (p. 37). Needless to say, the grandfather is senile ('old and lost') and does not recognize his granddaughter...
In "Fairy Tale", a prostitute that has been shipwrecked by her GI boyfriend in New Orleans and working again on Bourbon Street, talks about the men: "I have many men say they were in my country and they always sound a little funny, like they have a nasty secret or a sickness that you should be careful not to catch. And sometimes they just call it "Nam," saying that word with broken glass in their voice or saying it through their noses and their noses wrinkle up like the word smells when it comes out." (p. 52). This particular story does have a happy ending. What it reminded me of though was that that generation of 'Nam vets is dying out, my step-father having been gone for over 15 years now, and yet I can still remember this very attitude of his towards the little he would divulge of his three years "over there." He was, to be honest, a rather despicable racist violent man, abusive of my mother (also recently passed away), but I sincerely did try to understand what he lived through. (See my thoughts in the review of Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam.)
There are a few more mystical stories such as "Relic" that were pleasant if haunting. In this story, the narrator has acquired, he believes anyway, one of the shoes that John Lennon wore on the morning he was assassinated in New York. "I wait until I can draw an adequate breath. Then I turn in my chair and gently lower the show to the floor and I place it before my bare right foot. I make the sign of the cross and slip my foot into John Lennon's shoe, sliding my forefinger into the loop at the back and pulling gently, just as John Lennon did on the day he joined the angels. (p. 142). I felt that the analogy of Lennon's last day and this old man's attempt to find somewhere to belong was poignant and original.
The final, eponymous story, "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain," is a sad, nostalgic love story and a fantastic end to this book: "I crossed the room to my wife...but when I came near the bed, she lifted her silk gown and threw it aside and I pressed close to her...I want to be with her in that square and with the rest of those we'd buried, the tiny limbs and the sullen eyes and the grey faces of puzzled children and the surprised adults and the weary old people who have gone before us, who know the secrets now. (p. 243)
This is not a long book, but it is full of beautiful imagery and moving stories. Highly recommended.
September 4, 2018
[2.5] About a third of the way through this collection, the stories started to irritate me. The writing felt like it was put through a strainer to become stiff and bland. I thought, "a bad translation." Of course, these are not translated stories. They are the stories of Vietnamese refugees, written in first person by Robert Olen Butler, a white American. I don't like the idea of putting narrow restrictions on a writer's imagination - why shouldn't Butler imagine these voices? And they were certainly a success - he won the Pulitizer prize!
The problem is that the stories are all written in slightly stilted English as if told in the narrators' second language. Why? Why wouldn't these men and women speak and think about their lives in the language they were fluid in? Butler, unfortunately, chose not to imagine his characters' as fluid thinkers and wrote about them as if through the filter of a poor translator. Compared to Viet Thanh Nguyen's urgent collection "The Refugees," these stories feel muted, reductive, homogenized.
The problem is that the stories are all written in slightly stilted English as if told in the narrators' second language. Why? Why wouldn't these men and women speak and think about their lives in the language they were fluid in? Butler, unfortunately, chose not to imagine his characters' as fluid thinkers and wrote about them as if through the filter of a poor translator. Compared to Viet Thanh Nguyen's urgent collection "The Refugees," these stories feel muted, reductive, homogenized.
November 28, 2012
I think white people need to stop telling non-white peoples' stories. It just reeks of uncomfortable colonialism. The short story where Butler writes his character as a cheap, two-bit Vietnamese hooker with the awkward stereotypical English one might expect from a recent war victim is just too pathetic for me to swallow. Some nice sentences here and there, but generally a flop.
November 13, 2020
Like many of the older Pulitzer Prize winners I've read this year, my copy of A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain came to me used.
In the pile of award-stamped paperbacks I've accrued I've seen unseemly coffee stains, wrinkled and peeling lamination, and dog-eared page corners, but this book is the first one that has been so obviously used by a university student. Pink highlighter overlays declarative sentences and artfully boxes in paragraphs, while pencil markings draw arrows between lines on the same page and all-caps words like "RISK", "GRIEF", and "SCHADENFREUDE" materialize in the margins. These markings made for an interpretive journey that veered into the metatextual with a "Oh, is that supposed to be important?"
Despite the markings-up of my copy, I thoroughly enjoyed A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's my second favourite of the 10 other Pulitzer Prize winners I've read so far this year. Robert Olen Butler's 1992 winner shows impressive range and is populated by short stories told by wonderful narrators. Each of the stories links back in some way to Vietnam, the diaspora in Louisiana, or the war. Even though the stories are all stuck together by this thematic glue, you'd be wrong to pigeonhole this collection as one about the Vietnam War.
Indeed, Butler grapples with day-to-day life in a way that is ceaselessly compelling. Whether I was following a cuckolded Vietnamese man seeking vengeance through voodoo (Love), or reading the musings with a former Vietcong soldier before he smokes a cigarette (Salem), the author captured my attention in the space of sentences. The longest story, The American Couple, comes near the book's end and follows a Vietnamese couple on vacation when they encounter an American couple who also have ties to the war. As the Vietnamese wife narrates this section I was reminded of Butler's skill throughout the collection: he gets human behaviour and is able to translate the more subtle aspects of complex emotion extremely well.
There's little moments of awe and appreciation that are peppered throughout this collection. A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain falls somewhere in the nebulous 4-5 star range, but is undoubtedly a worthwhile read. The fact that it holds up almost 30 years later is a testament to its staying power. Don't sleep on this one when you come by a used copy, even if it is all marked up.
This is the tenth book of my 2020 Pulitzer Prize Challenge!
In the pile of award-stamped paperbacks I've accrued I've seen unseemly coffee stains, wrinkled and peeling lamination, and dog-eared page corners, but this book is the first one that has been so obviously used by a university student. Pink highlighter overlays declarative sentences and artfully boxes in paragraphs, while pencil markings draw arrows between lines on the same page and all-caps words like "RISK", "GRIEF", and "SCHADENFREUDE" materialize in the margins. These markings made for an interpretive journey that veered into the metatextual with a "Oh, is that supposed to be important?"
Despite the markings-up of my copy, I thoroughly enjoyed A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's my second favourite of the 10 other Pulitzer Prize winners I've read so far this year. Robert Olen Butler's 1992 winner shows impressive range and is populated by short stories told by wonderful narrators. Each of the stories links back in some way to Vietnam, the diaspora in Louisiana, or the war. Even though the stories are all stuck together by this thematic glue, you'd be wrong to pigeonhole this collection as one about the Vietnam War.
Indeed, Butler grapples with day-to-day life in a way that is ceaselessly compelling. Whether I was following a cuckolded Vietnamese man seeking vengeance through voodoo (Love), or reading the musings with a former Vietcong soldier before he smokes a cigarette (Salem), the author captured my attention in the space of sentences. The longest story, The American Couple, comes near the book's end and follows a Vietnamese couple on vacation when they encounter an American couple who also have ties to the war. As the Vietnamese wife narrates this section I was reminded of Butler's skill throughout the collection: he gets human behaviour and is able to translate the more subtle aspects of complex emotion extremely well.
There's little moments of awe and appreciation that are peppered throughout this collection. A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain falls somewhere in the nebulous 4-5 star range, but is undoubtedly a worthwhile read. The fact that it holds up almost 30 years later is a testament to its staying power. Don't sleep on this one when you come by a used copy, even if it is all marked up.
This is the tenth book of my 2020 Pulitzer Prize Challenge!
April 14, 2021
This is a wonderful collection of stories that combine to give you a lovely picture of Vietnamese culture. I was shocked to learn that the author was not Vietnamese. He served in Vietnam as a counterintelligence officer and translator. His love for the people there shines vividly through these wonderful stories. They alternate in settings between Vietnam and America and in voices male and female.
The opening story called ."Open Arms" seems to be somewhat autobiographical since it's a story of the program that allowed the communists to switch sides without question. It involves counterintelligence officers and a Vietnamese translator (who is actually Vietnamese). It shows the conflicted feelings that the translator has for letting hardcore communists in but also understanding shared circumstances and culture. From these stories, it seems Butler must certainly have mixed feelings of his own after becoming enamored with the culture.
I was surprised at how often Butler wrote in the woman's voice and he did it so well whether they were sad, humorous, or beautiful. Stories in a woman's voice include:
1. Mr. Green - About a Catholic granddaughter's connection to the folklore of her traditional grandfather through his pet parrot.
2. Fairy tale - Humorous story about a prostitute who reads fairy tales to find a deeper connection to Americans and to better understand their language.
3. Letters from my Father - a poignant story of a daughter's perspective of only knowing her American father through the letters he writes to her.
4. MidAutumn - The beautiful story of a mother talking to her baby in the womb about her history and how it relates to the love of her child.
5. Snow - A story about a Vietnamese girl and why she is afraid of snow and an unexpected connection to a Polish immigrant who dislikes the snow for other reasons.
6. The American Couple - This was the longest and though it dragged a little bit near the end, its humor sticks with you. It's about a woman's deep assimilation to American culture through movies and television (especially the game show culture) while her husband has assimilated to the business culture.
Butler's stories in the man's voice were equally as good. In addition to the opening story mentioned above, they include:
1. The Trip Back - A sad story of a many who eagerly picks up his grandfather-in-law from the airport excited about reuniting him with his wife, but the trip back doesn't go as expected.
2. Cricket - A story about a father trying to connect his son back to nature,
3. Love - A funny story about the lengths a husband will go to, to keep his beautiful wife from the arms of her many lovers.
4. In the Clearing - A sad story about a Vietnamese man forced to abandon his lover and child in the fog of war. He writes to his son not knowing whether he will receive it since he is being raised by another man. He hopes to form a supernatural connection with his son.
5. A ghost story - A story of magical realism where a soldier falls asleep too long at his lover's home and has to travel back over a mountain at night when it's controlled by communists and receives some supernatural assistance.
6. A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - A poignant story of an elderly man trying to connect with both the world of the living and the dead in his last days through the scents of the past and present.
I've left out a couple of stories because I don't remember that much about them but I didn't dislike any as I read them. I loved this collection in its entirety and wouldn't leave out a single story. I will be reading more of Robert Olen Butler's books and would love it if any of them revisit this culture.
side note: Goodreads formatting is such pain!
The opening story called ."Open Arms" seems to be somewhat autobiographical since it's a story of the program that allowed the communists to switch sides without question. It involves counterintelligence officers and a Vietnamese translator (who is actually Vietnamese). It shows the conflicted feelings that the translator has for letting hardcore communists in but also understanding shared circumstances and culture. From these stories, it seems Butler must certainly have mixed feelings of his own after becoming enamored with the culture.
I was surprised at how often Butler wrote in the woman's voice and he did it so well whether they were sad, humorous, or beautiful. Stories in a woman's voice include:
1. Mr. Green - About a Catholic granddaughter's connection to the folklore of her traditional grandfather through his pet parrot.
2. Fairy tale - Humorous story about a prostitute who reads fairy tales to find a deeper connection to Americans and to better understand their language.
3. Letters from my Father - a poignant story of a daughter's perspective of only knowing her American father through the letters he writes to her.
4. MidAutumn - The beautiful story of a mother talking to her baby in the womb about her history and how it relates to the love of her child.
5. Snow - A story about a Vietnamese girl and why she is afraid of snow and an unexpected connection to a Polish immigrant who dislikes the snow for other reasons.
6. The American Couple - This was the longest and though it dragged a little bit near the end, its humor sticks with you. It's about a woman's deep assimilation to American culture through movies and television (especially the game show culture) while her husband has assimilated to the business culture.
Butler's stories in the man's voice were equally as good. In addition to the opening story mentioned above, they include:
1. The Trip Back - A sad story of a many who eagerly picks up his grandfather-in-law from the airport excited about reuniting him with his wife, but the trip back doesn't go as expected.
2. Cricket - A story about a father trying to connect his son back to nature,
3. Love - A funny story about the lengths a husband will go to, to keep his beautiful wife from the arms of her many lovers.
4. In the Clearing - A sad story about a Vietnamese man forced to abandon his lover and child in the fog of war. He writes to his son not knowing whether he will receive it since he is being raised by another man. He hopes to form a supernatural connection with his son.
5. A ghost story - A story of magical realism where a soldier falls asleep too long at his lover's home and has to travel back over a mountain at night when it's controlled by communists and receives some supernatural assistance.
6. A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - A poignant story of an elderly man trying to connect with both the world of the living and the dead in his last days through the scents of the past and present.
I've left out a couple of stories because I don't remember that much about them but I didn't dislike any as I read them. I loved this collection in its entirety and wouldn't leave out a single story. I will be reading more of Robert Olen Butler's books and would love it if any of them revisit this culture.
side note: Goodreads formatting is such pain!
March 31, 2010
a white guy writing vietnamese stories in choppy language as if it were written by a non-english speaker. nobody thinks in language this choppy, and though ESL speakers might not speak as eloquently in English, it doesn't mean their thoughts are disorganized and choppy. it was also just boring and it felt like a chore to read. i quit part way through.
December 18, 2018
“I turned and looked and the old man was standing beside the car. My wife embraced him and his head was perched on her shoulder and there was nothing on his face at all, no feeling except perhaps the faintest wrinkling of puzzlement. Perhaps I should have stayed at my wife’s side as the old man went on to explain to her that she didn’t exist. But I could not. I wished to walk briskly away, far from this house, far from the old man and his granddaughter. I wished to walk as fast as I could, to run. But at least I fought that desire. I simply turned away and moved off, along the side of the house to the front yard.”
Good Scent From A Strange Mountain was written by Robert Olen Butler and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1993.
So wow another book for my six star shelf! I was overjoyed by the superb writing in this collection of seventeen short stories about Vietnamese immigrants living in Louisiana. Each individual story in some way reflects life in Vietnam during the war and present day life in the United States after immigration. None of the characters in the stories are repeated. There is a lot of introspection and all of the characters are interesting. Of note more than half of the stories are written about Vietnamese women. Very few of the stories are depressing but often are reflections of how life has progressed for the characters.
In most every story, Butler introduces suspense leaving the reader to ascertain where the plots are headed. Surprisingly death is not heavily leveraged in these stories aside from occasional flashbacks. So I have read a lot of short story compilations, especially as part of my Read the Pulitzers project. This book is the best of the short story compilations in my opinion. In fact this is one of the best books that I’ve read period. I will be studying this one for a while to understand technically how both the prose and the stories were so masterfully wrought.
5 Stars
Good Scent From A Strange Mountain was written by Robert Olen Butler and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1993.
So wow another book for my six star shelf! I was overjoyed by the superb writing in this collection of seventeen short stories about Vietnamese immigrants living in Louisiana. Each individual story in some way reflects life in Vietnam during the war and present day life in the United States after immigration. None of the characters in the stories are repeated. There is a lot of introspection and all of the characters are interesting. Of note more than half of the stories are written about Vietnamese women. Very few of the stories are depressing but often are reflections of how life has progressed for the characters.
In most every story, Butler introduces suspense leaving the reader to ascertain where the plots are headed. Surprisingly death is not heavily leveraged in these stories aside from occasional flashbacks. So I have read a lot of short story compilations, especially as part of my Read the Pulitzers project. This book is the best of the short story compilations in my opinion. In fact this is one of the best books that I’ve read period. I will be studying this one for a while to understand technically how both the prose and the stories were so masterfully wrought.
5 Stars
December 13, 2023
I feel bad giving this book only one star since it won the Pulitzer, but I did not like this book at all. It's a collection of short stories about Vietnamese immigrants in America. The dust jacket promised "lyrical" but delivered "short and choppy" instead. The stories could be revealing about the Vietnamese immigrant's experience in America, but the writing style is off-putting and frankly, doesn't make much sense to me. Even if the stories are from a Vietnamese person's point of view, and even if they don't speak English well, they wouldn't THINK in choppy sentences, would they?
September 10, 2025
Winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1993, this short story collection is set in the time period during and after the Vietnam War and focuses on characters whose lives were affected by the war. Some of the stories are hilarious, some are heartbreaking, some are masterpieces, some are flops. Here is how I would rank the stories, from my favorite to least favorite, along with a quick summary of each and a few illustrative quotes:
FAIRY TALE (Five stars)
This is the best story in the collection. It is about a former Saigon bargirl who is now living in the United States and working as a stripper. Her past relationships have failed. Is a life of loneliness the only future left to her?
“I am a Catholic girl and I have a large statue of Mary in my room. That statue is Mary the mother of God, not Mary Magdalene, who was a bargirl one time, too.” (p. 48)
“I think this is very nice, how you get up on the back of time and ride and you don’t know where it will go or how it will try to throw you off.” (p. 45)
MID-AUTUMN (Five stars)
In this tale, a mother talks to her unborn daughter about love and tells her a mythical story about love, loss, and responsibility.
“Once you came down the rainbow, there was no way back.” (p. 99)
LOVE (Five stars)
A small man who served as a spy during the Vietnam War is in an arranged marriage with an unfaithful woman. Before the war ended, he used his military connections to protect his marriage. Now, he must turn to other means.
“But it is a terrible thing to be married to a beautiful woman.” (p. 74)
THE TRIP BACK (Five stars)
After many years, a Vietnamese grandfather is reunited with his family, now living in America. But time has passed and memories have faded.
“I don’t know this car … I don’t know it at all.” (p. 35)
SNOW (Four stars)
An unmarried, Vietnamese woman works in a Chinese restaurant in the United States. This story is about her interactions with a customer she meets around Christmas.
“And I woke to snow. The First snow I had ever seen. It scared me.” (p. 127).
LETTERS FROM MY FATHER (Four stars)
This story is about childhood in Vietnam for children of the war—those with an American parent. It considers the parent-child relationship and the effect of lost time, as it often took many years to secure the children’s release from the country.
“I was a child of dust … At one look we were Vietnamese and at another look we were American and after that you couldn’t get your eyes to stay still when they turned to us, they kept seeing first one thing and then another.” (p. 66)
IN THE CLEARING (Four stars)
A father writes to his son about his war experiences and about growing up by force.
“This was the last little bit of my childhood. I was holding my rifle across my chest, ready to fight, wherever the lieutenant was leading me.” (p. 108)
A GHOST STORY (Three stars)
During the Vietnam War, a major drives at night through dangerous territory, trying to reach a military base. Enter the paranormal.
“The major stood up and he was surprised to find not a single pain in his body, no bruises, no scratches, nothing whatever to show that he had crashed his car and had been thrown out.”(p. 115)
THE AMERICAN COUPLE (Three stars)
This story is about the lasting effects of war experience. A Vietnamese couple go to stay at a hotel/resort, after a game show gifts the vacation to them. The husband is a veteran. He and his wife meet another married couple at the resort. The husband in that couple is also a veteran. They spend time together and weird stuff happens.
“All the things that I had a sweet tooth for, my husband couldn’t stand, not this man who’d been through a war and survived, the man who’d made his way in a strange land.” (pp. 213-214)
RELIC (Three stars)
An odd tale about a wealthy Vietnamese immigrant in America, without his family, becoming American—assimilating into its capitalistic culture.
“I sit at my desk and I look beyond John Lennon’s shoe, through the window, and what do I see?” (pp. 139-140)
A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN (Three stars)
An elderly man visits with his friends and families, some alive, one dead, some having done terrible things.
“When you are very old, you put aside a week or two to receive the people of your life so that you can tell one another your feelings, or try at last to understand one another, or simply say good-by.” (p. 236)
OPEN ARMS (Three stars)
This story is about loss and ideology during the Vietnam Warr, as revealed through the questioning and actions of a soldier who switches sides.
“The government program that allowed a longtime, hard-core Viet Cong like Thap to switch sides so easily had a stiff name in Vietnamese but it can to be known as ‘Open Arms.’” (p. 4)
MR. GREEN (Two stars)
A woman takes care of her grandfather’s pet. It talks. It has a personality. It may live for 100 years.
“And though I could not protect my dead grandfather’s soul, I could take care of his parrot.” (p. 20)
PREPERATION (Two stars)
A lady is dead and her childhood friend is thinking about their lives in the presence of her body.
“But now she lay before me on a stainless-steel table, her head cranked up on a chrome support, her hair scattered behind her and her face almost plain.” (p. 146)
CRICKETS (One star)
Although it is about the difficulty of passing on culture across generations, the story focuses on fighting crickets to the death. No thanks.
“So each of us would have a stable of fighting crickets, and there would be two kinds.” (p. 62)
FAIRY TALE (Five stars)
This is the best story in the collection. It is about a former Saigon bargirl who is now living in the United States and working as a stripper. Her past relationships have failed. Is a life of loneliness the only future left to her?
“I am a Catholic girl and I have a large statue of Mary in my room. That statue is Mary the mother of God, not Mary Magdalene, who was a bargirl one time, too.” (p. 48)
“I think this is very nice, how you get up on the back of time and ride and you don’t know where it will go or how it will try to throw you off.” (p. 45)
MID-AUTUMN (Five stars)
In this tale, a mother talks to her unborn daughter about love and tells her a mythical story about love, loss, and responsibility.
“Once you came down the rainbow, there was no way back.” (p. 99)
LOVE (Five stars)
A small man who served as a spy during the Vietnam War is in an arranged marriage with an unfaithful woman. Before the war ended, he used his military connections to protect his marriage. Now, he must turn to other means.
“But it is a terrible thing to be married to a beautiful woman.” (p. 74)
THE TRIP BACK (Five stars)
After many years, a Vietnamese grandfather is reunited with his family, now living in America. But time has passed and memories have faded.
“I don’t know this car … I don’t know it at all.” (p. 35)
SNOW (Four stars)
An unmarried, Vietnamese woman works in a Chinese restaurant in the United States. This story is about her interactions with a customer she meets around Christmas.
“And I woke to snow. The First snow I had ever seen. It scared me.” (p. 127).
LETTERS FROM MY FATHER (Four stars)
This story is about childhood in Vietnam for children of the war—those with an American parent. It considers the parent-child relationship and the effect of lost time, as it often took many years to secure the children’s release from the country.
“I was a child of dust … At one look we were Vietnamese and at another look we were American and after that you couldn’t get your eyes to stay still when they turned to us, they kept seeing first one thing and then another.” (p. 66)
IN THE CLEARING (Four stars)
A father writes to his son about his war experiences and about growing up by force.
“This was the last little bit of my childhood. I was holding my rifle across my chest, ready to fight, wherever the lieutenant was leading me.” (p. 108)
A GHOST STORY (Three stars)
During the Vietnam War, a major drives at night through dangerous territory, trying to reach a military base. Enter the paranormal.
“The major stood up and he was surprised to find not a single pain in his body, no bruises, no scratches, nothing whatever to show that he had crashed his car and had been thrown out.”(p. 115)
THE AMERICAN COUPLE (Three stars)
This story is about the lasting effects of war experience. A Vietnamese couple go to stay at a hotel/resort, after a game show gifts the vacation to them. The husband is a veteran. He and his wife meet another married couple at the resort. The husband in that couple is also a veteran. They spend time together and weird stuff happens.
“All the things that I had a sweet tooth for, my husband couldn’t stand, not this man who’d been through a war and survived, the man who’d made his way in a strange land.” (pp. 213-214)
RELIC (Three stars)
An odd tale about a wealthy Vietnamese immigrant in America, without his family, becoming American—assimilating into its capitalistic culture.
“I sit at my desk and I look beyond John Lennon’s shoe, through the window, and what do I see?” (pp. 139-140)
A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN (Three stars)
An elderly man visits with his friends and families, some alive, one dead, some having done terrible things.
“When you are very old, you put aside a week or two to receive the people of your life so that you can tell one another your feelings, or try at last to understand one another, or simply say good-by.” (p. 236)
OPEN ARMS (Three stars)
This story is about loss and ideology during the Vietnam Warr, as revealed through the questioning and actions of a soldier who switches sides.
“The government program that allowed a longtime, hard-core Viet Cong like Thap to switch sides so easily had a stiff name in Vietnamese but it can to be known as ‘Open Arms.’” (p. 4)
MR. GREEN (Two stars)
A woman takes care of her grandfather’s pet. It talks. It has a personality. It may live for 100 years.
“And though I could not protect my dead grandfather’s soul, I could take care of his parrot.” (p. 20)
PREPERATION (Two stars)
A lady is dead and her childhood friend is thinking about their lives in the presence of her body.
“But now she lay before me on a stainless-steel table, her head cranked up on a chrome support, her hair scattered behind her and her face almost plain.” (p. 146)
CRICKETS (One star)
Although it is about the difficulty of passing on culture across generations, the story focuses on fighting crickets to the death. No thanks.
“So each of us would have a stable of fighting crickets, and there would be two kinds.” (p. 62)
November 30, 2015
So, I didn't realize this was a book of short stories until I started it. I knew it was a Pulitzer Price winner and that was enough to make me grab it. Short stories are not my favorites (I prefer a long book in which I can wallow) and sort of automatically come with a max of 4 stars. In general it was an okay collection and I learned a bit about Vietnamese culture, but the stories were not sufficiently different or interesting enough to garner 4 stars.
The stories are all about Vietnamese immigrants in southern American (Louisiana). They touch on race (obviously...and per Edward Hirsch a requirement for a Pulitzer winner) and also sexism and religion as well as cultural assimilation and differences.
I have specific notes below on each story:
Open Arms--I wasn't crazy about this one. It was not the best opener as it was simply a commentary on the differences in sexual expectations and pornographic allowances between the Westerners and the Vietnamese.
Mr. Green--This was interesting. Yes, parrots live a long time and are frequently willed to people. I never really considered, though, that the imitation could increase the mourning of the survivor.
The Trip Back--This was one of my favorites. I enjoyed not only the pragmatism of the narrator, but his recognition of his own assimilation. I like that he acknowledged that he didn't feel anything when his wife was upset, but simply acted in a sympathetic matter anyway. "I found that I myself was no longer comfortable with the old ways. Like the extended family. Like other things too. The Vietnamese indirectness, for instance. The superstition. I was a good American now."
Fairy Tale--I find it interesting that this book is so sexist. Not only are girls not as good as boys, but several of the female characters are prostitutes. I did like the acknowledgement that life is different than stories and I found the miscommunication from tones to be interesting.
A nonsensical sentence about a sunburnt duck was more meaningful than a political statement. And then, of course she makes up her own fairy tale about the apples.
Crickets--I was less interested in this story. The father wants to share his childhood, but can't because of the cultural and physical differences between their lives and generations. It is too overtly poignant to be actually meaningful.
Letters from my Father--Again with the fairy tales and the American with the Vietnamese bride. I enjoyed the incorporation of the shadow man in the story, but I wasn't really attached to the narrator.
Love--"It is a terrible thing to be married to a beautiful woman." Of all the stories so far, this is the most ridiculously sexist. Not only is she only valued for her beauty (my little butterfly): "I understand her limitations, and a wise man does not try to change the things that can't be changed." but she is solely his possession and after he unsuccessfully uses voodoo to "keep" her, she returns to him simply because he was willing to fight. Yuk.
Mid-Autumn--The mother speaks to the fetus and laments that she was not a son, but also we have the motif of dead Vietnamese father and replacement American. It was okay and I enjoyed the cultural lesson of the Rose Silk Thread God.
In the Clearing--So again we have fathers separated from the rest of the family, but in this instance the Vietnamese dad sort of accidentally left. I did enjoy the description of boyhood: "As a boy you wish to be frightened. You like the night; you like the quickness inside you and as you and your friends speak of mysterious things, ghosts and spirits..."
A Ghost Story--I was surprised reading this one to discover that the ancestor shrines were also occasionally devoted to women. Otherwise, the story itself was a bit humdrum...a grim reaper of sorts and yet another solider during the Vietnam War.
Snow--Again we have the mixed race couple and the female servant perspective. I wasn't not particularly interested in or overwhelmed with this one...but it did make me think of eating Chinese take out.
Relic--I found the idea of a Vietnamese refugee buying one of John Lennon's shoes to be slightly hysterical. It reminded me of middle schoolers trying to figure out what to do to fit in and be cool. I liked the self awareness of the narrator in this one ("spineless poor" and then he explains; he criticizes the vegetable back yards of the Vietnamese in Versailles but also note that he is glad he is alone because it helps him to assimilate).
Preparation--Again, this had a great voice. The ugly friend who has always been jealous of her beautiful (but now dead) best friend is guilt ridden but also still angry and jealous (even though she is the one still living) until she discovers that the friend's breast ha been removed and plans to move on to "take back" the husband.
The American Couple--This is the longest story in the book and I was less than enamored. Again there was some interesting dynamics between the husband and wife (power struggles) and also I liked the hot tub racism (the Americans were jealous of the hot Mexican lady and didn't even notice the Vietnamese), but I wasn't sure why it needed to be so long. The soldiers playing war and the girls looking at ponies was interesting commentary on the interchangeability of individuals within their own sex, but overall I was just underwhelmed and slightly bored with the length of this one.
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain--The title story features an old man who used to personally know Ho Chi Minh. I liked the personalization of the political figure, but I don't know much Vietnamese history (or enough to catch any of the subtleties here).
Salem--This was one of my favorites. I really liked the idea of the Vietnamese guy trying to decide if he should turn in the photograph of the woman and I liked that he identified personality quirks about the man that he had killed. I also found it interesting that Sa lem means to fall and to blur (really what else is death) and that there was just so much worked into this short story.
Missing--This was a great perspective switch. All of the stories have dealt with Vietnamese protagonists, most of whom have emigrated to the US. In this story the protagonist remained in Vietnam and his statement: "I am not missing. I am here. I know the smell of the wood fires and the incense my wife burns for the dead father and mother who gave her to me..." is a great definition of going native. It was a powerful way to end the collection and point out the positives of Vietnamese culture. He also had a great quote expressing a sentiment that my husband said to me a few years ago: "touched those places on your body that were smooth and soft and that are coarser now, and I love them still, I love them more for their very coarsenes."
The stories are all about Vietnamese immigrants in southern American (Louisiana). They touch on race (obviously...and per Edward Hirsch a requirement for a Pulitzer winner) and also sexism and religion as well as cultural assimilation and differences.
I have specific notes below on each story:
Open Arms--I wasn't crazy about this one. It was not the best opener as it was simply a commentary on the differences in sexual expectations and pornographic allowances between the Westerners and the Vietnamese.
Mr. Green--This was interesting. Yes, parrots live a long time and are frequently willed to people. I never really considered, though, that the imitation could increase the mourning of the survivor.
The Trip Back--This was one of my favorites. I enjoyed not only the pragmatism of the narrator, but his recognition of his own assimilation. I like that he acknowledged that he didn't feel anything when his wife was upset, but simply acted in a sympathetic matter anyway. "I found that I myself was no longer comfortable with the old ways. Like the extended family. Like other things too. The Vietnamese indirectness, for instance. The superstition. I was a good American now."
Fairy Tale--I find it interesting that this book is so sexist. Not only are girls not as good as boys, but several of the female characters are prostitutes. I did like the acknowledgement that life is different than stories and I found the miscommunication from tones to be interesting.
A nonsensical sentence about a sunburnt duck was more meaningful than a political statement. And then, of course she makes up her own fairy tale about the apples.
Crickets--I was less interested in this story. The father wants to share his childhood, but can't because of the cultural and physical differences between their lives and generations. It is too overtly poignant to be actually meaningful.
Letters from my Father--Again with the fairy tales and the American with the Vietnamese bride. I enjoyed the incorporation of the shadow man in the story, but I wasn't really attached to the narrator.
Love--"It is a terrible thing to be married to a beautiful woman." Of all the stories so far, this is the most ridiculously sexist. Not only is she only valued for her beauty (my little butterfly): "I understand her limitations, and a wise man does not try to change the things that can't be changed." but she is solely his possession and after he unsuccessfully uses voodoo to "keep" her, she returns to him simply because he was willing to fight. Yuk.
Mid-Autumn--The mother speaks to the fetus and laments that she was not a son, but also we have the motif of dead Vietnamese father and replacement American. It was okay and I enjoyed the cultural lesson of the Rose Silk Thread God.
In the Clearing--So again we have fathers separated from the rest of the family, but in this instance the Vietnamese dad sort of accidentally left. I did enjoy the description of boyhood: "As a boy you wish to be frightened. You like the night; you like the quickness inside you and as you and your friends speak of mysterious things, ghosts and spirits..."
A Ghost Story--I was surprised reading this one to discover that the ancestor shrines were also occasionally devoted to women. Otherwise, the story itself was a bit humdrum...a grim reaper of sorts and yet another solider during the Vietnam War.
Snow--Again we have the mixed race couple and the female servant perspective. I wasn't not particularly interested in or overwhelmed with this one...but it did make me think of eating Chinese take out.
Relic--I found the idea of a Vietnamese refugee buying one of John Lennon's shoes to be slightly hysterical. It reminded me of middle schoolers trying to figure out what to do to fit in and be cool. I liked the self awareness of the narrator in this one ("spineless poor" and then he explains; he criticizes the vegetable back yards of the Vietnamese in Versailles but also note that he is glad he is alone because it helps him to assimilate).
Preparation--Again, this had a great voice. The ugly friend who has always been jealous of her beautiful (but now dead) best friend is guilt ridden but also still angry and jealous (even though she is the one still living) until she discovers that the friend's breast ha been removed and plans to move on to "take back" the husband.
The American Couple--This is the longest story in the book and I was less than enamored. Again there was some interesting dynamics between the husband and wife (power struggles) and also I liked the hot tub racism (the Americans were jealous of the hot Mexican lady and didn't even notice the Vietnamese), but I wasn't sure why it needed to be so long. The soldiers playing war and the girls looking at ponies was interesting commentary on the interchangeability of individuals within their own sex, but overall I was just underwhelmed and slightly bored with the length of this one.
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain--The title story features an old man who used to personally know Ho Chi Minh. I liked the personalization of the political figure, but I don't know much Vietnamese history (or enough to catch any of the subtleties here).
Salem--This was one of my favorites. I really liked the idea of the Vietnamese guy trying to decide if he should turn in the photograph of the woman and I liked that he identified personality quirks about the man that he had killed. I also found it interesting that Sa lem means to fall and to blur (really what else is death) and that there was just so much worked into this short story.
Missing--This was a great perspective switch. All of the stories have dealt with Vietnamese protagonists, most of whom have emigrated to the US. In this story the protagonist remained in Vietnam and his statement: "I am not missing. I am here. I know the smell of the wood fires and the incense my wife burns for the dead father and mother who gave her to me..." is a great definition of going native. It was a powerful way to end the collection and point out the positives of Vietnamese culture. He also had a great quote expressing a sentiment that my husband said to me a few years ago: "touched those places on your body that were smooth and soft and that are coarser now, and I love them still, I love them more for their very coarsenes."
July 6, 2015
First let me say, “Damn you Robert Olen Butler. Damn you to hell.” Because now any book I pick up next can only pale by comparison to this exquisitely beautiful story collection. A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain is a Pulitzer-winning compilation of stories primarily about the Vietnamese diaspora, with the majority of the stories written from the perspective of immigrants living in and around New Orleans.
I am at a loss to adequately describe the poignance of Butler’s prose in this collection. The only thing I can remotely compare it to, in terms of soul-rocking beauty, would be the polemical chapters from The Grapes of Wrath . Butler does a brilliant job of describing the world through the eyes of a wide array of personalities but where he really shines is in his descriptions of the sensory aspects of this world, serving as analogs for the desires, hopes and regrets of the remarkably believable characters he’s created.
In a sense, that’s just good writing but Butler can take a description and charge it with such emotion that the whole thing begins to soar and I found myself often transported by his prose. He writes about both the minutiae of daily life and the extremely wrought issues of life and death with such power and clarity that I regularly felt (occasionally with an almost embarrassing sense of intrusion) I was viewing the souls of his characters. He is, without question, a writer with the courage to lay bare his heart.
This is such a varied collection that it’s difficult to go much further other than to say there are a couple of stories in here that are the most beautiful things I’ve ever read - specifically the book’s title story as well as the collection’s penultimate story, "Salem" and its final story, “Missing”. That said, there are a couple of stories that didn’t quite do it for me and one in particular ("The American Couple") for which I can contrive no explanation for why it’s in here. But the bottom line is this: Find yourself a quiet place, then take this book and prepare yourself for a ravishing read. Bravo, Robert Olen Butler. Oh, and damn you to hell.
I am at a loss to adequately describe the poignance of Butler’s prose in this collection. The only thing I can remotely compare it to, in terms of soul-rocking beauty, would be the polemical chapters from The Grapes of Wrath . Butler does a brilliant job of describing the world through the eyes of a wide array of personalities but where he really shines is in his descriptions of the sensory aspects of this world, serving as analogs for the desires, hopes and regrets of the remarkably believable characters he’s created.
In a sense, that’s just good writing but Butler can take a description and charge it with such emotion that the whole thing begins to soar and I found myself often transported by his prose. He writes about both the minutiae of daily life and the extremely wrought issues of life and death with such power and clarity that I regularly felt (occasionally with an almost embarrassing sense of intrusion) I was viewing the souls of his characters. He is, without question, a writer with the courage to lay bare his heart.
This is such a varied collection that it’s difficult to go much further other than to say there are a couple of stories in here that are the most beautiful things I’ve ever read - specifically the book’s title story as well as the collection’s penultimate story, "Salem" and its final story, “Missing”. That said, there are a couple of stories that didn’t quite do it for me and one in particular ("The American Couple") for which I can contrive no explanation for why it’s in here. But the bottom line is this: Find yourself a quiet place, then take this book and prepare yourself for a ravishing read. Bravo, Robert Olen Butler. Oh, and damn you to hell.
January 24, 2011
There's a reason this won the Pulitzer. While a few of the stories read more like retellings of myths, they are still so unique and melodic that I give this a 5. One of my favorite story collections.
August 5, 2016
Even though this wasn't a pool read (book to read by the pool that doesn't matter if it gets wet and easy to pick up and get back in the groove after days away), it could have been, up til the last story. The first 13 stories were like potato chips and I couldn't gobble them down fast enough.
I checked this out after my husband read/bought it. I tend to dismiss Vietnam War books--too depressing, violent, mucho macho military men figures, and I'm getting a little burned out from WWII novels lately. But this isn't a Vietnam War book (except for that draggy 14th story), it's more about the Vietnamese who immigrate here and settle in Louisiana. The back cover says it blends Vietnamese folklore with American realities and that's exactly right.
Loved the story of the cuckolded husband who went to the voodoo doctor and actually got all the supplies together to throw some nasty gris-gris at "the other man"! While the stories weren't humorous there was a sense of hope with all of them. For example, one Vietnamese girl ponders about the beginning of fairy tales, "Once upon a time". Since a cowboy during the war told her he used to get "up on" a bull, she pictures how during the telling of a fairy tale, you get "up on" the back of time and you don't know where or when you'll get off. Very poetic.
Pulitzer Prize winner 1993.
I checked this out after my husband read/bought it. I tend to dismiss Vietnam War books--too depressing, violent, mucho macho military men figures, and I'm getting a little burned out from WWII novels lately. But this isn't a Vietnam War book (except for that draggy 14th story), it's more about the Vietnamese who immigrate here and settle in Louisiana. The back cover says it blends Vietnamese folklore with American realities and that's exactly right.
Loved the story of the cuckolded husband who went to the voodoo doctor and actually got all the supplies together to throw some nasty gris-gris at "the other man"! While the stories weren't humorous there was a sense of hope with all of them. For example, one Vietnamese girl ponders about the beginning of fairy tales, "Once upon a time". Since a cowboy during the war told her he used to get "up on" a bull, she pictures how during the telling of a fairy tale, you get "up on" the back of time and you don't know where or when you'll get off. Very poetic.
Pulitzer Prize winner 1993.
April 13, 2021
There was some really good writing in this book, I enjoyed Butler's style and tone, most of the stories were moving and beautifully crafted with mostly interesting characters and plots.
However, I did feel that by writing a full book of short stories on the same topic, namely the war in Vietnam and living in the USA as a Vietnamese immigrant after the war, a lot was lost because it felt like repetition. The similarity in the stories' structure and tone of narration gave the whole book a somewhat staggered feeling - like it was starting and stopping over and over with each story. I also didn't always feel quite comfortable with the fact that a white American author tells the stories of Vietnamese post-war immigrants. As a linguist fluent in Vietnamese I'm sure he is well informed and knowledgeable, but still the stories mostly concentrated on the good life the characters had since going to America, which quite literally omitted the difficulties, racism and abuse the Vietnamese have experienced in the States.
Overall, a very nice book, even if my enthusiasm for it was diminishing towards the end.
However, I did feel that by writing a full book of short stories on the same topic, namely the war in Vietnam and living in the USA as a Vietnamese immigrant after the war, a lot was lost because it felt like repetition. The similarity in the stories' structure and tone of narration gave the whole book a somewhat staggered feeling - like it was starting and stopping over and over with each story. I also didn't always feel quite comfortable with the fact that a white American author tells the stories of Vietnamese post-war immigrants. As a linguist fluent in Vietnamese I'm sure he is well informed and knowledgeable, but still the stories mostly concentrated on the good life the characters had since going to America, which quite literally omitted the difficulties, racism and abuse the Vietnamese have experienced in the States.
Overall, a very nice book, even if my enthusiasm for it was diminishing towards the end.
August 11, 2010
I forgot that I finished this finally. I didn't throw it, but I definitely didn't like it very much. I think that writers CAN write from other points of view (just like readers can read and understand different points of view than their own) but all but one narrator rang false; what I heard behind the "Vietnamese" voice was always a white guy, probably from the midwest, who maybe went to Vietnam for a while. I can hear him working on it. Oddly, the story that had the strongest and most-likely-to-go-wrong voice (Fairy Tale) was the only one I liked.
May 4, 2020
The best thing a book can do is to transport me into the world of people I do not know. If I can learn, think, feel... If I can come out of it missing the characters I met and befriended... If I can better understand a culture or religion, or both... If I can believe that I am changed. Then that is the book that deserves a solid 5 stars.
Robert Olen Butler served two years in Vietnam. After returning home to the USA he began writing stories which were published in several literary journals. In 1992 a collection of these stories was published as this book, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I don't think I would have read it if that had not happened, so I am very glad to be on this journey, reading the complete list of winners.
This book is entirely different from any other book I have seen about the war. This one tells the stories of the immigrant experience, of the Vietnamese refugees who come to America and settled into communities in Louisiana. Each story is told in the first person, giving the book an intimacy and voyeuristic quality that allowed me to fully connect with each character. The cultures and customs are explored. The differences between the refugees who came from the north versus those who came from the south are highlighted in a quiet, respectful way. And I came away from the book with a much deeper understanding of the immigrant experience for the people who came out of Vietnam.
I am old enough to remember the war but too young to have much true understanding of it, so reading is my only real source of knowledge. I appreciate when a book can make me feel nostalgic for a time and place, especially when it is a time and place that I actually know nothing about.
My edition includes two stories that were not in the original volume, both of which take place later than the others. I loved them as much as the others. I found these stories compassionate, respectfu and unique. The characters were real and raw, not stereotypical in any way that I could see. I found myself surprised by the depth of understanding the white, American veteran author displayed for his Vietnames characters. His admiration for the people was palpable in every story.
Robert Olen Butler served two years in Vietnam. After returning home to the USA he began writing stories which were published in several literary journals. In 1992 a collection of these stories was published as this book, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I don't think I would have read it if that had not happened, so I am very glad to be on this journey, reading the complete list of winners.
This book is entirely different from any other book I have seen about the war. This one tells the stories of the immigrant experience, of the Vietnamese refugees who come to America and settled into communities in Louisiana. Each story is told in the first person, giving the book an intimacy and voyeuristic quality that allowed me to fully connect with each character. The cultures and customs are explored. The differences between the refugees who came from the north versus those who came from the south are highlighted in a quiet, respectful way. And I came away from the book with a much deeper understanding of the immigrant experience for the people who came out of Vietnam.
I am old enough to remember the war but too young to have much true understanding of it, so reading is my only real source of knowledge. I appreciate when a book can make me feel nostalgic for a time and place, especially when it is a time and place that I actually know nothing about.
My edition includes two stories that were not in the original volume, both of which take place later than the others. I loved them as much as the others. I found these stories compassionate, respectfu and unique. The characters were real and raw, not stereotypical in any way that I could see. I found myself surprised by the depth of understanding the white, American veteran author displayed for his Vietnames characters. His admiration for the people was palpable in every story.
December 13, 2018
Robert Olen Butler served in Vietnam as Military Intelligence and as a translator during the war the in the sixties and part of the seventies. Fluent in Vietnamese, he said his favorite time was walking the back streets of Saigon and crouching in the doorways, getting to know a people that he considers to be some of the most warm-hearted and open people he has ever known.
A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain is a collection of short stories each from a different person's point of view. Some of the narrators are men, some are women, some are old, others are young. Some stories are narrated by successful business men, others by house wives, one by a prostitute and one by a man we are not sure is crazy or not. What they all have in common is that they are Vietnamese and live in the Lake Charles district of Louisiana.
Most of these narrators have lived during the Vietnam war, but a couple of the protagonists are young people who were born and raised in America.
This book won a Pullitzer prize and while I felt at times the writing was a bit stilted, the voices of the narrators were strong and convincing.
I suppose some would ask "how an American man can speak with the voice of people from another country?". I don't know. I'm not Vietnamese and maybe his voice is not absolutely authentic, but that is beside the point. To me it was as if someone went somewhere and had an adventure and told me about it. They can only tell me what they saw and how they perceived things. Maybe if I went on the same adventure, I would see things differently; but that doesn't matter. We all love to hear other peoples' stories and I am glad that Butler wrote his down because not only has he opened a portal to another country and people, he has revealed also himself and certainly his great interest, and even love for the Vietnamese people.
A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain is a collection of short stories each from a different person's point of view. Some of the narrators are men, some are women, some are old, others are young. Some stories are narrated by successful business men, others by house wives, one by a prostitute and one by a man we are not sure is crazy or not. What they all have in common is that they are Vietnamese and live in the Lake Charles district of Louisiana.
Most of these narrators have lived during the Vietnam war, but a couple of the protagonists are young people who were born and raised in America.
This book won a Pullitzer prize and while I felt at times the writing was a bit stilted, the voices of the narrators were strong and convincing.
I suppose some would ask "how an American man can speak with the voice of people from another country?". I don't know. I'm not Vietnamese and maybe his voice is not absolutely authentic, but that is beside the point. To me it was as if someone went somewhere and had an adventure and told me about it. They can only tell me what they saw and how they perceived things. Maybe if I went on the same adventure, I would see things differently; but that doesn't matter. We all love to hear other peoples' stories and I am glad that Butler wrote his down because not only has he opened a portal to another country and people, he has revealed also himself and certainly his great interest, and even love for the Vietnamese people.
May 6, 2017
This collection has a couple good stories. But as a Vietnamese American, I feel that Robert Olen Butler has taken away something from the Vietnamese people. He has used our culture, our history, our country, and its people and appropriated it for his own benefit. This collection of stories, told from a Vietnamese perspective, won the Pulitzer Prize and has won Butler acclaim. But there are great Vietnamese writers out there, writing about life during the war and after, that are hardly published, read, or marketed here in the United States. There are Vietnamese writers writing about the exact same things that Butler is writing about, with more soul, and more insight into the Vietnamese spirit, and they are pushed aside so that a white man can tell our stories for us. These Vietnamese writers will never reach acclaim or get recognition, because when they write stories about themselves, it's classified as a 'niche' or 'international' market and it doesn't sell. Butler has presented himself as an expert on the Vietnamese here, but he's a fraud. His stories ring inauthentic. You're better off reading an actual account from an actual Vietnamese person. Try The Vietnamese Gulag by Doan Van Toai, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places by Le Ly Hayslip, the Sacred Willow by Duong Van Mai Elliott, and others. I am disgusted and furious by the appropriation going on here, in the name of "creative writing."
October 16, 2016
My problem with this book is not that a White Male(tm) had the temerity to write about a culture that is not his own (gasp!). If we're going to be that reductive about literary license, then shame on JK Rowling for representing a nine-year old wizard boy! She has no experience being a boy OR a wizard!
Authors write from perspectives that are not their own. It's not the context of the creator, but the output that may or may not be problematic.
Problem with Robert Olen Butler is he doesn't write stories from another cultural perspective with grace or elegance. He writes with the heavy-handedness of a an who was utterly fascinated by Vietnamese people and wants to share stories the cultural quirks of these "others" with his own people. The characters in these stories never forget to remind you that they are, in fact, Vietnamese, and not in a subtle way. They say things like (and this is a direct quote from the book), "I'm Vietnamese, you know."
Butler clearly has finds the "exotic otherness" of Vietnamese spirituality fascinating to the point of fetish. The stories are clumsy, not very well-plotted, and on the nose with their monotonous imagery. The fact that this won the Pulitzer Prize is more of a sign of the literary culture it emerged from. I doubt very much this collection would be even published today, much less gilded with literary prizes.
Authors write from perspectives that are not their own. It's not the context of the creator, but the output that may or may not be problematic.
Problem with Robert Olen Butler is he doesn't write stories from another cultural perspective with grace or elegance. He writes with the heavy-handedness of a an who was utterly fascinated by Vietnamese people and wants to share stories the cultural quirks of these "others" with his own people. The characters in these stories never forget to remind you that they are, in fact, Vietnamese, and not in a subtle way. They say things like (and this is a direct quote from the book), "I'm Vietnamese, you know."
Butler clearly has finds the "exotic otherness" of Vietnamese spirituality fascinating to the point of fetish. The stories are clumsy, not very well-plotted, and on the nose with their monotonous imagery. The fact that this won the Pulitzer Prize is more of a sign of the literary culture it emerged from. I doubt very much this collection would be even published today, much less gilded with literary prizes.
August 30, 2018
Worth your time, I love reading short stories and this book has excellent short stories with all the Vietnamese refugee as narrators. Its a book about war, home, cultures, and countries. The narration is the best part of this book, narration by housewives, businessmen, soldiers, and grandchildren.
The descriptions are perfect and evoke very definite mental pictures of the people and their distinct Vietnamese culture.
It shows the complexities of human emotion, also the way Mr. Roberts wrote from the female perspective is commendable and very few writers do. He has done an excellent job.
I liked all the stories, the first one with the parrot is favorite. Just the one story with the couple who went out for vacation was a bit too long and not that touching. Apart from that, the stories are just lovely.
Its one of those books to which you can come back to and read again. Its an incredible read and I'll highly recommend this.
Happy Reading.
The descriptions are perfect and evoke very definite mental pictures of the people and their distinct Vietnamese culture.
It shows the complexities of human emotion, also the way Mr. Roberts wrote from the female perspective is commendable and very few writers do. He has done an excellent job.
I liked all the stories, the first one with the parrot is favorite. Just the one story with the couple who went out for vacation was a bit too long and not that touching. Apart from that, the stories are just lovely.
Its one of those books to which you can come back to and read again. Its an incredible read and I'll highly recommend this.
Happy Reading.
January 10, 2008
Like all on this site, I'm a voracious reader. In my lifetime I've read thousands of books, including many of the great classics of literature. This book is my absolute favorite book of all time. The first time I read this book, I did it in a sitting. And then I proceeded to read it twice more in a 48 hour span. The prose is first-rate, with imageries that jump off the page. Butler weaves themes and phrases from one part of a story throughout the rest of the story to perfection. This book makes me want to be a writer; it makes me wish I had written that perfect sentence I had just read. The quality of stories ranges from superb to breathtaking. I can't say enough good things about this book. It is my all-time favorite.
May 27, 2009
In THE THINGS THEY CARRIED by Tim O'Brien he has a short story about the young enemy soldier that he killed by throwing a hand grenade at him. In Olen Butler's A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN, there is "Salem" the short story of a Vietnamese soldier that keeps a pack of Salem cigarettes that he recovered from a dead American soldier that he had killed. He is troubled because the government wants him to return all of the items that could be used to identify the dead Americans. Ho Chi Minh smoked Salems and he wants to keep them as a shrine. The stories should be read together. The Man I Killed is the focus of these two stories, there are people out there in these wars and when these two men focus on that. War becomes a different thing for both of them.
June 18, 2019
I have a real problem with the whole premise of this book. A Vietnam veteran writing about the war and its aftermath? Great. But a Vietnam veteran writing about the war and its aftermath solely from the POV of Vietnamese refugees? No. Just no.
November 17, 2007
I only continued reading this because it was so bad it was shocking. Kind of like a gruesome car accident.
November 2, 2012
I’m really torn over whether this book deserved a Pulitzer for several reasons. First, several of these stories are stunning and do what great short stories do. They set you up and spin you through a slice of life at a discombobulating pace then leave you pinned at some unanticipated place. Like playing pin the tail on the donkey. However, I found one or two to be good, but not great. Thus four stars….(the expectations are high for a Pulitzer Prize winner.)
The stories were interesting and fueled by quiet introspection, humorous cultural assimilation, and sad alienation. I fully expect the content to pop into my mind in the future for various reasons. For example, “The American Couple” will come to mind whenever I’m in a temporary situation (like a vacation or a retreat) and fast friendships are made. The kind you know nothing will come of, but under the circumstances anything is possible.
Another struggle….A white man writing in the Vietnamese (both male and female) voice. Not sure how this will play out over time. I think he did it admirably, but the fact is, it nags at me. Seemed authentic….got the Pulitzer. But was anyone on the Pulitzer committee Vietnamese? Female?
I feel this all sounds overly critical, and Butler had no control over his book being a Pulitzer and doesn’t deserve uber-criticism because of it. So, if I randomly picked this up, or read it not knowing it was a Pulitzer, I’d quite likely have swooned over it.
The stories were interesting and fueled by quiet introspection, humorous cultural assimilation, and sad alienation. I fully expect the content to pop into my mind in the future for various reasons. For example, “The American Couple” will come to mind whenever I’m in a temporary situation (like a vacation or a retreat) and fast friendships are made. The kind you know nothing will come of, but under the circumstances anything is possible.
Another struggle….A white man writing in the Vietnamese (both male and female) voice. Not sure how this will play out over time. I think he did it admirably, but the fact is, it nags at me. Seemed authentic….got the Pulitzer. But was anyone on the Pulitzer committee Vietnamese? Female?
I feel this all sounds overly critical, and Butler had no control over his book being a Pulitzer and doesn’t deserve uber-criticism because of it. So, if I randomly picked this up, or read it not knowing it was a Pulitzer, I’d quite likely have swooned over it.
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