Novel Without a Name in On Paths Unknown

Aug 26, 2020 Zorlon Zorlon rated it it was amazing

"If, if."

Like all war novels, Duong's Novel is both horrifying and weirdly moving, just as they should be. War is awful in and of itself, but its effects on the people involved, even if not in combat (but especially those) is worse because they linger long after the battles have been fought.
In Quan's case, he's been fighting for ten years (the novel seems to take place in the final year of the American phase of the war, 1975), seen lots of friends die, but still keeps pushing on. Sent by one chi ...more

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Mar 07, 2016 Ronald Morton rated it really liked it

Shelves: in-translation, by-women, read-in-2016, vietnamese

How proud we were of our youth! Ten years ago, the day we left for the front, I had never imagined this. All we had wanted was to be able to sing songs of glory. Who cared about mortars, machine guns, mines, bayonets, daggers? Anything was good for killing, as long as it brought us glory We pulled the trigger, we shot, we hacked away, intoxicated by hatred; we demanded equality with our hatred.

The primary events of this novel take place in the last year of the conflict between North and South V

How proud we were of our youth! Ten years ago, the day we left for the front, I had never imagined this. All we had wanted was to be able to sing songs of glory. Who cared about mortars, machine guns, mines, bayonets, daggers? Anything was good for killing, as long as it brought us glory We pulled the trigger, we shot, we hacked away, intoxicated by hatred; we demanded equality with our hatred.

The primary events of this novel take place in the last year of the conflict between North and South Vietnam. It’s important to distinguish that from the “Vietnam War” which is specific to the US intervention into the conflict, a conflict which preceded our intervention by a great number of years, and continued for another two years after the Paris Peace Accord was signed. Further, it is important to note that this novel is specifically and distinctly Vietnamese – with one brief exception – the Americans (all Westerners) are long gone by the events of this novel, and are basically never mentioned, even in the flashbacks. In the West the Vietnam War remains a major touchpoint of the 20th century, while here, in the context of a decades long conflict that tore a country apart, it’s not worth a mention.

In many ways this reads like a standard war narrative; setting aside some cultural specifics, large passages of this novel could be read and interpreted to be about many other battles and wars. There is a universality to the proceedings, to the fears, to the anguish, to the long interminable grind of war that ties this into the long and storied tradition of the war novel. And yet, again, it is deeply personal and specific to the Vietnamese perspective. There is a long stretch where the protagonist travels across the country, ruminating over his 10 years of war, running into friends and acquaintances of his childhood and early war days, and eventually returning home. In this we are privy to the destruction and depravation – of infrastructure, of families, of philosophy, of culture – that decades of war inflicts.

More than anything though, even with that focus on the high level destruction, the book is intimately focused on the psychological impact of war, of the constant assault on the psyche, and the loss of youth and innocence – as a society and as an individual – that cannot be reclaimed.

Never. We never forget anything, never lose anything, never exchange anything, never undo what has been. There is no way back to the source, to the place where the pure, clear water once gushed forth. The river had out across the countryside, the towns, dragging. refuse and mud in its wake.

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